'She bent her head, overcome by a sense of unworthiness. I have taken the name of Virginia Woolf in vain, she thought.' ~ Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

'[...] to put it more simply, in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.' ~ Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

'Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned.' ~ Han Kang, The Vegetarian (tr. Deborah Smith)

ERRATUM special December offer 💥25% off TRAUMNOVELLE💥 via this link -> shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params... [US/UK customers only]

That was when it was sad, when you lay awake at night and remembered things.

'[...] that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to me merely through my present sensibilities to form and colour, but the long companion of my existence, that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid.' ~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Svetlana Alexievich (SECOND-HAND TIME, tr. Bela Sheyavich) will be on the BBC World Service today, 12.05 GMT: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

'[...] and who from her solitary situation was ready to like anyone [...]' ~ Jane Austen, Catharine, or The Bower

'My advice is: 'Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.'' ~ Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, tr. Susan Massotty

'[...] the foam of past sorrows folds into itself like a flat mirror.' Very excited to receive (amid other goodies) Telenovela by Gonzalo C. Garcia, the latest from @galleybeggars.bsky.social - available now to order!

'Then I fired four more times into the lifeless body, where the bullets sank without leaving a trace. And it was as if I had rapped sharply, four times, on the fatal door of destiny.' The Outsider - Albert Camus, tr. Sandra Smith

New acquisitions: The Vegetarian - Han Kang, tr. Deborah Smith The Outsider - Albert Camus, tr. Sandra Smith Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner

SAVE SCRIPT HAVEN! Please donate/share our crowdfunder to keep this vital independent bookshop in Worcester open!!! ❤️ Save Script Haven crowdfunder: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-scrip...

A gift from my mother: The Book of Saints, compiled by the Benedictine monks of St Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate

Thrilled to receive these delightful editions from @renardpress.com's impressive Classic Fiction selection: Three Lives - Gertrude Stein It Can't Happen Here - Sinclair Lewis Venus and Adonis - William Shakespeare Catharine of the Bower - Jane Austen

'Only yesterday, in love —' ~ Parting, from Anna Akhmatova's Selected Poems, tr. Richard McKane

Had a great morning browsing local independent writers, publishers, and makers at Norwich Book Festival at the Forum, coming away with lots including these three from the lovely people at @salopress.bsky.social

'I felt I had made the impossible mistake of thinking that one of the virtues of love was permanence.' ~ H. E. Bates, Love for Lydia

'Between grief and nothing I will take grief.' ~ Faulkner, The Wild Palms

"What is at stake if we cannot continue?" Simultaneously very happy and crestfallen to be part of this Open Letter (written to the industry, as well as readers, writers, and - well - everyone who cares). Please read, and share: www.thebookseller.com/comment/open...

'[...] the one that failed the most tragically and the most splendidly.' William Faulkner on his favourite of his works, The Sound and the Fury. Taken from the authoritative and deeply insightful The Life of William Faulkner, by Richard Gray

Two not-so-new acquisitions: Selected Poems - Anna Akhmatova, tr. Richard McKane, with a 1964 introductory essay by Andrei Sinyavsky Fair Stood the Wind for France - H. E. Bates

'The veiled face of a woman, refined, disillusioned, is a suitable preface to this book which will treat sadly of sensual pleasure.' From Colette's The Pure and the Impure, tr. Herma Briffault; an 'unforgettable gallery of eccentrics'

Remembering William Faulkner on his birthday 🎂 📷 Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1962 "The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure & prevail." - from his Nobel Prize speech, 1950

"It has come too late." Jean Rhys on her rediscovery and subsequent literary acclaim after decades of obscurity. #booksky

🌓 HOUSE OF DAY, HOUSE OF NIGHT by Olga Tokarczuk, tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones publishes today 🌓 A ‘constellation novel’, HOUSE OF DAY, HOUSE OF NIGHT is a brilliantly imaginative story of a small place by one of the most ambitious novelists of our time. 🌓 fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/house-...

Fragment from the incomplete epigraph to Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, in a superb translation by Julie Rose

Some new acquisitions: A not-so-new Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, tr. Julie Rose #booksky

'If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.' From the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

'A light pleasant void was in Gregor's heart, life was good and free from care. The red-tailed dawn was pecking up the starry grain from the dove-coloured floor of heaven.' From Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don, tr. Stephen Garry

'We always kept two bullets for ourselves, two—in case one misfired.' Irreconcileable horror in the untold stories of the women who fought in WWII, from Nobel laureate (and huge personal favourite) Svetlana Alexievich's The Unwomanly Face of War, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky

Book cover designs by Virginia Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell (c.1930) #WomensArt

A very beautiful cover of Spring Torrents by Ivan Turgenev, translated by Leonard Schapiro; and the epigraph from which the novel takes its title

'His parted lips were lips which spoke, not of love, but of millions of miles [...]' Two on a Tower - Thomas Hardy

'[...] and I thought to myself that nothing can make a face more impenetrable than a mask of kindliness.' From André Gide's doomed romance Isabelle, tr. Dorothy Bussy

'Chekhov said that you should write everything - except denunciations.' The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes

Recent-ish acquisitions: Serious Concerns - Wendy Cope Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh Three Sisters - Anton Chekhov, tr. Paul Schmidt The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank, tr. Susan Massotty The Disinherited - Benito Pérez Galdós, tr. Lester Clark #booksky

Our short story prize is open for submissions again! Please share this widely - and please send us your stories: www.galleybeggar.co.uk/prize Closing date 8 November!

There's very little invention in my books. What came first was the wish to get rid of this awful sadness that weighed me down.

The cruel vacillation of a lover, taken from the opening stanza of Thomas Hardy's I Say I'll Seek Her

'But the desert is as unmarked as the hands of a cadaver, all lines of destiny wiped clean.' Really enjoying the intelligence, the unbounded creativity, and some of the simply wild paragraphs of Carlos Fuentes' Terra Nostra, in a masterly translation by Margaret Sayers Peden

'[...] its expression of unbearable anguish so haggard and awful with sorrow you cant even cry for a thing so ugly, so lost [...]' From Jack Kerouac's poignant later novel Big Sur, a far cry from the boundlessness, the delirious energy of On the Road, one decade before

'Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.' O Pioneers - Willa Cather, via @hesperus.press

'Knowing its unadornment held as freight The sweetest image outside Paradise.' The ending of Her Definition, a love poem of Thomas Hardy

'[...] and as if the warm, living hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be as nothing to the sunny earth.' From Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford

'Can you tell me, kind master, why it is that even in the presence of great happiness a man cannot forget his grief?' The Night Before Easter - Anton Chekhov, tr. unknown

'Titsch told them without any ambiguity: You must get on it. In all the reams of Plaszów paperwork, Oskar's dozen pages of names were the only pages with a connection to the future.' From Schindler's Ark, the basis for Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, by Thomas Keneally

‘Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.’ From 'Lady Lazarus', which appears in Sylvia Plath's Ariel.

Purchases from a Brighton & Hove trip: Selected Stories - Anton Chekhov, tr. (tragically) unknown Heart Lamp - Banu Mushtaq, tr. Deepa Bhasthi (via @andotherstories.bsky.social and bought from the amazing @citybookshove.bsky.social) The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford #booksky