Two books read in recent days: the superlative After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/05/01/a...

Someone has been EJECTED from the Crucible for not switching their phone off during the snooker, and now I'm thinking about all the ways I'd police the public use of phones if only I had the power of a snooker referee.

I've been living in Japan in my head, in lieu of being able to go back for a visit, thanks to Lesley Downer's book about the history of geisha, their role in Japanese society and whether it's a dying art form. I loved it. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/04/28/g...

Yesterday in Manchester was a beaut. Today I had ice cream.

It’s a good day to remember Saint George is the patron saint of Palestine. One of the stories from my family’s village is about him turning up in the guise of a traveller to warn that the current drought was a compromise, to avert something worse.

I may as well reshare it myself 😇

Today's excellent work thing - our new pop-up banners arrived and I immediately road tested one at the Heritage Libraries and Arts book giveaway for World Book Night. A couple of people stopped for a chat about archives👍🏻

Two excellent things at work yesterday: the arrival of the new wall graphics and the Northern Roots Heritage Champions giving our Archives Talk on the research they did with us and the history and future of the Northern Roots site. More about Northern Roots here northern-roots.uk

An unplanned read, inspired by a review on a blog I follow, The Formidable Miss Cassidy is a ripping yarn mostly set in Singapore, mixing folklore, mythology and magic. I loved it. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/04/19/t...

An interesting perspective on the story of Factory Records and Tony Wilson, told by his first wife Lindsay Reade. Wilson believed in personal truths, and this book is very much Reade's personal truth. She's self aware but also unguarded at times. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/04/16/m...

The McCartney lost bass documentary on BBC2 just reminded me of this so I showed it to the kids. Serafinowicz's Beatle impressions remain unsurpassed. The BeatleBox now inescapably reminds me of the Beatles In Mono boxset, which came out a couple of years after this. youtu.be/jcVS9ssNYVQ?...

We saw some sculpture yesterday @yspsculpture.bsky.social and these were my favourites. Curious about why so many of the works are fenced off, though. Some had signs saying they were undergoing 'landscaping and conservation', others had no explanation. Is it the crazy weather's fault?

Clever, yes. Enjoyable, no. Penance is a fictional true crime story, a metafiction if you will, involving the brutal murder of a teenager by 3 of her schoolmates, purporting to look at the why of it all. It was too Gen Z for this Gen Xer. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/04/08/p...

To the seaside today for yellow food #stannesonthesea #mangoicecream #chips

This morning I ate T H R E E #tobler_ONE

Annually you forget the evil psychology of EGG. "Have another bit of me" says EGG "it might be a bit thicker than the last bit" says EGG and then oh no you have in one sitting eaten all of EGG

I set myself a goal this morning. By 1pm, I had eaten F O U R. #tobler_ONE

A depressing number of organisations are stealing from authors right now but libraries are definitely not one of them.

Happy Easter!

I've spent a happy week combining a number of particular interests with the brilliant Butter by Yuzuki Asako (tr. Polly Barton). It made me feel hungry, angry, sad and entertained. I loved main character Rika's journey through food to knowing herself. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/04/04/b...

Today at work - installing 'Northern Roots - Our Heritage Stories', an archive display of original and digital material from the collections at Oldham Archives. The display runs from 4 April to 30 June.

Accidental album cover. Explanation in the Alt.

Glen Baxter has died. His drawings of cowboy art critics and wimples were an absurdist joy. RIP

I borrowed a book from the library because it's #NationalYearOfReading2026 and the library's doing book bingo. March is #CosyCrime so I read The Case of the Dotty Dowager. It was an easy read with an interesting locked room crime at its centre. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/03/28/t...

I'm supposed to use hashtags aren't I? Here you go: #folkhorror #giantrabbit #seasonalmenace #shadowplay I didn't find any Easter eggs in the backs. Just a drunk bin on its side, incapacitated by tetrapaks and egg cartons.

The giant rabbit was here again this morning. We don't have carrots big enough to satisfy its needs.

A friend lent me When The Cranes Fly South. It's possibly the saddest book I've ever read, but full of compassionate truth about family, friendship and end of life care. Grief is never fully tidied away and reading this resurfaced some things. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/w...

For me the way they portrayed Egg in the Walking Dead was not canonical. It's like the writers didn't know anything about him. Though no one even called him Egg to his face, we know they were all thinking it.

The truth about Edwardian Britain. Nobody talks about the Data Entry Horse any more.

Meanwhile, daffodil outburst.

Miki Berenyi's memoir Fingers Crossed is an interesting insight into life in an indie band in the 80s/90s. She had a rough start in life and her coping strategy was to become a wild child. She's pretty sorted as an adult, though. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/03/22/f...

Ottoline dreams of a life at sea.

Book 16 of 45, or 17 of my new target of 56, because I've acquired more books (bought, borrowed, rediscovered), is a guide to using documents in qualitative social research. I'm an archivist. OF COURSE THIS MADE ME HAPPY! thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/03/17/d...

Excellent typography at Blackburn railway station today.

I've bought a few books for strangers from @biggreenbooks.bsky.social and decided to buy something for myself recently. How nice is this wrapping? It's like it's my birthday! (It's not my birthday, except it's always my birthday. And that's just a fact.)

Starting the day with a complaint to @beenetworks.bsky.social about the tram driver at St Peter's Square who shut the doors on people still getting on the tram. Quality service, well done👍🏻

A sneaked in book for Reading Wales Month 2026. In "And: A memoir of my mother", artist and writer Isabel Adonis tells the story of her parents Catherine Alice and Denis Williams and her disrupted childhood. It's pure, lyrical brilliance. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/03/11/a...

When you don't have a kitchen at work and everything (microwave, kettle, mugs, teabags, coffee, paper towels) is crammed onto an 80cm square table in the corner of the room that should be a kitchen.

Trees. I bloody love them.

I'm a third of the way through the books from my backlog I've chosen to read this year. Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus is monumental. Magical realism, folklore, politics and adventure. What more could you want? thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/03/07/n...

This is the reply thread I didn't know I needed. Dewi Sant: Fashion Influencer.

Number 14 from my list of 45 books by women from my backlog is Tracy Chevalier's Falling Angels, a moving account of the transition from Victorian to Edwardian and the societal change that started to gather pace. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/02/28/f...

This is magnificent stuff. Proper writing-to-work-things-out stuff. History is ever changing. We rewrite it and ourselves in relation to it constantly. At its heart, though, is a kernel of truth.

Book 13 in my Year of Reading Women is The Heart Goes Last. Not the best thing I've read by Margaret Atwood, but not the best, either. Farcical about sums it up. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/02/24/t...

Uh oh. Mr'icks has introduced me to something that tickles my obsessiveness. And I'm better at it than him. 48.1/50. I remember colors better than I remember names. Come at me. dialed.gg?c=WTJEWP

Book 12 for my Year of Reading Women was Jane Fletcher Geniesse's Passionate Nomad, about Freya Stark, a woman who became an expert in Arabic culture in West Asia and whom I'd never heard of. I didn't always like her but I was thoroughly entertained. thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/p...

Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists? Here’s the graphic novel version - the whole story told in cartoons. You can still enjoy the story without reading the 255,000 word original text And there are lots of horses and bicycles to look at

This article is interesting. I had massive (to me) scraping activity on my inconsequential blog about book nonsense over the last 4 days and it threw my reptilian brain for a loop. 53 views an hour? Fine. 1,143 views an hour? WHAT?