Valarie Smith

Ferocious alt text

White rabbit stood upright on blue background, painting.

🐇 #WhiteRabbit
🖼️ Frank S Guild

The cover of The Doary of Virginia Woolf: Volume 2, 1920-1924. Edited by Anne Olivier Bell, assisted by Andrew Mac Neillie. The attached quote is from June 29, 1920, and was about Barbara Bagenal

“[She had the] fixed lines of premature maturity…such a grind her life is as fills me with pity—seeing human life a thing to be put thru the machinery by necessity. First Nick, then the child—& all her lines laid down for her by the hand of fate, for she can’t leap them. There she treads her road.”

From the rim where the ice was becoming water, as the warmer incoming flow from the moor repelled the frozen surface, I saw a flurry of tiny white birds lift into the air, as wading birds will flush in sequence as you approach them along a shoreline. I stood and watched the line where ice met water, where they had taken off from. and flung up - twenty feet into the air, and scintillating.

“Only when it had happened twice more did I realise that there were no birds - no birds here at all - and what I had thought was a flock of waders were fine platelets of ice being torn away by gusts of wind …”

I had been told by a retired Manchester police officer, who walked once a year from Kinder Scout to Saddleworth, that on each occasion he made a point of walking past the engine block of a Lancaster bomber that had crashed on Bleaklow during the war; and sometimes it was there and sometimes it wasn't, he said, because it sank and rose from the moor, year by year, so that one summer it would be on the surface and the next it had gone under, circulating in the ground according to currents he couldn't explain. It was the nature of the moor, he believed, that it would in due course give up whatever had been buried there.

I’d never quite understood the power of the moors - the actual physical power - until reading William Atkins’ The Moor, bought on a trip to London about 10 years ago.

When this is over, I want every single person who voted for this pres and a Republican Congressperson in ‘24 brought before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They need to see the connection between the lever they pulled and the girls’ school that was just bombed, among 1,000 other consequences.

The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive

Wow! How cool is that?

We took a boat tour that was quite nice. Also, be on the lookout for an open-faced sandwich - they’re known for them and they’re very fresh, simple and delicious.

Just love the rhythm and push and heart and indignation of this poem by Safia Elhillo 🖤

www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

I am a very patient, even-keeled person but holy hell that would enrage me.

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” #readindies #thewasteland My final book for #ReadIndies is from a publisher who’s a huge favourite of mine, and I did wonder if I would get it finished in time as it’s a bit of a chunkster! Fortunately, I embark…

On the Ramblings today, my last review for #ReadIndies, and it's a chunkster - a stunning book about the composition of #thewasteland from @faberbooks.bsky.social - more here: kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/02/27/i...

I’ve always meant to read Matthiessen but this will be my first. Looking forward to it!

An excellent description!

5 books on a sunlit table: The Transylvanian Trilogy Vol 1 by Banffy, Zero at the Bone by Christian Wiman, Will and Testament by Hjorth, Pamela by Richardson and The Snow Leopard by Matthiessen.

So @drlauravarnam.bsky.social couldn’t say enough great things about Pamela, and @orionmagazine.bsky.social had a great story on The Snow Leopard, and loads of you have been recommending the Banffy trilogy and THEN Powell’s had a sale. What else was I supposed to do?

THE SELF-MADE MAN For him, it began in a moment of shattering stillness. Something separated and fell away. Instinctively his heart understood this "something" was the long-cherished notion of himself as a distinct individual; an American entity called "The Self Made Man." He'd learned it through generations of irascible ancestors with the same hard-set jawline and gnarly nose. He had pictures of them on his stone mantel. Tintypes going back to the Civil War of his great-great-great-grand-father; a man called Lemuel P. Dodge, who lost an ear fighting for the North, an arm fighting for the South, and was finally hanged for "womanizing" in Ojinaga and dragged through the dusty streets until his head separated from his torso. There were others: men with long beards and wide-brimmed straw hats, standing three abreast atop giant hay wagons, wooden pitchforks in hand, almost biblical against the prairie sky. Railroad men riding cowcatchers, waving der-bies; blasting their way through granite mountains; unstoppable in their absolute conviction of Manifest Destiny. Then, later generations, where the mysterious glint of doubt begins to creep into their eyes.

Someone asked for people to post great first lines and I went right to Sam Shepard and read a whole first paragraph and I mean, I can’t, I just … sigh.

YOU: The first Gorillaz album was released 25 years ago.

ME: I disagree.

THE SELF-MADE MAN For him, it began in a moment of shattering stillness. Something separated and fell away. Instinctively his heart understood this "something" was the long-cherished notion of himself as a distinct individual; an American entity called "The Self Made Man." He'd learned it through generations of irascible ancestors with the same hard-set jawline and gnarly nose. He had pictures of them on his stone mantel. Tintypes going back to the Civil War of his great-great-great-grand-father; a man called Lemuel P. Dodge, who lost an ear fighting for the North, an arm fighting for the South, and was finally hanged for "womanizing" in Ojinaga and dragged through the dusty streets until his head separated from his torso. There were others: men with long beards and wide-brimmed straw hats, standing three abreast atop giant hay wagons, wooden pitchforks in hand, almost biblical against the prairie sky. Railroad men riding cowcatchers, waving der-bies; blasting their way through granite mountains; unstoppable in their absolute conviction of Manifest Destiny. Then, later generations, where the mysterious glint of doubt begins to creep into their eyes.

Someone asked for people to post great first lines and I went right to Sam Shepard and read a whole first paragraph and I mean, I can’t, I just … sigh.

Will do!

A great to place to donate to support our trans friends in Kansas.

Delighted to hear it!

You are awash in good fortune! How exciting!

Happy birthday, Claire! You’re lucky we don’t live near each other or I’d be right over to start reading the backs and first paragraphs of each of those books.

Gross

A highlight from the story:

Observer: What’s on your wish list for change?
NG: A different vision of writing life would help: a huge advance doesn’t necessarily make you a career writer. And publishers, if your marketing department says, “It’s a good book, but...” don’t bid for it!

🧵

Ha, he’s a stubborn man. I talk to him every week and he always asks about you. I’ll pass on your good wishes.

It really isn’t!

I always had this idea - based on nothing, I now realize - that HB were a way of getting more money from people. You can sell a *slightly* different product at a much higher price point by granting earlier access to people who have the money.