Frances Evangelista

And from previous years too. A couple I read quite some time ago.

Many people would love to find that one in the wild.

Lovely!

Okay. Prove this place is good for culture and post a good book cover.

Noted!

❤️Me too!

I need to start reading Shute. Not sure where to start.

I didn’t. It was in really poor shape. But if you want it I’ll go back…

After days of careful consideration in which all the evidence was weighed and the witnesses heard, they made their decision:

Words and numbers are of equal value, for, in the cloak of knowledge, one is warp and the other woof. It is no more important to count the sands than it is to name the stars.

The one DeLillo I haven’t read. And congrats on the upgrade! ❤️

❤️

Took a quick reading break to return library books & pop into the Friends of the Library shop. This one is in rough shape, but I stopped to look anyway because I’ve been conditioned to do so by @hogglestock.bsky.social’s Shute love. We logged a few hours book shopping together over the years.

Now reading The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump. My third IBP longlist title in a row this weekend. Celebrating amazing short novels and my favorite sofa right now.

😔

❤️

Solid idea. Especially as engaging visual content can be sparse here some days.

I am. I’ve read with a shadow panel for the IBP for years. Great fun. We read the longlist before the shortlist drops. And offer our own short list then winner. Highly entertaining.

I saw the gap too. I wonder if they are active anywhere.

Good idea.

Good tips. Thanks.

Many people are trying! And a great account to follow. Maybe social media content in general is changing. Maybe I’ve done a meh job of curating my timeline. Maybe the content users offer here is not the same as on other sites.

Looking through things I’ve saved from my Twitter account, I feel the impact of what is missing here. Please, beautiful people, give me your books, your art, the weird miscellany I crave. And stop reposting the same dire news story 100x. I’ve read it. I act upon much. But my spirit needs joy too.

Right down to an unexpected burst of color on the endpaper as you open the book.

Now reading On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from the Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan. @charcopress.com

“He was about to speak; or so he told himself, as he sat there silent. Exchanging in his mind one pretext for delay after the other, he was like someone who, at the close of a beautiful day, constantly shifts his chair to enjoy the last of the light.”

Now reading Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran by Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from the Persian by Faridoun Farrokh.

“When she appeared to react, these weren’t reactions at all, were they? But her performing what she thinks she is. Or what she has decided she is. So the performance was desperately committed but gratingly false.”

Do I keep this Reader’s Catalog? Complete with original order form in the back? A young me was pointed to many fine books by this giant. I can’t get rid of it.

Deeper Than They Thought | Edward Mendelson Although Margaret Kennedy has been largely forgotten as a popular writer, in her novels she wielded the most cunning techniques of literary modernism.

Margaret Kennedy believed that “true novelists are responsible only to themselves and their readers, not to any cause that might be pursued through politics or religion or anything else that has not been transmuted by a novelist’s imagination.” —Edward Mendelson

I read it right at the beginning of the pandemic. Definitely not the right time for this one.