Rachael B

🫂 🫂 🫂 hope results are encouraging x

Sadly it was all so hectically compressed (and the traffic SO AWFUL on the way up) that I never made it... another time, though. Hope all is well with you all!

@likewinterblue.bsky.social hello, I hope you are well. I can't DM you but we're heading vaguely your way this weekend, wondered if you were around & therefore worth planning a detour via Grasmere to do some shopping?

Hmmm I think I may indeed have an unread copy of Underland somewhere...

(Preference likely to be given to things I already own, as a useful clearing-out step, but realistically I'll acquire anything that sounds compelling enough.)

<appends standard throat-clearing about being a bit useless at this app, sorry etc etc>

Readers, writers, editors, publicists, other book people not covered by those categories: I have a month off coming up.

WHAT SHOULD I READ?

Old or new, fiction or non, any genre pretty much apart from horror. I do like good sentences, but also plain ones with a strong plot.

Please advise!

Adam Shatz · Wash out your ears: Messiaen’s Ecstasies While few would question Messiaen’s importance in 20th-century music, his religious modernism has always been met with...

THIS IS SO GOOD: Adam Shatz on Messiaen in the new issue of the @londonreview.bsky.social. Did you know Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood was nuts about Messiaen? Now you do. Read on for more including synaesthesia, weird instruments, Catholicism and French composers being incredibly rude to each other.

As opposed to sober and considered at all times IRL...?

Hi Nick! I am unexpectedly cheered by your punctuation.

Shell Game | Evan Ratliff | Substack A podcast about things that are not what they seem, hosted by journalist Evan Ratliff. In Season One, that thing is Evan’s voice. By creating a voice clone and hooking it up to an AI chatbot, Evan set...

Not exactly either of those: but I found Evan Ratliff’s Shell Game completely fascinating - www.shellgame.co/podcast - essentially he went in search of the bleeding edge of AI voice technology, created an AI version of himself, and then sent it into various wild conversations. Thought-provoking!

ooh ooh can I be the first pedant to say, this wasn't Desmond Tutu? And thereby entirely miss your point?

Anyone remember the story of the Magic Porridge Pot? Because my washing machine seems to be like that today, only with SOCKS.

I have therefore decided that everyone in my household should go barefoot henceforth, which seems to me entirely proportionate.

He always seems like such a Good Literary Citizen.

David Nicholls and Hattie Crisell at Cambridge Literary Festival

Helping out at Cambridge Literary Festival today & starting off by slipping into the back of David Nicholls’ event with Hattie Crisell
- packed! Nearly everything sold out today but the odd ticket around if you’re quick… plus livestreams for some. cambridgeliteraryfestival.com/whats-on/

There was a bio-ish sort of book that came out sometime in the last five years that I DEMANDED for Christmas and then never read because, you know, books, life, time. I can see the typography on the spine in my mind’s eye but it’s not on my shelves where I expected it to be. Curses.

WOW.

The yellow copies are the best, I think only have about 2 or 3; most of mine - although not all - are 80s paperbacks (Anchor Books? possibly?). But the yellow spines are how I first encountered them, in my school library.

Honestly I don't think I've read ANY of those. I was a devotee of the Whispering Statue, and one that was set in Hawaii whose title I can't remember. But they were all pure joy.

Awww Bethanne, thank you! You make my life better too.

OMG SO ESSENTIAL

But do you get ALL of them as one of your 20?

Which is your favourite?

Only downsides being
(1) now I really REALLY want to read The Proof of My Innocence but I won't be back in @lrbbookshop.bsky.social until Tuesday & no I simply cannot take my custom elsewhere
(2) added another counterexample to the pile to argue with my brain saying STAY IN GOING OUT IS NEVER FUN.

...not to mention reminiscences of my former teacher, the legendary (notorious?) Dr Eric Griffiths. And then afterwards I met several lovely people who turned out to know several other lovely people I know, and yes, Cambridge is small, but still when these things happen, it delights me beyond words.

#oneofthosenights for serendipity (coincidentally my favourite word). Went to old college to hear @jonathancoe.bsky.social discuss his new book with Adrian (NB definitely not John) Poole, an event I only learned about on Weds: nostalgia, comedy, Proust by way of Pinter.

For obvious reasons I have not read the book itself, but I heartily endorse your first clause.

I've finished The Sequel now, anyway, so that’s one fewer to worry about. Perfect for you if you are rendered helpless by a completely preposterous yet somehow compelling plot with many in-jokes about books and publishing.

The thing about losses like that is they never completely go away, we just find different ways of carrying them. xx

That sounds super hard, Sam. I'm so sorry.

I love this kind of walk 😍

The Orange One appears to be diligently working his way through a list entitled ‘celebs that have been debunked by Maintenance Phase’

That thing you wrote about living in Venice for a bit lodged in my brain so firmly that I am always taken by surprise when your posts make it clear you’re now in the UK. I’m sorry.

Jorie Graham · Poem: ‘Then the Rain’ after the hard seedspushed in as deep aspossible & kept alive on dew...

Jorie Graham: the GOAT, as the yoof say. (You can have actual Jorie read it to you on that poem’s LRB page too, if that is in any way helpful, though I appreciate it may not be: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...)