1930s France sounds so much like what’s happening here that it’s eerie

Here's a link to my @seattlechannel.bsky.social interview with the most wonderful Kira Jane Buxton: bsky.app/profile/seat...

R.I.P. Thomas Perry, author of two of my very favorite thrillers: 1983's Metzger's Dog (which featured a particularly interesting cat) and 1995's Vanishing Act, (which introduced his series star Jane Whitfield).

Done & dusted. “Fantasy Toy Shop,” a 1000-piecer from @ravensburgertcg.bsky.social was-I cannot lie-tricky to do (all those dolls!) While I worked on it I listened with great pleasure to Amy Gamerman’s The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector and a War Out West.

Another excellent sign

Best sign of the day;

Love this photo of Joe and I walking the Kennet-Avon canal footpath into a darkening sky and potential torrential rain. Sort of a metaphor of aging together in a very long marriage

Late to the party, but really loved Cameron Reed's The Fortunate Fall. Still processing how amazingly current a novel orig pub some 30 years ago can be. Excellent plot, wonderful writing. Grateful to Tor Essentials for reprinting this last year.

What Seattle definitely needs (I am tempted to say, more than anything) is a Marks & Spencer Food Hall

The LAF is delighted to meet another librarian named Nancy !

In his terrific book Everything is Tuberculosis, @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social quotes a friend of his who says "Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past," which I haven't stopped thinking about since I heard it on the audiobook, which Green reads.

Finding an "Easter egg" in a novel you're reading is such a treat, and here's one I found while I was listening to the audio book: the librarian in Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books uses "nancypearl" as her password! Very very cool, thank you @kirstenmiller.bsky.social !

“The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” Hannah Arendt

When one beloved dies there is no need for rain. Tears will wet the earth Wrote this haiku when I was about 12. #haiku

How to turn your ox into bouillon cubes -

I was looking through some old notebooks of mine and found this, which I wrote when I was 17 or 18

Best sign seen on today’s walk. Plus, for Seattle peeps and visitors, I highly recommend the one scoop hot fudge sundae from Dick’s Drive-In. I figured an 11 mile walk easily justified it.

A @brianbilston.bsky.social poem is always a treat and this one is terrific.

Done and dusted. This @galison.bsky.social puzzle 1000-piecer is a delight to do. I listened to Jacque Roy reading Adam Highinbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl while I worked on it. It’s a terrific book

“It was love that set me on the journey, love that called me home.” - Denis Johnson

“-The owls are restless. People have died here, Good men for bad reasons, Better forgotten.” R. S. Thomas

My very very favorite Laurie Colwin novel, despite my feeling that the last third or so doesn’t really work. (This is the British edition and I’m not at all fond of the cover.)

Done & dusted. Finally I had time to do my first puzzle in the new apartment and it’s a good 1000-piecer from Galison Puzzles. Love those cats

“Another day in the ruinous world,”

Scotland’s signs are delivering. Y’all understood the assignment. 😂

After a major reread, I can categorically state that the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe mysteries hold up, while the Lockridge Mr and Mrs North/Captain Heimrich ones were, I am sad to say, better remembered than reread

Sometimes you read a poem at just the right moment and then it becomes a part of you. That’s what’s happened to me with Galway Kinnell’s Shelley, which I can’t get out of my head. It’s the shortest and most perfect summing up of Shelley’s life.

One of my favorite stories to tell when I was a children’s librarian was “The Huckabuck Family: And How They Raised Popcorn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back” - one of poet Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga stories. It’s great fun

Backlist title of the day: this memoir is a total delight - funny and affectionate about the author’s four very quirky uncles

I’ve been going through all my books trying to decide which ones I want to keep and which to give away; I’ve been skimming/rereading many of my favorites, books I’ve kept for decades, and what I’m finding is that the vast majority of those are better to remember than to reread. Which is sad but true

I’ve been a big Elinor Lipman from her first novel on, but this early novel is my very favorite-

I always think I’m not fond of memoirs and then I remember how much I loved Richard Shelton’s Going Back to Bisbee

Backlist title of the day: if you’re in need of a cheering up sort of book, Steve Kluger’s Last Days of Summer is just the ticket. Set in the early 1940s, it’s the story of 9 yr old Joey Margolis whose hero is baseball player Charlie Banks, who is pretty sure he doesn’t want to be anyone’s hero

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy. I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

I find it so interesting that all 4 blurbs for The Collected Stories of Richard Yates. Back in 2001 I guess @henryholtbooks.bsky.social didn’t think women readers would appreciate Yates, which I don’t believe for a minute.

Backlist title of the day: Tom Perrotta’s first novel is a delight, funny, romantic, and wistful. Check it out

I’m reading a new novel in which the author doesn’t use the Oxford comma, and I’m trying to decide how much that matters in my feelings about the book. For what it’s worth, it’s written by a Brit and the first chapter’s marvelous

Best sign today in N.E. Seattle:

A friend did this cartoon

The wild blackberries are announcing their imminent arrival on to the scene

Excellent writing, a strong sense of place (East Africa in the very late 20th century), and romantic in the absolute best sense of the word - I loved this 1998 novel from @pantheonbooks.bsky.social and now I feel I must reread it immediately.

The cruelty we’re constantly seeing from the R’s is breathtakingingly nauseating and terrifying

Wow, really great poem

How did I never read a Tchaikovsky sci-fi novel before? Service Model is terrific—smart, entertaining, often funny, with just the right amount of sadness thrown in. Reader, I loved it. Now trying to decide what Tchaikovsky book to read next. Suggestions welcomed.

I have no idea what Stephen Spender was doing in Tulsa in 1982, but I was working at Yorktown Alley Bookstore and he must’ve come in and signed my book because here it is. I was a huge lover of his poetry

Luxurious foam, the barista said

Most people aren't tracking this, but the Big Ugly bill would effectively ban marketplace insurers from covering abortion care in ALL 50 states. We can't let this stand. Please help spread the word. Republicans are jamming this bill through—we have to speak up NOW.