I read the Booker Prize shortlist (again). Rum do, this year - but not uninterestingly. On the bourgeois novel:

If you see this post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.

I'm going to use this as the jonbar point in my upcoming alternate-history novel.

Entirely accurate.

Managed to find where @adamroberts.bsky.social keeps one of his old posts -- this good one, on Thackeray. profadamroberts.substack.com/p/unthorough...

KEVIN COSTNER: I’m selling eminent British actors to football clubs. Judy Dench to Arsenal. Charles Dance to Wolverhampton Wanderers. ME: Not Chelsea? KC: No. Dance is with Wolves.

And tonight ... it's FRONKenSTEEN

Feed: "Substack-ships On Fire, Off The Shoulder Of Orion" By: Adam Roberts on Thursday, November 6, 2025

This guys legs are even longer than his name.

Did no one think of "To Boldly Lego" as a slogan? www.lego.com/en-gb/produc...

Splendidly honest opening sentences for this book on Hegel.

I can't be the first academic to go with the "Marvell's Comic Universe" line, surely. profadamroberts.substack.com/p/carping-at...

In today's post: this upcoming from @quellist1.bsky.social

I mean, I see what they mean, but the "in the entire 204-year-old history of this publication, only 15 zero-star reviews have ever been written" is a tad misleading. As if early 19thC Guardian writers were penning "the Manchester Guardian gives Lord Liverpool's new Corn Laws ZERO STARS" articles.

This really isn't what THE NAKED SUN is about.

PRINCE: what's that sound? ME: Just the tide going out. P: You mean ... the water leaving that little cove? M: Exactly. Revealing a little sandy beach. P: So *this* is what it sounds like ... when coves dry.

Journey To The Centre* of The Earth!!** --- *eleven inches below the surface ** Redruth

I used to be the Local Association Secretary of my union, what was (but is no longer) the AUT. We had a bunch of material from a strike ballot, from before I became an academic. The slogan for this campaign was: "Rectify the Anomaly!" Academics, eh? Pff.

The Bumble in the Jungle

An update on Wonders and Visions, my collaborative project with @adamroberts.bsky.social grahamsleight.com/2025/11/03/w...

On Sergelstorg baht ‘at

A message from Graham Sleight and myself concerning the "Wonders and Visions" project: profadamroberts.substack.com/p/wonders-an...

Inconceivable!

Tonight I shall be singing "please pudding hot/pease pudding cold/pease pudding in the pot 9 days old" in the style of The Smiths. "Pease Pease Pease Let me let me let me Pease pudding hot This time"

Nogbad the Bad.

A re-read.

Some interesting comments on this, now.

At all good book shops (and one or two in Soho).

Ten years ago I published a novel based on precisely this idea.

A towering work.

I have written a guest-post for Adam Kotsko's "Late Star Trek" blog, on a bizarre Deep Space 9 episode. latestartrek.substack.com/p/resurrecti...

"I PITY THE FOOL who measures out his life in coffee spoons. I ain't gonna wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, fool." Oh look. It's Mr T's Eliot.

I feel like the Guardian is fat-shaming Blue Ghost here.

Ozymandias's real name: medium.com/p/138f7036d64

I wonder if I'll know ... when I've been satanTango'd.

There is a legal case for King Charles III to resume his status as monarch of the Americas—but it is strewn with obstacles

That's even more than Boris Johnson! Why haven't the Conservative Party snapped (*I thang yow*) this geezer up as their new leader?

all these passing things (all these passing things) all these passing things now put your hands up!

Today, so far, just one for me: spam in which my "Land of the Headless" (abt decapitated criminals forced to continue living their headless lives, their consciousness operating from a hard-drive bolted onto their spines) was described as "the hot new title American Romantic Fiction is waiting for!"

My name is Ozzy Osbourne, Brum of Brums Look on my War Pigs, baby, and despair.

I should have been a pair of ragged carnivorous death balls Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Whenever I see this title some weird circuit in my brain drops the "of" and sings the rest to the tune of The Teardrop Explodes' "Seven Views of Jerusalem". I don't know why.

Citron sunset over Berkshire.

This tagline has a distinct "cheeky little scamp!" vibe to it. Either that, or it's the rap name of a 17yo from Lewisham.

Richard Dadd, Baldrick-like, in court, denying that he murdered his father.

Re-upping this post on William Blake's ‘Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion’ (c.1810). profadamroberts.substack.com/p/william-bl...

"Celebrating 50 Rat Years". How much is that in human years?

TRIPLETS movie in the pipeline I see.

"Bakers! For your show stopper, the judges want a broach-shaped cake with a glazed Old English monarch ganache ..."

"Sadness in his eyes ..." profadamroberts.substack.com/p/william-bl...