Behind the scenes in Iran...

They were plain-dressed, the women not wearing scarves, and for the first time in my memory I saw a large group of women with all their hair hanging freely. It was breathtaking. I was in awe, as if seeing a scene out of a Romantic painting of sea nymphs, like the ones Maman Elizabeth once told me about at bedtime. All textures and weights, dark, wavy, flying carpet-like. I loved these women and their powerful hair.

7 weeks! I don't think so...?

There's definitely a reason I turn these 'insights' off for kindle! Haven't worked out how to do it on Libby...

#WPLL25
#WomensPrize

You, the gentrifier, have now been gentrified.... once every ten years, you should have a reunion and bitterly reminisce, clutching your paper cups of Moscow mule and growling about how this town's landlords and businesses put cash before community. At the end of the evening you should stand in a long line, in the order that your spending powers evolved to claim the city

Always the art explored uncharted terrains, and managed to get him outside his comfort zone. Almost every time he was left enthralled by this new generation of artists that were conscious and produced art that was not only beautiful but also effective in its own transgressive way.

[No title in db]

Andzani woke up with a babalas the following day...

[Book not in the database https://wisaniirvin.com/]

Failed attempt to take a picture of beautiful brunch and book...

Book not in the db yet

This is a café, they sell food, but it's also a hardware, see the timber? You can see it all the way from school, it's so long. This is the fastest route to get to the school, after passing this cafe you will find this passage. And out of this passage you are met by that big house with the red tile roofing. It is one of the few houses that have tile roofing around here as you can see. After you have passed the house you will see these boulders.

Before he fled, he ran through the stable blocks and loosed the horses rather than leave them to burn or to starve to death locked in their pens.

Sometimes when I think of Iran, the summer of 1979 before a people's hard-won freedom was scattered by the wind, I imagine the Arab horses galloping through the suburbs of the city, past the houses and the factories towards the desert--and pray that they at least never were recaptured.

Running at full pelt across the farm field then climbing up onto the top of a hay bale. I feel strong and invincible and like the sky is blue because it loves me. When I get home I am going to read a book under my covers by glow-worm. The library van stops outside our caravan once a week. It is loaning me everything it has to read and the librarian is always so nice to me. I have found a way to escape my world every night.

"I also meet some funny people who advise me to "trade" upon my nationality. They tell me that if I wish to succeed in literature in America I should dress in Chinese costume, carry a fan in my hand, wear a pair of scarlet beaded slippers, live in New York, and come of high birth... I should discourse on my spirit acquaintance with Chinese ancestors..."
Written more than a hundred years ago by a Chinese-American author.

Bookriot re https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-ends-bide...

https://bookriot.com/guide-to-critically-read-a-press-release-from-the-federal-g...

Maria says, 'Well they were murdered in cold blood by somebody. I think we are joined in this country by pure evil, my friend' ....

Signor stops itching a moment and snaps, 'Ladies! Would you speak of those things which you understand, and leave the rest to us?'

Maria is puffing out her cheeks and I wonder if she might open her mouth and belch real fire.

Currently reading #WomensPrizeLL25

Before they leave, you meet them for coffee and you understand then that they were always wary of Berlin, that they never committed themselves to a city that in turn never really committed to them. For all the talk of people ignoring each other at the end of relationships, it's Berlin which is the true ghost, drawing you in with a flurry of wild promises, and then abruptly losing interest.

AI's not quite there yet...

Fascinating book, filled with details you didn't know you needed about "ordinary" Viking life.

Got to watch those guys who bath once a week...

One is the Gosforth Cross from Cumbria, carved in the first half of the tenth century, towering 4.4 metres high in the churchyard of St Mary's... [it] also has carved stories that we might remember from Norse mythology, including Loki bound and tortured with snake poison for his crimes, and a figure with its foot in the mouth of a monstrous fanged beast, perhaps Odin fighting the wolf Fenrir at Ragnarok.

Reading on the station about out of this world travel.

Bit of a contrast.

He dreamed - of all things, of all damned American things - of the infamous image taken by Michael Collins during the first successful moon mission, back in 1969: the photograph of the lunar module leaving the moon's surface, and of the earth beyond.

No Russian mind should be steeped in these thoughts.

Well, the good thing about Peirene novellas you don't get on with: they are short.

This Icelandic novella (about a researcher having a breakdown over a mistake she's made in the archive) I think would have been a better short story.

This was the author's first fiction though, so wonder what the others are like. Will they also be translated?

I'm not usually a fan of campus novels, so this one had points against it before the start!

Similar parchments and manuscripts were used in other parts of medieval Europe, with prayers to the saints for safe delivery, invocations against evil, and holy images. One of these, an English scroll from c.1500, was found to have traces of human proteins associated with vaginal fluids, as well as honey, cereals, milk and legumes (all used as historical treatments during pregnancy and childbirth).
---
And I moan about biscuit crumbs 😮

Not your average footnote...

Place names might also hint at religious beliefs and practices, the location of cult sites, a local preference for a particular deity....place names such as Selby, Whitby and Wetherby.... 'Willow Farmstead', White Farmstead' and 'Sheep Farmstead'....

Elsewhere, we glimpse... individuals who lived there... Grimsby ('Grim's Farmstead'), Ormskirk ('Orm's Church') and Skegness ('Skeggi's Headland')...

"...and yet you're none of those things..."

Burn!

3/3

Love this series.

2/3 The power of reading...

1/3

Sounds good!

I bought this copy second hand, not realising that someone had annotated it.

Very touching: they wrote out the whole final poem, I think clearly a fan.

The legal doctrines the US created to take Indigenous land still govern how the US treats those living at the margins...

Powerful end to a powerful book.

Dangerous times on the Waterstones app...

As recently as 2022, Justice Samuel Alito argued that Indigenous nations do not share a common political interest, because "before the arrival of Europeans, the tribes were at war with each other."

What is sad about these statements is that Supreme Court justices are no better or worse than the general public; most people don't know what a federally recognized tribe is, how jurisdiction works on a reservation...

Love a Pulp reference.

#CommonPeople

In a personal letter to President Monroe in 1817, Jackson confessed that he had long viewed treaties with Indigenous nations as an "absurdity." Such treaties were necessary, Jackson wrote, when Indigenous nations were strong and the federal government was still weak, but now, "circumstances have entirely changed." ?

Want!

THE LACTATION CONSULTANT'S OFFICE is in the Boys' Quarters. We squeeze past two jeeps in the narrow driveway to get to the one-room office at the back of the main house. The signage is lopsided, dusty, but my doctor said Dr. Laoye is good at what he does.

Tomorrow, it will be three weeks since the funeral. It was only the day before yesterday that I overcame the fear of writing 'My mother died' on a blank sheet of paper...

Went to hear Toby Green talk about the restitution of museum objects to Africa. As several members of the audience (and the Gambian respondent) pointed out, perhaps reparations, debt relief, climate crisis, economic reconstruction might be ahead in the queue...

Still didn't get to look at the library though.
#MerseyrailFail

45 years! At 14!🤯

#WomensPrizeLL25

A great evening in a beautiful venue.

Apart from the Jimenez (TKMaxx) all thanks to Oxfam Books.
Bagpus is impressed.

I wrote this book because I believe the American public needs to understand that the legacy of colonization is not just a problem for Indigenous peoples, but a problem for our democracy.

#WomensPrizeLL25

By far the most exciting read is The Chosen... to hear the familiar streets of Williamsburg described in the opening chapter as "cracked squares of cement,.. softened in the stifling summers,'... my small, crowded district of Brooklyn.... A book about my home! ...

What a wonderful new sensation, to delve into the pages of a book and realize that the familiar sense of alienation, of confusion, was gone.

"Don't you see, girls," Mrs. Meizlish proclaims, "how easy it is to fall into that category of choteh umachteh es harabim, the sinner who makes others sin, the worst sinner of all, simply by failing to uphold the highest standards of modesty? Every time a man catches a glimpse of any part of your body that the Torah says should be covered, he is sinning. But worse, you have caused him to sin. It is you who will bear the responsibility..."

How did I not know TK Maxx have books?

(Could turn into an expensive discovery)

A reminder (for me) to check on the 4th!

😬🤣🤣🤣

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/meet-the-judges-reading-...

The new edition of this book includes notes and comments at the back on the process and drafts of some of the stories. I thought this was interesting: not sure I'd "choose" to set a story on a golf course without any interest in golf!

From the story where his "everyman" character is plagued by starlings.