Such a fascinating glimpse into parliament, politics and what it was like to be an early woman MP c. 1930s

(The murder mystery is a bit ho hum).

"But, sir, I've often wondered why more people don't get murdered in this place when you think of the opportunities."

Photo: detail of a painting I took a long time ago visiting the H of P. Is that Gordon Brown?

The policeman on duty at the door....explained with a grin that the Home Secretary's League of Women Voters had arrived en masse to be shown round and given tea. The Minister had escaped after assuring them how glad he was to see them, how delighted Mr West would be to show them everything, and how terribly disappointed he was that a Cabinet meeting prevented him from having that great joy himself.

He was angry that the Minister should have agreed to see Annette Oissel alone, an unprecedented action. No Minister ever sees any visitor without an official nurse in attendance. It is recorded that a recent Home Secretary, after laying down office, remarked to his wife, "How nice to be able to talk to you, my dear, without having the minutes taken by a secretary."

‐‐-----
Ah, those pre WhatsApp group times...

[Cardinal] Rohan believed that Cagliostro exercised occult power: he could cure disease, transform metal into gold, and see into the future. When asked... whether he had any regrets about the life he had led, he replied that he still felt terrible about the assassination of Pompey...
....
"The Affair of tbe Diamond Necklace" - reads like fiction, unsurprisingly the talk of Paris in 1785.

Very cute and amusing collection of minimalist cartoons...

(Google translate: Have you noticed how we always hear the teacher of class 305 say "shh"?)

Yes, even in our class we hear her)

The bookshelves for Creature Comforts...
(At a Wallace & Gromit exhibition)

https://theharris.org.uk/product/wallace-gromit-in-a-case-at-the-museum-exhibiti...

Since nobody really wants to be a trans woman, i.e., nobody wakes up and goes whoa, maybe my life would be better if I transitioned, alienating most of my friends and my family, I wonder what'll happen at work, I'd love to spend all my money on hormones and surgeries, buy a new wardrobe that I don't even understand right now, probably become unlovable and then end my short life in a bloody murder.

The internet at that time was this big, exciting place where you could anonymously spill your guts about gender and discomfort and heteronormativity and how weird male privilege felt and lots of other things, except back then she didn't really have language for it so she just went like: everything sucks and I am totally sad.

... she's, like, way the hell downtown, in Chinatown, and she really should go back to work. Opportunity number two for an odyssey of city exploration as a metaphor for self exploration: poof, down the tube. Whatever. She does have this feeling for a moment though of what it would be like not to be tied to Steph, to their apartment, to her job, but then she thinks: that's some straight dude bull-shit, the self-sufficient loner.

"She only goes after people who are really terrible..."

This book is set in 2010. The author and the interviewer reminisced. I felt old. Unlikely to buy...

This is just a terrifying subject.

#10beforetheend

Starting with Kris Manjapra, as NF generally takes me longer (and if I finish before the end of October, it does double duty for another challenge!)

@ChaoticMissAdventures

Going to take @ChaoticMissAdventures prompt and read these books on my shelves before the end of the year. Some have been there longer than others! Wish me luck...

#10beforetheend

When someone else is enthusiastic about a book:

But you have read it recently and are just "meh"....?

https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/BK_sample.html?action=click&module=nl-i...

But the colonists were too stubborn to accept his invitation.

What the Believers had suspected all along, that the whites were beyond redemption, was confirmed. What else would one expect from people who were a product of a different creation from that of the amaXhosa, people who were so unscrupulous that they killed the son of their own god?

(Photo taken waiting for the Sarah Hall event to start...)

Sat in the second row and was so star struck forgot to take a photo. So articulate and interesting to listen to.

More events coming up: Norwich, London, Kendal, Newcastle...
https://www.sarahhallauthor.com/events https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/events/helm-sarah-hall/

Portrait of the original author in the back of the book.

Fascinating re-imagining of a late 19/ early 20th century novel about class and gender inequalities in a northern (English) town dominated by one industry.

Afterword explains what Holdsworth was trying to do and how, like many successful women writers, she has been written out of lit history.

I'm out of work and I don't intend to find any... until I've got through Marx.
............

Well the reading bit I id with, not so much Marx after a painful attempt for a history course many years ago.

Eh Rachel!

Mme du Barry continued to be the favorite target of libellers... A scurrilous biography, Anecdotes secrètes sur Mme la comtesse du Barry, traced her career from the brothel to the royal bed...It became a top best seller in the underground book trade of the 1770s...

...
Royal gossip clearly not new.
Image from "her" webpage.
http://www.madamedepompadour.com/_eng_pomp/home.htm

There's no nibbling in covert operations!

‐-------
Not even in Paris?
Another good reason for avoiding MI5...🤣

Finally finished this chunkster! I usually get a bit itchy at any book over 300 pages, but the #Booker2025 shortlist made me pick it up (thank you, my library system).

Some great moments, but mostly I felt disconnected from the young titular characters. Think for me a book centring Pooja or Mama's story/ies would be more interesting. Acknowledging a criticism (trope of predatory older artist) within the narrative doesn't "fix" the issue, either!

When he told Sunny the ingredients in what he'd brought....he always added at the end: y amor!

"Huauzontles y amor! Frijoles, epazote y amor! Tomatillo, serrano y amor!"

Ulla would say, "The love is in the sauce," which had always irritated Sunny. He wanted only sauce in his sauce. Or, if anything, a touch of irony in his sauce, or the devil in his sauce, or sauciness in his sauce.

"Please leave amor out! I'm allergic to it," begged Sunny.

"At some point before his death in 1345, Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham (1287-1345) composed his Philobiblon ('Love of Books'), in which he set out to 'clear the love we have had for books from the charge of excess.'

I love de Bury's treatise: it is a battle-hymn for the value of books and learning: 'in books we climb mountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss'."

This section reminds me of a neighbour from the subcontinent, who also thinks this kind of comment to near-strangers is perfectly fine...

#CultureShock

They played Iqbal Bano singing "Hum Dekhenge." The picture on the cassette cover showed the singer wearing a black sari to protest the dictatorship of Zia....

What happened within a family, what happened between a couple, was no different from that which happened in a nation under dictatorship, running on fear. Far above, planes blinked across the sky, and below, the madman in the ruins of the idgah came out and shouted....

Poor Tracy! 🤣

Oh no, I now want to immediately go to this bookshop and spend a large amount.. 😬

Edith Rickert died a few months before the first volume of the edition was pub lished, and Manly six months afterwards. (Predictably, Rickert's work was undervalued, as it still is today. In the introduction to the edition, Manly praised Rickert for having a 'woman's capacity for enormous drudgery, and to this day, Manly has an entry in the Dictionary of American National Biography, but Rickert does not.)

*boo hiss*

At home Sunny said: "Ulla, why did you say I put curry in everything? I put spices in everything, not curry in everything. There's no such thing as curry, in fact. It's a fake word invented by the British."

He distinctly heard his mother's voice in his ear say, Who is this stupid person?

Almost matches...

Oh no!

Forgot to take a picture of the lovely green endpapers, so here is the cover again...

I'm a fan of SH, including her short stories, so no surprise that I loved this novel, stories across time linked by the one named wind in the UK. From climate change scientists measuring plastics now, back to early man's first stone monuments, "Helm" is watching...

It's a disaster for nature, but also for humans. Without trees to hold the earth back, mudslides occur....

(Book not in the db - 738 Jours)

It is a quiet weekday signing. Fortunately one couple need six signed copies. Browsing to pass the time, I am again mistaken for a bookseller.

'Could you help me with the Paddington Bear books? I have a granddaughter in Perth.'

Of course I can. We find the adventure that seems exactly right, and then the lady asks me how long I have worked here. I explain that I don't - that I've simply been signing my book.

There is the north, she thinks, where levelling-up means Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, and stops with the BBC effect. And then there's the other north.

[Rubicund Radical Bookshop offers] the second transcendent moment of the tour, sipping coffee and seated by a shop window displaying a Robert Mapplethorpe photography book, as a sense of hope grows in me that there really could be a radical future with acceptance of everyone for whoever they may be, and quality cake for all. Rather than being a champagne socialist, I may become a Battenberg Bolshevik.

We are three-quarters through October & a magnificent gilding of leaves has occurred across Eden, as if illuminators had been working in the branches...

The geese are away, so tidy in their formations overhead - a mournful desertion.

Sit to the right of the carriage, he was advised by the conductor: less scenic, but better for viewing Batty Moss and the brooding uplands Garsdale, Kirkby Stephen. The small, ingathered towns pass by, ancient ruined castles with ginger cattle grazing around their mounds, whitewashed village churches.

Article discussing the geography: https://www.faber.co.uk/journal/members-map-sarah-hall-on-places-of-significance...

Dangerous for the wishlist...

Visiting pooch is unimpressed by any deviation from a strict schedule of her game, sorry Sarah Hall.

Next up...

Lots of reading, bookshops, sunshine. 🇨🇵

(And an unexpected large protest march, but moving swiftly on...)

Montpellier.

Photobombed by seagull.

A big breakfast for a big book...

From the for-kids section of the book...

Tempting...