This book should be subtitled 'and add them all to your wishlist.'
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This book should be subtitled 'and add them all to your wishlist.'
... now I was certain. I'd glanced at the right-hand side of the shelving unit when I'd been fetching tinder for the fire chamber, and somehow I'd saved the image in my mind.
There they were.
The 'bumlets' the squares of linen to keep the benches clean and stop your bum being singed by the hot wood.
....The pile was lower than it should have been.
---
I had no idea this was a thing.
Every day a school day.
"Every reader of Singer is at home in Krochmalna Street, the heart of Warsaw‘s Jewish neighborhood, where the author lived from 1908 to 1917 and where he set many of his books. When you read Singer, Krochmalna becomes the center of the world. The feeling is even more powerful because the street now exists only in these texts... and a few black-and-white photos..."
https://europeanreviewofbooks.com/the-underbelly-of-krochmalna-street/
"We all have our turn in the end," I said....
She took a deep breath. "Well, I suppose if we die tonight, I'm okay with it. I've had a good life, you know. I was married to Kenneth for over thirty years. Eighteen of them were really happy. That's not so bad."
"What happened to the other twelve?"
"Erectile dysfunction and his abortive attempt to breed Weimaraners."
He hadn't mentioned the postmortem oblivion, though. He assumed they knew about that, how comedians almost never reached posterity, how quickly the material aged, and the delivery, how a comedian dead twenty years might as well have lived in the Middle Ages, might as well have been one of those court jesters about whom the only thing we remembered was the funny hats.
"Vague isn't necessarily bad,' he said. 'It mirrors the human experience.'
How was this guy allowed to teach English? Dorothy wondered.....
'Good writing is supposed to transcend human experience,' she said, 'not just mirror it. Otherwise, all I would have to do for critics to call my next show a masterpiece would be to write an hour's worth of random words, and I would get blurbs like "Astounding! Just like life! Makes no sense at all!"
Ride on! ride on in majesty! / In lowly pomp ride on to die. Or, Thou, most kind and gentle death, / Waiting to hush our latest breath, / O praise him, alleluia! It perplexed Evelyn that there was such a mismatch between the lurid passionate words of the hymns and the tame chit-chat of the congregation at the end of services, when any mention of death - or for that matter lowly pomp, or even riding - would have seemed jarring and excessive.
100 Notable African Books of 2024 from #BrittlePaper
https://brittlepaper.com/100-notable-african-books-of-2024/
Only 100 pages into this chunkster. So glad I didn't wait for work to close for the hols to crack this one open!
pickI'm having a bit of a good run at the moment. I bought this a while back thinking I'd save it to read. A lovely distraction, beautiful, thoughtful prose and so many art and music references to check out.
From over there is a sound of argument, from over there a clamor of complaint, from over there a gospel choir, from over there the muezzin's call, from over there three or four sputtering generators, from over there the squall of the bus stop and taxi stand, from over there revelers and water sellers, from over there the neighbor's relentless television... a vast sonic mix of an ocean that beats its incessant waves the whole night through...
Think instead, he says to himself, of all the people in the Medina Koura, think of them in their homes, in their beds, think of their quotidian worries about their children's schooling. Think about their secret savings, and their delightful subterfuges, their religion and transgressions, their necessary severity, the warmth of their families, and the untranslatable consolations of their lives.
Lovely exhibit, so many beautiful books to look at... plus plenty in the shop too!
pickJust loved this! One of those books that I had completely the wrong idea about, and was only persuaded by another reader to give it a go.
'Your English is perfect,' Joan said, watching me thoughtfully. 'Edward was worried we wouldn't find someone.'
'I learnt at school. From Sister Mary and from reading Woman's Own.'
She laughed loudly, again. I laughed too. No one found me funny on the island.
'I see. Well, it's perfect. You could pass for an Englishwoman.'
Joan looked out at the sea.
'Greatest country in the world.'
[Sensing an authorial raised eyebrow here]
A marriage is a private business, even for people who leave behind them such a vast litter of diaries, letters and third-party gossip. What occurs at its centre, what bonds maintain it, are not always visible, or even guessable, to the outsider's greedy eye. The sense that arises from this residue of words is of an abiding love, comprised in equal parts of affection and intellectual stimulation. My inviolable centre, Virginia called Leonard...
Love a book list!
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/25/g-s1-34679/npr-books-we-love-2024
(See previous post for the NYT free access link)
Yay! A list...
How many have you read? (8) How many do you want to read? (Well, I've ticked 9, but I think that's likely to rise).
100 Notable Books of 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/26/books/notable-books.html?unlocked...
Next up, NPR's list!
'I saw the story in the Irish Press,' he said.
'So did I. What about it?'
'I suppose the press release came from the palace?'
'We issued one too, but it was ignored. Church business is none of our business.'
'Even when it's a murder?'
Hackett was silent.
'The paper had it that he fell down the stairs,' Strafford said.
'And?'
'And he didn't fall down any stairs.'
Ireland, 1950s, the Catholic church vs the police
Image: roaringwaterjournal.com
Some not cheap books about VW. Never mind a room of one's own, need a small loan for the books...
Congrats to Percival Everett!
https://www.writingafrica.com/w-paul-coates-percival-everett-feted-at-us-nationa...
Poetry lovers are viewed with suspicion. Many years later, when a popular tabloid was trying to convince its readers that they had identified a sexually motivated murderer, their character-assassination Exhibit A was 'He owns over a thousand books, many of them poetry'. So, if you are into poetry or, better still, if this book gets you into poetry, best keep quiet about it...
My mother only has photos taken of her children. Never anything else. I haven't got any photographs of Vinh Long, not one, of the garden, the river, the straight tamarind-lined avenues of the French conquest, not of the house, nor of our institutional whitewashed bedrooms with the big black and gilt iron beds, lit up like classrooms by the red street lights, the green metal lamp-shades, not a single image of those incredible places...
He thought Tehran was also like an addict.
A city addicted to smoke, to humiliation, to poverty and torpor whose slightest effort to sober up gave rise to panic. Tehran was an addict that wanted to get clean but lacked the will, and after several days of sobriety would begin using again with even greater intensity. It was an addiction to oppression, an addiction to poverty, and an addiction to inhibition and nostalgia...
Perhaps he was simply offering to purchase the embroidered cloth? But if so, then why the expression of fear on the young woman's face? Why the young woman's concentration, so brittle and freighted with meaning, as if it were the only rebuff she was permitted to make...
https://www.wikiart.org/en/judith-leyster
This was not a painting of temptation, but rather one of harassment and intimidation, a scene that could be taking place right now in nearly anyplace in the world. The painting operated around a schism, it represented two irreconcilable subjective positions: the man, who believed the scene to be one of ardor and seduction, and the woman, who had been plunged into a state of fear and humiliation.
I would dive into the lake
- immediate, its cobalt reach and
silence - slide down, into the rich,
closed, icy book, blue lipped
in a white rubber cabbage-roses
headdress, and a coral rubber nose-clip,
slow-flitting like an agate-eating
swallow, floating sideways in
the indigo pressure.
... the flames rippled over the pages, catching first the old books with the brown paper whose smell I loved so much. I vividly remember how Danko's Burning Heart was engulfed in flames that then licked at Luce's skirt who, desperately trying to protect herself from the fire in the pages of Romain Rolland's book, held Pierre tightly to her breast...
pickLoved this book, a mix of oral histories from migrants and the memories of those who worked on the island.
They were screening an English film, and she wasn't entirely able to follow the plot, but at least there wasn't much talking. A pretty woman with yellow hair seemed unhappy, despite apparently having lots of money, maybe because she kept getting attacked by birds. Siew Li wasn't sure what she'd done to make the birds angry, but maybe there wasn't a reason, who knows how bird brains work...
She saw them from her window, swarming out of two cars parked just downstairs. All those men coming to get a schoolgirl, she thought, unless there's someone else in this block. But no, they were all hers. They seemed in no hurry, going through all her possessions, writing down the titles of books. "Read so much for what? Will Marx help you find a husband?" jeered one of them....
"The British gave the most trouble..."
The 2024 shortlisted authors are:
Out of Gaza: New Palestinian Poetry
Lana Makes Purple Pizza
The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine
48 Stories of Exile from Palestine
Knights of Cinema: The Story of the Palestine Film Unit
Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine
Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba
.... they both look down on the crowd....
[H.G. Wells asks] "You don't think they'll swamp you?" I said. "Now look here," said the Commissioner, "I'm English-born Derbyshire. I came into America when I was a lad. I had fifteen dollars. And here I am! Well, do you expect me, now I'm here, to shut the door on any other poor chaps who want a start with hope in it, in the New World?
From recent research by the Literacy Trust [UK]. (I think, of course for adults too, it's just they only asked the youngsters for this research!)
Their programmes work to give more children access to books and reading.
They're looking for support and volunteers: https://literacytrust.org.uk/reading-for-pleasure/
.
"I know. But I'm taking a huge risk by leaving you in charge of this investigation. If there's another murder, Kyiv will hold me responsible. And if that happens, you're out on your ear. I hope I make myself clear?"
"What's the worst that can happen? They're not going to transfer me somewhere worse than Chernobyl, are they?"
Image via Unsplash (Pripyat, abandoned city)
Well, the catalogue isn't out yet (!) but the art was amazing.
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/whatson/walker-art-gallery/exhibition/conver...
pickLives of British artists, their art choices and experiences. At points the archive record is so fragile (or non-existant) this is the focus of the book. It would be even better with colour reproductions of the art but Google was my friend here.
...the objects [in the paintings] communicate Nina [Hamnett]'s admiration of her sitters, and create new measures of value - such as imagination, intelligence and grit - entirely distinct from portraiture's traditional criterion: wealth. Borrowing from Cubist portraiture, Nina painted her sitters with a monumental stillness, as though they were carved from wood or rock; they look capable of enduring any weather, any encounter...
College Street.... a maze of coffee shops and dusty bookstores, where, the tongawallah informed her, customers could sit and read for as long as they wished without buying so much as a pamphlet.
Persis wondered, briefly, what her father would make of such wild generosity; she suspected his heart might literally implode at the thought of his own clientele wantonly thumbing the Wadia Book Emporium's merchandise before leaving without a purchase.
![[tagged book]](https://image.librarything.com/pics/litsy_webpics/icon_taggedBook@3x.png){kind=icon}
