Jonathan Gibbs

Not read the Raven - have heard similar things!

Books on the tube

Atomic Habits by James Clear
A Court of Silver Flames & Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
Grunwick by Jack Dromey
The Trading Athlete by Shane Murphy
Let the Snog Fest Begin by Louise Rennison
Villains Academy by Ryan Hammond

Books on the tube (this morning)

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin
The Miseducation of a 90s Baby by Khaholi Bailey
In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story by Ghada Kharti
Unidentified blue Fitzcarraldo edition

Books on the tube (last night)

Babel by RF Kuang
Intimacy With God by Randy Clark
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Ha. At his best he’s superb. “I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.” At his worst (The World of Sex or whatever it’s called) … shudder!

Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell and So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid.

Two books I happen to be reading at the moment.

Anyone got a SAD lamp they'd recommend? Ideally one that's dimmable and can change colour temperature for the evening (but nothing that needs an app to control it)

If you choose to wear smart glasses then my first assumption right off the bat will be that your glasses are smarter than you are.

I’ll reread Day one day, but the book of yours I reeaaally want to take in for the second time is Everything You Need – BUT I want a holiday on a remote island to do it properly.

And a late addition from last week, which I didn’t post because it was just two books, but which seems appropriate to post today:

A Court of Thorn and Roses by Sarah J Maas
Riders by Jilly Cooper

Books on the tube

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Boys in Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

I’ve only read the Harry Palmer books. Do you prefer them or the more military ones? (Bomber, GB-SS etc)

Latest reading mini🧵, on a collection of essays with its centre of gravity in the unloved landscapes of Essex but moving off in all kinds of directions, and gathering up all kinds of interesting knowledge.

A Personal Introduction to A Personal Anthology This is the first letter that I sent out, on 1st September 2017, to inaugurate the Personal Anthology project. Dear reader, This is the first of a what I hope to be a long series of letters …

Yes, it’s a hypothetical exercise, but no less fun for that. Imagining the real physical book is what makes it seem real.

I wrote about the origin of the project here: apersonalanthology.com/a-personal-i...

23yo son just brandished The Sea, The Sea at me and said: this is good, right? Or is it there another one I should read instead? Wasn’t sure but in the end gave him that and The Bell and said read a bit of both, see which you prefer. I think TS,TS was the first I read. Might as well dive right in.

‘On the Marshes’ is another good book from Little Toller, but about life across the Thames on the north Kent coast.

💯%!

Oh I think you’ll enjoy it! (It’s also Little Toller, which is a mark of quality all of its own.)

To my cyclist son, the obituary of Pat Hanlon, iconic British bicycle frame- and wheel maker; to my friend H, the vignette of his father Cornelius Cardew playing with the Scratch Orchestra. etc; to my dad, the pieces on Essex, especially the land around Bradwell.

It’s the best kind of ragbag collection, offering up the harvest and byproduct of many years’ research, observation and enchantment. The knowledge is dispersed like spores, not put on display or instrumentalised. But you come away enriched, and wanting to share the pleasure of enrichment.

…about his parents and grandparents that features not just war-time evacuation from the East End to an Essex orchard and outside privvies but also fortune telling, music hall piano and rabbit stew. Wonderfully evocative. Great writing also on urban planning, gardens, and cemeteries and necropolises.

That essay (40pp) is followed by shorter pieces, many of which also gravitate towards Essex, including pieces on the county’s history of utopian communities, often cross-pollinating Christianity and Socialism, the ‘Great Tide’ of 1953 (307 dead) and, in ‘The Bungalow’, an excellent piece of memoir…

The essay is about “post-war English landscape aesthetics”, and takes its cue mostly from the countryside and coastline of Essex, which I like Worpole knew as a child and teenager, and so can thoroughly appreciate its careful reclamation here from the inundation of cliché, ignoral and deprecation.

Paperback book of Brightening from the East: Essays on landscape and memory by Ken Worpole with a photograph of three shire-type horses walking on an empty country road with crash barriers in the background.

2026 Reading 59: Brightening from the East by Ken Worpole. A perfectly judged present from @guineagibbs.bsky.social that I finally finished this weekend. The main attraction is the long essay ‘The New English Landscape’, originally published by Field Station with photos by Jason Orton.

There’s a lot more comedy though in Heller, which arguably makes the misanthropy and pessimism hit harder than in Haneke.

Something Happened by Joseph Heller

Now reading:

Brutal book. Definitely time for a reread, now that I’m (presumably) as far over the protagonist’s age as I was under it when I first read it.

A Personal Anthology Writers, critics and others dream-edit a personal anthology of their favourite short stories

More admin. I've updated the apersonalanthology.com website with Amanthi Harris's pick of and introduction to a dozen favourite short stories, including a pair of triple-decker linked story sets.

And featuring the Personal Anthology debut of:

Romesh Gunesekera

So congrats to him!

This could be a long and rambling thread. Be patient with me.

I bought an old mahogany bureau on Ebay. I didn't really want a bureau as we're meant to be downsizing, but it was a beautiful piece & obviously very old. Google lens suggests the brass chased handles are Queen Anne. That's 1702-1714 😯