Marghanita Laski, The Victorian Chaise-Longue. Brilliantly controlled immersion in dreadful loss-of-agency, dislocation, and very #Lynchian psychogenic fugue. As ever, always revisit the relevant @backlisted.bsky.social episode for further enrichment and enjoyment, one of the best.

Great Shirley Hughes cover of Nina Bawden's Squib. Mibby bit dated, but a swift engaging tale that weaves fairytale woods, rivers, changelings & darkness thru themes of anxiety, safety, fear & loss, all effectively framed within the viewpoints of the children. Moved to tears in final pages.

Saturday afternoon listening, loving the baritone sax. Under-the-radar Leo Parker's only two records are adorable rollicks across swing, blues, bop, soul & gospel. Pure delight. #jazz #bluenote #RollinWithLeo #RudyVanGelder Mad Lad Returns!

Been slowly building a reading den down the garden and it's nearly finished. E Nesbit, Five Children And It.

Cask Masters #Benrinnes #maltwhisky #gift. More often used for Johnny Walker blends, this is a great mouthful: chewy, cerealy white fruits, with a wee lip-smacking creaminess 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

#DaphneduMaurier My Cousin Rachel. Whose story is this? Gripping, descriptive, mesmeric prose, building rapport with a narrator who might be slipping into contradiction & delusion in his construction of Rachel and her story. About 'truth', tropes & stories. So readable and enjoyable, a classic.

Top 10 books of 2025 (from 100, in order) #DorothyDunnett #DodieSmith #AntonioWhite #MFKFisher #ToveJansson #OliviaManning #GeorgetteHeyer #Melville Astonishing writing. Grateful.

December eating mode. Credit Errington Barn, George Mewes Glasgow, Celino's Alexandra Parade, Dunlop Dairy, The Cheese Lady Haddington & Ian Mellis Glasgow for 2025 cheese joy 🧀

From the roof of the Crawfords' Boghall Castle: #GameOfThrones #DorothyDunnett "To the east lay the roofs of the barony town of Biggar, smoking in the socket of Bizzyberry Hill...the horizon was jumbled with hills." A brilliant walk up Bizzyberry this morn, pondering the ghosts of Midculter. #Lymond

Paulette Goddard expressing #MyBreakfastsThisWeek...! Chaplin's #ModernTimes gets better every time I see it; it's brisk, mad, tough & graceful. #movies

I love these, two of the very best winter soundtracks. Excitement, nerve, verve, sweetness & sadness: #JohnBarry #OnHerMajestysSecretService Mystery, magic, enchantment, wonder & joy: #EnnioMorricone #IMagiRandagi #soundtracks

Any Hexham visit means going to the Abbey to imagine: Tom Erskine hid in the transept gallery, while battered prisoner Francis Crawford is brought in by the English to confess and be shot.. #GameOfKings #DorothyDunnett #heartstoppingbookscenes #16thcentury #Northumberland #ghostsofFlawsValley

Really taken with the cover of this #AgathaChristie #CatAmongThePigeons I picked up in Hexham. First uk paperback print (1962) of her 1959 book; and one of her best from the handful I've read.

Watching my lesser-seen #MeikoKaji dvds: the Blind Woman's Curse credit sequence is a thing of joy and beauty... #cinema youtu.be/iBYjo4MCD0g?...

December afternoon at the movies. #Latalante #JeanVigo #DitaParlo #facesofcinema Years since seen on dvd, has grown in the memory like a personal dream, fabulous on the big silver screen.

From Tove Jansson's book 'Moominland Midwinter'1957... Moomintroll, unlike his family who hibernate, decides to stay up through the harsh winter. It is a tale of endurance, acceptance and learning to live with the discomfort of uncertainty #womensart ❄️ #Midwinter

Noohoozfurra a wee drink to toast the life of Stanley Baxter?

Stanley Baxter and Ronnie Corbett as the Ugly Sisters in panto, Kings Theatre, Edinburgh, 1967.

James Kelman discusses Hogg’s JUSTIFIED SINNER on the Unburied Books podcast, looking at the novel’s unusual structure, moral ambiguity, & mixture of genres, & placing the work in a modern, international context #gothic #romanticism 💙📚 4/10 unburied-books.castos.com/episodes/the...

The City of Edinburgh is absolutely hoaching with wildlife. I saw more critters there than I ever did growing up in Canada, or where I live on Scotland's far north coast. Not even squirrels or magpies around here :-( The Water of Leith is superb & has a cyclepath alongside youtu.be/Zxii5GSS-UQ?...

'The puddle bathers' by contemporary Glasgow printmaker Fiona Watson #WomensArt

Suzie MacKenzie, printmaker working primarily in collagraph, her work describes the landscape of the north-eastern Highlands of Scotland #ReframingWomenPrintmakers #Winter

The Little White Rose (To John Gawsworth) The rose of all the world is not for me. I want for my part Only the little white rose of Scotland That smells sharp and sweet—and breaks the heart. —Hugh MacDiarmid, “The Little White Rose” A #StAndrewsDay poem www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46800/...

Lilian May Miller (1895-1943) was a US woodblock printmaker and poet born in Tokyo, who was influenced by a Japanese printmaking styles of strong colours and bold design #Womensart

Toad: once read, has never left me; what a wee beauty of a poem, itself a tiny wondrous radiance.

I love Dexys. Aged 16 on Soul Rebels release, 18 at Too-Rye-Ay, 21 at Don't Stand Me Down; My Beauty 35, Soar 48. What gifts🙏. Bless Me Father could be fairer, more generous, to Kevin; could have said more about astonishing music & performance. But it's unique, searing, compelling riveting, moving.

Niki Bowers, contemporary UK printmaker based in Norfolk #WomensArt

Miss Agnes Russell funded and gifted The Russell Institute to Paisley Burgh in 1927, for the health, care and welfare of mothers and children of the town. What a treat to be given a tour of this amazing building #ArtDeco #Paisley #DoorsOpenDay

Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758), Scottish botanical illustrator known for the book "A Curious Herbal" 1737. Blackwell published her hand drawn, engraved and coloured work in order to raise funds to free her husband from debtors prison. #ReframingWomenPrintmakers

Perfect late October: Robert Aickman, A Cold Hand In Mine, a roaring fire, and a few glasses of #Lochlea single malt Ploughing Edition. Stories...The Swords, The Hospice, The Same House: wow and shivers. Thanks to @backlisted.bsky.social #HalloweenSpecial for the original steer 🎃🥃🔥🌚

Autumn reading pleasures.

Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001) was born #OTD, 25 Aug, in Dunfermline. She is best known as a writer of #HistoricalFiction – in particular the six-part LYMOND CHRONICLES that begin with those fateful words: “Lymond is back.” A 🎂 🧵 💙📚 1/6 booksfromscotland.com/2019/06/redi...

Scotland 1477. Dorothy Dunnett's Gemini closes the 8-book Niccolo series. Truly atonishing, I've deeply loved it. In the end, a love story about identity & connection, and the search for harmony and meaning. A melancholy book full of death and loss...and emergence. Out of turmoil, a testimony...

A recommendation @pear-jelly.bsky.social. Perfectly controlled pacing: onward and inward journey, past infusing present, emergence of heroine's agency, quiet and subtle and powerful. #spinsterseptember

Anthony Price: hard-to-find, always rewarding. Butler's pov, and first meeting with future spymaster Audley, as young men caught in ww2 crosscurrents. Singular narrative drive, gripping action, physical & emotional dislocation, and an intense sense of the blasted mud, wood & waters of rural France.

My favourite reads of August 2025, in order: Gemini (Dorothy Dunnett), Rhine Journey (Ann Schlee), The 44 Vintage (Anthony Price) and Pieces of Modesty (Peter O'Donnell). Journeys outward and inward, emotions subtle and intense, high adventure and great enjoyment.

MFK Fisher, Gastronomical Me (clumsy cover/title😬). A beautiful profound personal collection (1912-41) on how eating & drinking are interwoven in time and life with joy, loss, identity, memory & meaning. Wonderful and moving. Thanks @backlisted.bsky.social for author discovery!🙏 #warmroundpeachpie

Georgette Heyer, Faro's Daughter. Hugely enjoyable Georgian romance. I love the tough, funny, expressive, decisive Deborah Grantham. Role-play, comedy, gaming, fights, kidnapping, banter & wit. (4th fave of the 11 I've read!)

Purity of Blood, Arturo Perez-Reverte. Language & description immerse you in the dank, sensual, dangerous backlanes of 17th century Madrid; religion and government are rotten with corruption, cant, hypocrisy & inhumanity, leaving our sword-for-fire Captain Alatriste as Europe's last decent man.

Crime fiction. Dolly and the Starry Bird, Dorothy Dunnet. Read in Bay of Naples! A fun break while I delay finishing the magisterial Niccolo series. Dated vocab, hard to follow? Riding the tone, I heartily enjoyed this twisting madcap caper with its food/drink/clothes/travel & the wind-in-its-hair!🚤

June 25, crime fiction. The Snack Thief, Andrea Camilleri. Read in Sicily. Best of 3 I've read. Pleasingly convoluted, with delightful tangents, as the flawed detective grapples with issues of corruption & justice, fathers & sons, inclusion & alienation, in a reach for gestures of meaning & value.

June 2025. Crime. City of the Dead, Sara Gran. Smart, quirky, funny, vivid & compassionate. Ace detective Claire DeWitt trawls the urban edges of post-flood New Orleans, in dialogue with dreams & death, history & mystery, in search of truth. Dale Cooper would enjoy. Can't wait to read the other two!

Tove Jansson, The Summer Book. The beauty, clarity & fragility of a cherished dream. Attentive to pebble, light, insect, moss, seedlings; small things, sounds, tastes. Unsentimental, immersive. Summer: across memory, childhood, age & identity. Floating, sinking, diving, drifting, sailing.

Penelope Mortimer, About Time Too. This maligned memoir (so poorly reviewed, a planned follow-up was dropped) is sparse, skipping, poetic, witty, questioning, engaged. Full of pain, and chocabloc with damaged, entitled, blustering men, it still finds a kind of peace through its great writing.

Recording, for myself, my top reads of 2025. Much travelling in June, has led to having mistly lighter books in tow!

Pictures that explain things. "Roots of a tree spread as far below ground as the branches do above" (The Tree and its World, 1975) Artist: David Palmer

Dorothy Dunnett, Caprice And Rondo, 15thC, 7 of 8. Truly loving this reading adventure: moving, confounding, heartbreaking, wondrous; want them to never end and I go into the final book emotionally fragile, intensely engaged, and with a deep, lunatic pang of pure love. 'Whoever cast love aside...'

Elizabeth Taylor, 1st short story collection. My standouts: Hester Lily, Spry Old Character, Gravement. Tales of the unspoken, miscommunicated, saddened, illusory; surfaces, depths, defeats, laughs, and radiant moments.

What a debut. Already in place: the conversational, intimate, even-handed, analytical voice; honed classical prose; great dialogue; witheld info "I meant to keep myself out of this story..." Cool on food/decor/clothes. Open-ended/canny-quite-find-an- ending? Fab springboard for the brilliance ahead.

The favourite reads of May 2025 have brought deep reflection & joy. Dorothy Dunnett & Elizabeth Taylor I'm reading in chronological order; Margaret Drabble, I've gone back to her debut having adored novels 2-5. #books