Are ya feeling xmasy yet?

Who is cleaning the seats? That’s what we want to know

The Slipper Room NYC

Sophie Kinsella dies…

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Möet et Chandon, Epernay, Champagne, France.

Ten points for every famous artist, writer, or philosopher you can name who used to hang here, extra points, if you know where the name comes from…

Happy xmas from the meat industry…

So who wants Xmas socks?

I got chills, they’re multiplying…

Cheer up, it’ll be January soon enough…

Les Deux Magots, brunch spot of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway. Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce. The name refers to a popular 19th century play entitled Les Deux Magots de la Chine. The two original Chinese statues [magots] can still be found inside

Bullsnake vs rattlesnake. I wouldn’t advise picking up either of them, but the rattler on the right has a distinctive arrow shaped head and is poisonous, the bullsnake is not but it mimics the rattler’s tail-shaking antics.

Currently reading this:

Meanwhile, at the gloriously named Bevy’s Liquor World, I am caught with a bear behind…

Finally getting some theological clarity on the ethics of reclining in one’s plane seat

My local PD keep updating me on how things are going: Looks like it has been one of those days again…

For the last time, aliens don’t…

Justice

Step 1: Sign up for a FREE library card at your local library today. Step 2: Enter a world of possibilities. Step 3: Share some of the library joy that is sure to come.

Polaroid of Warhol superstar Candy Darling…

Here’s another one of Guillermo del Toro’s crazy waxwork sculptures. Do you know who this is?

Guillermo del Toro has a bunch of crazy waxwork sculptures dotted about his house check out his Edgar Allan Poe also note the bloodstain red decor…

Ruh-roh…

When you know for a fact your bestie’s not buying you a birthday present…

Here’s something to sheer you up PBS super artist Bob Ross had a personal pocket squirrel…

So you want your book to be a movie?

Dali: I don’t do drugs, I am drugs.

Autocorrect has become our worst enema.

Meanwhile, in Britain…

Malibu

Guillermo del Toro's father, Federico del Toro, a businessman who owned a car dealership, won $6 million in the lottery in 1969. GDT says his pops spent the money on a massive house, a fabulous library and a menagerie of pets including a lion.

How delightfully quaint some of these old Devon village names are, their etymologies lost in the mists of time.

13 years ago. I wrote a few books before this and many more since, but this one still has a special place in my heart.

Frankenstein in the news again recently due to the awesome Guillermo del Toro movie. Here is a picture of the author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by Richard Rothwell, find it in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise 1839. National Portrait Gallery London. The sight of Dickens in his younger day is surprising to many I am sure.

T.S. Eliot another one of the writers who lived in my old neighborhood of Marble Arch, London. Others include P.G. Wodehouse, William Makepeace Thackeray, and the awesome Edward Lear.

The design of the British editions of the Chandler classics is far superior to the current American designs.

My latest cartoon for @theguardian.com books pages.

Galleria Colonna in Rome’s Palazzo Colonna. Original design by architect Antonio del Grande and later enhanced by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Johan Paul Schor and Carlo Fontana in the final decades of the 17th century

Are you watching the new Clare Dane show the Beast in Me?

Smart move for the Mexican drug cartels sponsoring the Republican bill to make Cannabis illegal again, they are going to make billions.

Here’s the other book I am reading this week. The title is obviously a ‘hilarious’ irony as Cameron Crowe is the dude who interviewed Led Zeppelin [ for Rolling Stone magazine ] while he was still at school.

One of the best books you will ever read. The fact that it was cheated out of a Pulitzer prize by Updike’s yawnsome Rabbit at Rest is of course a total travesty.

How to know when Dirty Donny is ahead of you on the trail

Son of a beach!

Meanwhile, at the local daycare…