Next up, a lushly illustrated cultural history of stones. I like a niche deep-dive, so have high hopes for this one: the author's credentials seem impressive. 💎🪨🗿

I enjoyed Wassef's memoir of balancing private life and co-managing a chain of independent bookshops in Cairo as much as I'd hoped, and more than I expected. I don't think I'd have liked to work for her though!
It was an engaging insight into recent Egyptian society and culture, as experienced by an educated, middle class, liberal woman in a patriarchal and increasingly conservative country.
Although I didn't get to her shop, Diwan, when we ⬇️

I may be a bit premature, but this is Skye, a rescue cat we've applied to re-home. We met her today at her foster home, now we have to wait for the animal shelter to do their checks and give their approval. Hopefully, we can bring her home in about a week or so 🤞😺
#CatsOfLitsy #FingersCrossed

“Never make a decision based on fear or guilt or guided by what you think is easier. Choose what rings true to you.”

#SundayFunday @BookmarkTavern

It might be time to re-read this... ??

This LitHub article quotes from the book: "The incumbents refused to get out. It was very simple. They merely charged illegality in the elections and wrapped up the whole situation in the interminable red tape of the law." Sounds familiar! ?
https://lithub.com/how-jack-london-foresaw-the-anti-democratic-future-with-the-i...

I bought this a couple of years ago, and was reminded to take it off the shelf by the StoryGraph "reading the world" challenge, which this year has Egypt as one of its prompts.
The Diwan bookshop opened its first Cairo store in 2002, so it was there when we were passing through in 2008. I didn't get to it, and in fairness, given our limited time, I wouldn't have curtailed visiting the Cairo Museum, but still, it would've been nice... ????

"Sometimes we're up, sometimes we're down
But our feet are always on the ground
We always laugh, don't have to cry
And this is the reason why
We got love power.
It's the greatest power of them all.
We got love power
And together we can't fall." ❤️✊❤️

?️Dusty Springfield
?Love Power
?Dusty... ...Definitely
?️ https://youtu.be/b3tV_AptOsE?feature=shared

Bennett, under the pseudonym Francis Stevens, was an early writer of weird fiction, admired in the 1920s (Lovecraft), but long eclipsed by others in the genre (Lovecraft), and not included in a seminal overview of the weird, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (Lovecraft). Even some photos of her are of doubted authenticity (the one I've posted is held as genuine). She is belatedly being seen as an originator of dark fantasy, so it's nice to ⬇️

"Extract from entry of May 17, 19--, in the log of the Portsmouth Bell, British merchant vessel, Captain Charles Jessamy, Master:
The floating scoria and ashes covering the sea in an almost unbroken thickness from six to fifteen inches are greatly impeding our progress."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

This is a good locked-room mystery with an interesting detective who, my manga-reading daughter tells me, she felt may have been, in part, an inspiration for the Death Note detective, L.
I liked the metatextual discussion of locked-room mysteries by the narrator & by the characters, which bore directly on the story itself: very clever. The setting and cultural insight was interesting, too.
I've ordered the second in the series from the library 😊

This is a good locked-room mystery with an interesting detective who, my manga-reading daughter tells me, she felt may have been, in part, an inspiration for the Death Note detective, L.
I liked the metatextual discussion of locked-room mysteries by the narrator & by the characters, which bore directly on the story itself: very clever. The setting and cultural insight was interesting, too.
I've ordered the second in the series from the library 😊

#BookHaul
My son got me a present of Murderbot hardbacks, partly to regularise my collection into uniform editions, partly to replace the ones I'd lent him which he water damaged! 🌊📚😱 😄
I got Enchanted Creatures and Claimed! for myself, the latter being my next read.

#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude

A koto plays a part in the plot of "The Honjin Murders", though as I'm near the beginning of the story, quite what its significance is I've yet to discover. However, the mention of the instrument immediately made me think of the sublime "Koto Song" by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, so their album "Jazz Impressions of Japan" is now my soundtrack ❤️ ??❤️

https://youtu.be/LbdD9gPnhhM?si=mh0jsYkKny4gLWLQ

#BooksAndMusic

I thoroughly enjoyed Helen Wilson's cultural history of the robin. Focusing on the European robin (Erithacus rubecula), it includes the American robin (incongruously Disneyfied into Mary Poppins's London in A Spoonful of Sugar, though not as alarmingly as Dick van Dyke's cockney accent), the Asian magpie robin, & other species unrelated genetically but which have been given the name.
Lots of wonderful photos & illustrations: a quick, light read.

One of my 2024 Christmas books. Still suitably seasonal as snow is still on the ground, and a robin is an occasional visitor to the garden.
Time to find out a bit more about Britain's favourite bird ❤️🐦‍⬛❤️

#ClassicLSFBC @Ruthiella @RamsFan1963

Stories, mainly melancholy, about US white colonialism in the guise of interplanetary settlement.

Written in the shadow of WWII and the atomic bombings of Japan, Bradbury gives a pessimistic view of the human capacity for self-destruction, genocide, ignorance & bigotry couched in beautifully lyrical prose that captures the sadness of decay and decline, grief for the passing and the passed, & a scintilla ⬇️

"One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets."

- Rocket Summer ?☀️?

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

[Illustration: Peter Thorpe]

#ClassicLSFBC
Usher II is one of Bradbury's invectives against censorship, written in 1949, obliquely referencing McCarthyism, and directly referencing book bans and book burnings, even if set in his own future.
It's hard not to see MC William Stendhal as other than an authorial avatar, driven mad by the destruction of his 50,000 book library at the hands of investigators of the Moral Climate crusade, he plots his revenge upon the repressive ⬇️

"How could I expect you to know Mr. Poe? He died a long while ago, before Lincoln. All of his books were burned in the Great Fire...He and Lovecraft and Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce and all the tales of terror and fantasy and horror and, for that matter, tales of the future were burned. Heartlessly. They passed a law. Oh, it started very small. In 1950 and '60 it was a grain of sand. They began by controlling books of cartoons and then ⬇️

#BookMail #EarlyReviewers

I've been lucky recently with the Library Thing giveaway program, winning books I've requested AND actually receiving them!
This one is a psychological study of the impact of war & long term conflicts on identity, group dynamics, and the dehumanisation of the other.
Is it surprising that the outcome of seeking to genocidally bomb your opponent into oblivion is not peace but more war? Who could possibly have guessed?🫠

#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude

Some Martian music as I'm reading Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles/The Silver Locusts".

• Pixies, Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons: https://youtu.be/DNtRoTB9gB4?si=W3aQeCyRkMAnB-z_

• David, Life on Mars?: https://youtu.be/AZKcl4-tcuo?si=l8cGA2jX8a-E8iSY

• Camille, Mars is No Fun: https://youtu.be/_hvDvMk4S-o?si=ipW3XGWXYk1V7kkP

• Marc, Ballrooms of Mars: https://youtu.be/X46oHcSa5RA?si=IwgXLAY6zSHSFqhh

#ClassicLSFBC

The #ClassicLSFBC pick for January is Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles", which I've read before in the Harper edition in the middle, and the GN version on the left.
While I've had it longer, I've not yet read the UK version, titled (after one of the stories) "The Silver Locusts", so I'll be using that one for the group read.
The contents are slightly different to the US edition: it drops "The Fire Balloons' and adds "Usher II", so I'll ⬇️

"When the brutal 50-year tyranny of the Assad dynasty collapsed last month, people danced in the streets in many parts of Syria as they contemplated an unprecedented new beginning."
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

#SocialistStandard issue 1445, has an editorial about the regime change in Syria, a main article about how tech companies leverage political power, continues its series of essays about socialism based on an address by William Morris, ⬇️

I'm probably more interested in this book as an artifact than for its contents, which were, nonetheless, interesting.
I picked up this 1901 edition in Durham, and the beautiful inscription shows that it was held by the St. Cuthbert's Society at the university. I can't quite make out the signature, but it looks like J. D. Hall, perhaps.
It was published jointly in Dublin & London, the little bookbinder's sticker suggesting this one was printed ⬇️

Just holding onto that Christmas spirit a Lyttelton longer! I miss Humph, though his replacement, Jack Dee, is appropriately curmudgeonly. This 2003 Christmas special was a parody of Dickens, including most of the usual games.

Still, as the Christmas tree of time sheds its needles into the fluffy slippers of destiny, and the tremulous foot of fate is pierced by the accidental acupuncture of eternity, I notice it's the end of the review.

The last book I'll start in 2024 ⏳

The last book I'll finish in 2024 was Simenon's tale of a marriage marred by family interference, bourgeois suspicions, emotional betrayals and psychological abuse.
Set in the claustrophobic environs of a seagoing freighter, dogged by bad luck and paranoid tensions, it's a bit like the film "The War of the Roses" at sea. The story builds to a climactic sea rescue with inevitable tragic consequences.
⬇️

I *might* have time to squeeze in a final book before 2024 is over.
This is a non-Maigret Simenon about a boat captain whose wife insists on accompanying him on the maiden voyage of his new vessel. Marital tensions build and fracture, though to what end I'll have to read to discover! 💔🌊💔

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book of 2-3 page essays about objects and ideas that enter our culture either as essential threads in the social fabric, or as fun and modish niche elements, with an ephemerality that may not be apparent but which always assets itself.
The focus is on Western culture, and I'd like to see a companion volume taking in other cultures, as those things we've lost or given up are as telling as those things we hold onto.

A Palestinian boy sets off on a school trip in 1968, reflecting on his experience of having known life only under the Israeli occupation. His mother, waving him off, reflects on her experience of surviving the horrors of the 1948 Catastrophe, when Palestine was abandoned by the British and occupied by Israelis. She visits her mother, who recalls the withdrawal of Ottoman occupation, and the succeeding British and Israeli occupations. ⬇️

"This book is a collection of objects that once populated the world, but do so no longer."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

I'm about halfway through this collection of 85 short essays about defunct and superceded objects and the ideas they manifested. I'm really enjoying it, and while each essay is brief, the information density of reading them in one consecutive stretch is cognitively demanding, so I'm taking a brief break to rest my ?

BBC Radio 4 has a new series of some of the Holmes short stories read by Hugh Bonneville 😊

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0kbcyb3

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes

Merry Festivus, to those who celebrate 🥳
#BookHaul #Christmas
All cultural histories, in one way or another.

Being the time of year it is, I couldn't resist a book about that quintessential seasonal animal that sums up the spirit of good cheer & holiday companionship: the Christmas Squid🎄🦑🎄
Lancashire legend holds that the squid climbs up the outhouse drain with its packet of gifts, which it deposits with its tentacle through the coalhouse ⬇️

I read a different author's cat memoir earlier in the year, and was upset by that writer's focus on her pets' ill-health and deaths, frequently caused by her own neglect.
This book is somewhat more balanced in following Mii's life from kittenhood, through 20 years of companionship, inevitably dealing with illness and death, so not for anybody likely to be distressed by such detailed descriptions.
What really distinguishes it from that other ⬇️

Well, Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," of course, and Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales," too, but the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" always gives me the Christmas feels ? ????️‍♂️

#SundayFunday @BookmarkTavern

Having just bailed on a self-help book, let's see how I get on with (yet another) author's cat memoir! 😸

I picked this up because I like the title and the author/illustrator's name, Dancing Snail💃🐌
It's a self-help book about depression and fatigue, lots of illustrations to reduce cognitive load in delivering its message. I'm not a great fan of self-help books, but it'll be interesting to see how this one comes across.

Oh, yeah, a gratuitous #BookmarkMatching photo 📖🔖

Wrong legion for the story, but I do what I can! 😀

This was a great historical novel set in the 367CE Roman province of Britannia, a period about which we know enough to provide interesting background, while also vague enough to give an author lots of latitude to play around & I thought Duckworth did justice to the material.
The story follows Alberic, an exiled Saxon prince, and Dominicus, an embittered young legionary, as their paths in the conflict raging across the island gradually converge, ⬇️

Four #LibraryHaul GNs this week, of which Conan was the best, precisely capturing the classic sword & sorcery aesthetic, by Crom!
The Star Wars book was unreadable and I bailed. The Force was weak in that one!
Venom was ok, a flashback to the Lethal Protector's early career, featuring Silver Sable & Nick Fury, with Doctor Doom the antagonist. Workmanlike rather than inspired.
⬇️

"I can't believe I'm doing this."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

This is volume three of Zub's "Black Stone" storyline of Conan comics, and while I haven't read the previous two volumes, it doesn't really matter - I'd guess he's had to fight wizards and monsters, flexing his "mighty thews"?? and killing anyone and anything within reach of his sword ?️
That said, it's exactly what I want from a Conan comic, and - Bonus! This one sees him cast back in time 80,000 years to Valusia and an encounter with ⬇️

“There is in fact no way of correcting wrongdoing in those who think that the height of virtue consists in the execution of their will.”

"Sovereign power is nothing if it does not care for the welfare of others, and...it is the task of a good ruler to keep his power in check, to resist the passions of unbridled desire and implacable rage."

"The last embers of the fiery sunset danced across the surface of the Solway Firth, with the tips of its fingers illuminating the great stone fort at its edge."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

It's that time of the year to re-read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 💚❤️💚
This time around, it's Simon Armitage's revised translation, with lots of luscious illustrations. When I first flicked through this version, it didn't sit well with me, but as I'm actually sitting down with it to read through, it's actually flowing nicely.
🙇🏻🩸🪓🧌

"O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm.
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy."

- The Sick Rose

I like faded flowers, though these are starting to get a bit Miss Haversham, so I should probably throw them out now ?

I attended training today on working in a healthcare setting with autistic people and those with a learning disability. The training company has published a range of picture books introducing children to various long-term health conditions, while raising awareness of diversity. This one was on my table, and I found it charming and informative. There are five in this "My...Has..." series.
https://www.happysmilestraining.co.uk/our-books/

#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude

I love Pixies, so while this post could feature any of their albums, this is the one I'm listening to right now, so Bossanova it is!
I first heard them listening to Surfer Rosa on John Peel's evening radio show. I miss Peely.

I don't need much persuasion to be listening to #Finland 's national composer, Sibelius, but as it's his birthday today, it seemed rude not to mindfully do so.
Sibelius derived his Pelléas et Mélisande suite from his incidental music for Maeterlinck's play about the doomed love of the title characters. The setting is a decaying castle deep in the forest, which fits the mood of the book I'm reading, "Gossip from the Forest".
?? ????

A newly acquired 1958 Folio Society edition of short stories originally published in 1686, in which Ihara is credited with creating the Ukiyo "Floating World" genre of Edo Period Japanese literature.
Folio covers are often difficult to photograph: this one is bound in a beautiful watchet-tinted silk ?
The end papers and title pages are beneath, and a detail of one of the woodcut illustrations to the left ❤️