Kim McNeill •📚🌿☕️

What did you think of THE EMPUSIUM? A friend and I were just talking about it yesterday.

Look what book is in this pile, @ds228.bsky.social! 🐻

I love this cast of characters. She brings them so alive in all their charm and boorishness.

It seems more like Versailles helped to comfort her in her final years. “To kill her” seems a bit much.

It will be our first book of the year!

Knowing what’s best for other people is a dangerous game.

—Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Long View

The painter with camellia branch (Self Portrait)

The painter with camellia branch (Self Portrait) https://www.wikiart.org/en/paula-modersohn-becker/the-painter-with-camellia-branch-self-portrait-1907

If you reread it, I’d love to hear what you think!

All the Dorothies are on sale during @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social's sitewide sale for the next (checks watch) 36 hours! 📚🎁

Go: www.nyrb.com/collections/...

To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light.

Katherine Mansfield, Katherine Mansfield Notebooks

This was my first time to read it & I loved it. It’s playful & vivid and I absolutely adore her sentences. The pageantry, the landscape, the weaving of voices, it coalesces beautifully.

Aww, ❤️❤️❤️ !!! I am so grateful!

I liked it a lot. I think volume 2 is my favorite so far because I loved the exploration of seasons, but I really liked the themes in this one as well.

Her writing is vivid & witty and she captures a lot of interesting history.

Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabe...

Portrait of Elizabeth-Charlotte (Liselotte) of the Palatinate by Pierre Mignard, 1675

#NYRBWomen25 Elizabeth-Charlotte (Liselotte) seems quite spirited. “A great blonde Teutonic tomboy…she was fond of animals & had many pets; little dogs & a tame duck; she hoped they had immortal souls, while doubting whether anybody had.” Is said to have written 60k letters throughout her life.

The complete gard'ner, or, Directions for cultivating and right ordering of fruit-gardens, and kitchen gardens : La Quintinie, Jean de, 1626-1688 author : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Intern... [2], xiv, [4], xv-xxxv, [1], 48, [2], 35-309, [7] pages, [10] leaves of plates (9 folded) : 21 cm (8vo)

#NYRBWomen25 Quintinie's gardening book was translated into English by John Evelyn in 1693 under the title, The Compleat Gard’ner. It’s available to peruse on the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/comp...

The Kitchen Garden at Versailles

“[M. de La Quintinie’s] book, ‘Instructions pour les Jardins Fruitiers et Potagers’ must be one of the best gardening books ever written; it makes the reader long for a kitchen garden; the instructions are so precise that a child could follow them” (p23) #NYRBWomen25

“Le Nôtre never lost his interest in painting & the arts, and his lodging at the Tuileries was full of beautiful things […] When he was out, this delightful man would leave the key of his house on a nail so as not to disappoint any amateurs who might call to see his collection.” (p22) #NYRBWomen25

“[Colbert] did little or nothing to help the French peasants […] indeed low farm prices suited his policy of cheap exports […] the gap between the peasantry and the rest of the population first became serious under Colbert” (p17) #NYRBWomen25

Portrait de Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1655) by Philippe de Champaigne

Portrait of André Le Nôtre by Carlo Maratta

Portrait of Charles Le Brun by Nicolas de Largillière

Portrait of Louis Le Vau

#NYRBWomen25 “There were four men without whose collaboration the King could never have built Versailles: Colbert, Le Vau, Le Nôtre and Le Brun.” (p14) I loved this section on the builders.

MARGINALIA by Naomi Washer HELEN OF NOWHERE by Makenna Goodman ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME III by Solvej Balle (tr. Sophia Herst Smith & Jennifer Russell) BETWEEN THE ACTS by Virginia Woolf MOURNING A BREAST by Xi Xi (tr. Jennifer Feeley) #NYRBWomen25 THE QUEEN OF SWORDS by Jazmina Barrera (tr. Christina MacSweeney) THE SILVER BOOK by Olivia Laing WHITE GIRLS by Hilton Al’s

Here are the books I finished in November. So many gems. I also still have Proust #AContinuation25 & several short story collections in circulation so here’s to a prolific reading month in December! #NYRBWomen25

Such a wonderful review, thank you! Did you see this short piece I posted yesterday? Great timing! bsky.app/profile/joie...

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington Born in Lancashire in 1917, Leonora Carrington is perhaps now best known as a surrealist artist; in 2024, one of her artworks sold for $28.5 million. During her career, however, she also wrote nove…

New on the blog today, I've written about THE HEARING TRUMPET by Leonora Carrington.

A surreal, subversive, wildly imaginative novella that challenges traditional patriarchal & ageist societal structures, turning them on their heads in thrilling fashion! 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/t...

Thank you for sharing! So interesting & I love when books are in conversation with each other.

#NYRBWomen25 #XiXi Mourning a Breast
@joiedevivre9.bsky.social #RachelCuskTogether #Transit

THE SUN KING by Nancy Mitford

Page guide for THE SUN KING by Nancy Mitford

Bust of Louis XIV by Bernini. “…the only effigy to illustrate contemporary descriptions of the King’s appearance.” (mentioned on page 7 in THE SUN KING by Nancy Mitford)

“Louis XIV fell in love with Versailles and Louise de la Vallière at the same time; Versailles was the love of his life.” (p1) #NYRBWomen25 Here’s our page guide & a photo of Bernini’s sculpture mentioned on page 7.

I think the intro is helpful. It sets the stage.

"Carrington’s surreal lens reminds us of what purely fiscal approaches miss: the imaginative, the unquantifiable, the deeply human. If economics teaches us to manage scarcity, her fiction teaches us to see abundance where others see loss."

"Marian’s exile becomes an act of liberation, her supposed decline a portal to radical transformation. In this world, the limitations of old age are not a phase of diminishing returns or heightened financial risk, but a form of creative agency that challenges the rigidity of economic models."

#NYRBWomen25 The Surreal Economics of Aging: Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet Reimagines Value Beyond Decline bullandbearmcgill.com/the-surreal-...