Endless Bookshelf

You can hear the cicadas here at Wrigley over the crowd noise.

the régime in Washington continues to act against the interests of the people

SEXUAL STEALING by Wendy Walker

/ free of charge this summer, read the fourth instalment here

temporary-culture.com/sexual-steal...

now that is a rockin’ Festschrift

THE CRITICAL MESS by Michael Zinman

From the late 1970s onward, Mr. Zinman’s collecting habits evolved into what he has called the critical mess theory of collecting : get enough examples of something and you can begin to see what patterns emerge.

The Collapse of Homo Sapiens by P. Anderson Graham

up on the ’shelf yesterday

Dust Jackets & the Interwar Scientific Romance

panels / conversations at Readercon

/ c.c. : @sfencyclopedia.bsky.social

endlessbookshelf.net/2025/08/03/d...

”Michael Zinman is a private collector who surely ranks among the
greatest Americana collectors of all time.”
— James Green, Library Company of Philadelphia

THE CRITICAL MESS by Michael Zinman

THE CRITICAL MESS
by Michael Zinman

Illustrated compendium of articles by & about legendary collector Michael Zinman, including Mark Singer’s New Yorker profile, “The Book Eater” ; essays by Bill Reese, James Green ; & more.

Distributed by Temporary Culture

temporary-culture.com/product/mich...

Cheez Whiz

Sacre du printemps in Paris

Someone whose life was saved by a book and who has utterly romanticized the dynamic. (Me. It's me.)

Friday fact-check inquiry from a magazine, a truly remarkable topic
/ story TK (in the autumn)

will set aside a jar from the next batch in the fall

@alvarezgibson.bsky.social greetings from New Jersey !

what is a book collector?

/ right or wrong answers only
/ you needn’t categorize as you answer & repost

What is a book collector ?

/ right or wrong answers only, please repost

Today is a sad day for our judicial system. By confirming Emil Bove, my Republican colleagues once again failed their constitutional duties and put loyalty to Donald Trump over the good of our country.

Found resting amongst the bamboo in my tiny N. London garden yesterday evening -- this rather splendid male Southern Hawker dragonfly.

Annals of Collecting 10. The Critical Mess

this is quite the book
/ first copies

yes but in my experience they disallow the monosyllable

Sexual Stealing by Wendy Walker
/ the most important book published by Temporary Culture
/ links to read free of charge in instalments, or to buy signed hardcover, paperback, or e-book editions
/ please repost

Akan drum, 18th century

Sexual Stealing by Wendy Walker

Sexual Stealing by Wendy Walker

the entire text of Wendy Walker’s beautiful and dangerous book, SEXUAL STEALING (2021), a work whose timeliness is only emphasized by recent developments in the world. Third of seven weekly instalments, presented free of charge

temporary-culture.com/sexual-steal...

[earlier today at work I made a modest literary discovery, details TK when confirmed]

Via Dave Langford:

Found tucked away at the back of a W.H. Auden verse collection ...

T.S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas,
Crying: "What, if you please,
Did you mean by The Mill on the Floss?"

current reading :
— Raymond Sokolov. Wayward Reporter. The life of A. J. Liebling. Harper & Row, [1980]

Peak Victorian book decoration
Source is :
Mrs Barker, Some of my feathered and four-footed friends (Routledge, 1883)
digitized by Univ. of Florida
ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00050397/0...

Everything is connected to @ursulakleguin.com: she said Tom Lehrer performing in the math dept revue, when she was at Radcliffe and he was a Harvard grad student, was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. She also used to sing "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" in the car.

RIP.

A garden rife and lush and
Untameable

Honor the green will
by Jessica Reisman @jesswynne.bsky.social

my late colleague Duncan Andrews was almost never photographed but appears at lower left (with glasses) in the cover photo on An Evening (wasted) with Tom Lehrer

tomlehrersongs.com/albums/an-ev...

Tom Lehrer was a musical genius

tomlehrersongs.com

[my father was an old line Main Line Philadelphia engineer & conservative, yet teo of the records I remember from childhood are That Was the Year That Was & An Evening (wasted) with Tom Lehrer . . .]