Kat

I do want to read more! There is so much etiquette that’s full of meaning but I totally missed 🤷‍♀️

There are many film versions of Macbeth to choose from, of course, but this film is excellent. Good god the witches!! Kathryn Hunter is *perfect*. And the set design! Not real yet not a stage: somehow better than either? Plus Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand of course. Great stuff.

A school edition of Macbeth that’s probably from the 90s.

Inside the book, exercises and discussion ideas are on the left page and the play’s text is on the right.

Kathryn Hunter played the witches to creepy perfection.

I found an old school version of Macbeth and gave it a go. It’s full of classroom activities for (probably) high school students, which were always amusing and often helpful. Usual text with more fun. Followed it with Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth with the book by my side.

#booksky 💙📚

Five books from an afternoon’s browse at the library: Three Novels by Yuri Herrera (Mexico) Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali (Turkey) The Island by Antigone Kefala (Romania, refugee camps in Greece, New Zealand, Australia) The Rainbow by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan) So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (Ireland)

About to take a trip around the world thanks to an afternoon’s browse at a Denver Public Library.

📚💙 #booksky

Finally I just watched the 1995 production; it’s my ultimate comfort show. Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth forever! 🥰Although I am executed to see the newest version—I’ll follow Olivia Colman pretty much anywhere.

I also listened to the new Audible performance, as I’m using up the last of those credits. At 4.5 hours, it’s more like a radio show than a reading, with excellent performances and top-notch production. The language has been modernized though; not my favorite but very accessible for new audiences.

I immersed myself in the Pride and Prejudice world for a bit. This annotated edition is fantastic: if you like history, certainly, but it explains cultural/social/class nuances that reveal so much of Austen’s depth. Left page is text, right page is annotations and illustrations. Excellent.

💙📚🖋️

Tell me your pips is back

Ha and I’m over here thinking why didn’t I read these earlier! And when can I read them again? And what else am I missing?? What a problem to have 💙

A stack of a dozen library books on a table being snuggled by a tuxedo cat named Poppy.

Library appreciation post!

Probably half this pile is from the Staff Recommendations shelf. I never leave without checking as they always have something on my list, or by an author I love, or just something irresistible (hence the large pile).

So I gotta focus: book, blanket, cat.

💙📚🖋️

I totally agree! And that got me running to see if it’s on Edmonton’s list (it’s not)

It is. Should be required reading and I’m from NS and I didn’t even know

Time War and Chronicle of a Death: I want to reread immediately.

Evenings and Weekends didn’t live up to the hype for me. There were some lovely moments but if they’d all just talk! The Berry Pickers: I wanted to go much deeper.

But then I read some truly great books so the good ones paled a bit.

- This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar 🇨🇦 - The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters 🇨🇦 - The Summer Book by Tove Jansson 🇫🇮 - Foster by Claire Keegan 🇮🇪 - Ducks by Kate Beaton 🇨🇦 - Orlando by Virginia Woolf - Fun House by Alison Bechdel (of the Bechdel test! Graphic novel) - The Apartment in Bab El-Louk by Donia Maher with illustrators Ganzeer and Ahmed Nady 🇪🇬 - Evenings & Weekends by Oisin McKenna 🇮🇪

August reads. Standouts:

First Virginia Woolf! First modernist novel. I want a whole class on this.

Foster and The Summer Book: beautiful adult/child relationships.

I want to read everything the above ever wrote. (Well not all the Moomins.)

Three graphic novels, all heavy hitters… 🧵

💙📚🖋️

It’s on my list too. The final scene is perfect.

The cover for the audiobook Taste by Stanley Tucci. A great one to listen to, although it contains recipes that I want to make and the book version probably has pictures. All well; worth it for how the man reads a story.

A scene from Big Night, starring Stanley Tucci and Tony Shaloub (so good), with Marc Anthony on the right in a supporting role. They’re working away in a small restaurant kitchen full of food. The last five minutes of this movie are PERFECT (not pictured).

I like Stanley Tucci.
I like the way he tells a story. I like his voice. I like how he writes scrips for his memories.

He mentions his 1996 movie Big Night, so I watched it. Ebert said “It is about food not as a subject but as a language…by which one can speak to gods”. Good stuff.

💙📚🖋️ #booksky

The cover of The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares lies in a wooden table. On the cover is a photo of the silent film star Louise Brooks.

Creepy and brilliant: a story of obsession and “immortality” that’s maybe just desire stuck on repeat. There were a couple of chilling moments that felt very Stephen King (hell, the whole premise does). And it’s only 100 pages.

#booksky 💙📚🖋️

Thank you! I wish I could sit in the back of your class! 💙

Daaaamn. I NEED to read this again.

My daughter read it in high school. Such a fantastic choice! 💙 And sounds like a lot of fun—I wish I had read it then (is that weird?) and we could have had some interesting discussions.

…but about discovering how an entire community is complicit. The deeper you go, the more widely the responsibility spreads. I wish I had read the book with my handy dandy notebook at hand, making little notes about the complicit. I’ll pick up a paper copy and read this again, for sure.

The audio version of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez. I think the cover has an exposed human heart, but I’m not totally sure. 😬

Well damn. I listened to this book and I’m sorry I did; my brain just isn’t set up to listen this well.

Actually I’m not sure there is a « this sort of book », is there? It’s a murder mystery that isn’t a mystery: the book is not at all about discovering who committed the crime… 🧵

#booksky 📚💙🖋️

Wild—I just spontaneously picked up a copy of this one. Had heard of it but know virtually nothing

Also Darf is a tiny publisher in London that focuses on books from the Middle East and North Africa. I discovered them while doing The StoryGraph Reads the World Challenge 🌍 #20indiebookchallenge

You, then, are living in an apartment in the busy center of the city, but are a recluse, and a grumpy one at that. Can’t even bond with cats, but there is a parrot who’s all right.

Make sure you read the dedication 💀

The book The Apartment in Bab El-Louk by Donia Maher. There are two illustrators: Ganzeer and Ahmad Nady. The book cover is entirely filled with the illustration of the front doors to an apartment building. Old wooden French doors, turquoise, with panels of diamond-shaped glass topped with circles like suns.

This book is not in comic book style; some pages are regular paragraphs will illustrations while on this page, the words take the shape of a cat. The image shows the cat page in front of my own pernicious cat, who is loafed at the end of a bed.

I’m not sure what I just read, tbh, but I’m glad I read it. Rear Window in reverse, kinda? It’s described as a noir poem, and it’s very short—one sitting. There are two different illustrators, which is put to brilliant use. Most is written in second person. 🧵

💙📚🖋️

Ha I only recently discovered myself, when @forgotten-niceties.bsky.social mentioned on one of my posts that Kate Beaton is basically one of the internet’s greatest gifts (and thank you kaori!).

Hurry for spreading such wonderful stuff! 😍

How did I not know about Hark! A Vagrant? I’m even from Nova Scotia, dammit.

This one in particular is in the middle of a personal Venn diagram: my favorite literature meets my favorite bit of history 💙

#anneofgreengables #anneofcleves #puffedsleeves

I don’t know how I lived this long without knowing about Hark! A Vagrant. But the wonderful bit is it’s all in front of me 💙

Beaton takes great efforts to try to present a fair and balanced view of the complex issues: environmental of course, but also who that impacts (all of us, eventually, but First Nations first), the unnaturally male social order, the isolation, the ugliness of the work, and what all that does to us.

The book Ducks by Kate Beaton sits on a wooden table. This is a graphic novel, and the cover shows a young woman standing on the stairs up to a gigantic work vehicle; the kind with tires taller than a person. The landscape is dire: there is a cliff in the background that looks like it was bitten out of the earth.

Good pay comes with a high price. The book addresses the pain of having to leave home (in her case, Nova Scotia) to find good work, but also there are families torn by 12-on, 2-off work schedules where woman must raise children alone (but with good pay).

Newfoundlanders and Nova Scotians 💙

A dip into the memoir Ducks by Kate Beaton turned into an evening of nothing else—read in one sitting. My goodness this is powerful. Graphic novels, right?

A young woman from Nova Scotia, a recent university graduate, needs work. She heads to the oil sands of Northern Alberta. 🧵

#booksky 💙📚🖋️