why "read" if you aren't going to read, why "write" if you aren't going to write, why "think" if you aren't going to think.... maybe just go see about becoming a sea sponge or something else less psychically deleterious

“Her life has been so dreadfully unhealthy. She seems to have become weak-minded. All her old interests have gone; she reads nothing but novels, day after day.” -Gissing, The Odd Women

@yanina.bsky.social is the best

This is a 120 watt bass head I just completed for myself. I sold the prototype over 5 years ago, and have wanted one ever since. It goes boom.

So it's our pal Jonathan Richman's birthday today and he's 75 and it's getting warmer outside so let's hear "That Summer Feeling," because it's never too soon to get nostalgic about what's to come. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zmy...

evergreen

I know this is silly but I love all your list takes and mine is that The Magic Mountain belongs in the top 10.

The Hudson & Catskills from Clermont Park

So much to recommend here, but this line from Chateaubriand captures the vibe: “Our imagination is rich, abundant, and full of wonders; but our existence is poor, insipid, and destitute of charms.”

Enjoyed Liam's analysis, then found myself just as captivated by the remarkable faces in the background. I consult my guide, Anna Jameson, for context: "Gian Bellini is said to have introduced at Venice the fashion of portrait-painting..."

Wrote about a Dutch East India Company physician's attempt to figure out how acupuncture works – while essentially living on a prison off Nagasaki:

At the National Gallery of Canada the Helen McNicoll exhibition has just opened. Her work is impressionist, shimmering. There was a certain poignancy about it; she died of diabetes in 1915 when only 35.

me, buying a book written by someone who I've never met but we sometimes like each other's posts on Bluesky: my friend wrote this

Sad to see the news about Michael Pennington. Most of the stories are about a part he had in Return of the Jedi, but one of the most impressive things I’ve ever watched was his The Wars of The Roses—the cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays he co-produced and starred in.

Faculty picture on website: Faculty in real-life:

Among the many joys of reading Joanna’s GREYHOUND was learning about Mannin’s work…pre-ordering this now.

"...The murk conjured little interruptions of life - a group of jellyfish unfurled like the caps of mushrooms - that only reminded Iskandar of the small range of his wonder. I will have to do this many, many more times, he thought, just to feel that I've done it at all." - The Mirrors of Iskandar

“That language could possibly be enclosed is of course an impossibility, and so we’ve come up with terms to mitigate the friction generated by the imposition of the property concept on words: reference, allusion, homage, borrowing. What could it possibly mean to borrow from Beckett?“

Some great reviews this month: @brynstole.bsky.social on Wolfgang Koeppen's post-war trilogy, @return2sanders.bsky.social on Paul Celan's still-mesmerising ephemera, and myself on Polly Barton's novel of expat life and karaoke and translation:

"Austrian writer and translator Martin Pollack coined the term kontaminierte Landschaften in his essay of the same title, contaminated or tainted landscapes, referring to topographies where violent crimes and mass murder have taken place."

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1864–1933) The May Queen, 1900 gesso, hessian, scrim, twine, glass beads, thread, mother-of-pearl & tin leaf on panel Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow 📷 Glasgow Life Museums #AlphabetChallenge #WeekQforQueen 🎨 #MayDay

“We looked at one another, through a gulf of experience and age and unspoken family secrets and pain, and we maintained the vine of silence that chokes family trees. But I almost, almost asked her: Did you ever go on walks? Ever see a bridge?”

The design team at @beltpublishing.bsky.social did such an amazing job with this — just knocked it out of the park (and hopefully right into your hands).

Great opening here, worthy of a novel: “Of all cinema’s illustrious martyr figures, none is more romantic than Jean Vigo, poet maudit of ’30s French cinema…”

partially why elite impunity is so corrosive: it sets up a society where everyone feels like if they’re not scamming someone they’re being scammed, someone is always taking advantage of you, why should you play by the rules when that just means you lose?

brushSky, 2026

Received the most exciting PDF of my life today—so excited to share more with you all very soon!

"These new bohemians are responding to the failures of our technological society by embracing everything that has for too long been dismissed as antiquated and esoteric. They reach for whatever is artisanal, bespoke, recycled, vintage."

today is charlotte brontë’s birthday. in her honor, consider

Me not knowing when to quit…

“How bright you are, my unlived day…” Today marks 110 years since the birth of Romanian poet Magda Isanos, whose poetry I’ve read all my life, and had the honor of gathering and translating in 2021. I have not been to her gravesite in a couple of years but soon I will return and read her poems.

Fascinating thread that has me thinking (once again) about that porous boundary between fiction and nonfiction.

"She was gracious and yet fading, like an old statue in a garden, that symbolizes the weather through which it has endured, and is not so much the work of man as the work of wind and rain and the herd of the seasons, and though formed in man's image is a figure of doom." —Djuna Barnes, "Nightwood"

bruiseSky, 2026 #photography #landscape #concept #horizon

Dream where I missed a meeting because I was attending a reenactment of the Eleusinian Mysteries in Italy. Bulletproof excuse, really.

arm your hearts and minds with mistrust, never let your critical resistance down. -Mann, The Magic Mountain (tr. John Woods)

Obligatory repost whenever Portis and especially Masters of Atlantis appears in my feed. Love my reclusive weirdos.

Obscuris vera involvens: Truth is enveloped by obscurity Virgil

Here again to say, after reading yet another half-baked fashion piece, that the trousers that Amelia Bloomer wore were not exposed underwear. Underwear began to be called "bloomers" much later. Thank you.

Am I going to side with the reclusive weirdo who prioritizes self expression over monetary reward? Why yes, yes I am, every time.

“…I don't want to be filmed looking like Spock.” She takes such a bold stand against this ‘pivot to video’ madness that has infected everything, including, it seems, our most prestigious literary prizes.

This Helen DeWitt story is insane on so many levels.

Imagine you get to the afterlife and you're immediately taken to a celestial courtroom as part of the ongoing Dodos vs Humans class-action lawsuit

This is the condition called ekstasis, literally "standing outside oneself" , a condition regarded by the Greeks as typical of mad persons, geniuses and lovers, and ascribed to poets by Aristotle. Anne Carson Ph. André Durst, 1936

it’s a really fun read and smith and taylor just came out with a cute new edition www.unnamedpress.com/all-books/p/...

Anne and Emerson: the soul is in glass Emily’s ghost: touch grass

Love seeing these lines from Bruges-la-Morte, a pioneering work of photo-embedded fiction, available in a gorgeous edition from Wakefield Press.

“Time flows down a slope, on a bed without stones… And it seems that, living, we are already in eternity.” Bruges-la-Morte, Georges Rodenbach; tr. Philip Mosley

“In societies where freedom is under threat, an informed citizen is countercultural and deep reading is an act of resistance. Just as protest and vigilance are essential, so is the ability to read and think.” newrepublic.com/article/2076...

the best posts have six words, or else nine