well I dropped my kindle and the screen cracked and now I have a kobo! Which seems like an excellent ereader, but it's very weird to look through the long list of books I bought and never read and whose heft kept me on kindle for so long

Aaaaa new local bookshop over on Wood Street. AND it’s the sort that does a mix of new and second-hand, my absolute favourite sort of shop

Was just told about the German term “grusel schmusel” which apparently means “scary smooching”? If so, incredible, surely English-language publishing should adopt this instead of continuing to try to get “horromance” off the ground

New from the makers of KIDS & CARS: EGGS

Lovely time at @smallpublishers.bsky.social yesterday, definitely ended up with more books than I intended (but many fewer than I wanted)

this is indeed an incredibly weird story

look has anyone I know in London read the Helen Garner diaries and if so do you want to get a coffee and compare Opinions because I am having real trouble figuring out what mine are

Oh this is really charmingly done (via @dayofthemutants.bsky.social ) - little popup explanations of a bunch of the proverbs in Bruegel's big painting-of-proverbs bruegel.analog.is

this week's newsletter is mostly just some leftover things that happened in Vienna, me grumbling about finally getting covid (after FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, so cross!), and some links buttondown.com/holly/archiv...

the cats have settled into autumn

did a big post on the Piranesi larp I did last month blog.vbuckenham.com/i-was-a-chil... - my first ever big larp, and i thought people might want to have a sense what it's like to do something like this!

PSA: The Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant application deadline is this Sunday at 23:59 PST. The team and I may not be available over the weekend to answer any last minute questions, so please check out the FAQ and if there's any doubt - apply anyway! grants.draknek.org

Okay I wrote up my trip to the WORLD TRAMDRIVER CHAMPIONSHIPS buttondown.com/holly/archiv... cannot stress enough how much this newsletter issue is just a list of things that happened at the world tramdriver championships, please use your own judgement regarding whether that is of interest to you

There's a WEEK left to sign up to mentor for @artsemergency.bsky.social - potentially get paired with a young person (16-18) who wants to work in the arts/creative industries, but who might not have the contacts or context to help them understand how to do that www.arts-emergency.org/get-involved...

oh yeah that makes sense, thx

This seems needlessly complicated

We are at the World Tram Driving Championships

Had such a nice time on a panel with @tomfaber91.bsky.social @jon.inkle.co @jmechner.bsky.social at the Financial Times festival, did find it very funny to walk in and be immediately faced with this tent

I didn't realise E. Nesbit (of "Five Children and It", "The Railway Children" etc) also wrote a bunch of adult books! I found this recent reissue of "The Lark" (1922) in a second-hand shop the other day and it's pretty charming, maybe a little forgettable

I don't think of myself as listening to podcasts much but I found out about @eightdaysofdiana.bsky.social - which is basically @emilytesh.net and @rebeccafraimow.bsky.social talking about every Diana Wynne Jones book in turn, for an hour or sometimes two - a fortnight ago when it won a Hugo

The £30 I spend to be a "friend" of the @publicdomainrev.bsky.social is, in terms of purely selfish pleasure, the best £30 I spend a year, because every six months - just when I've forgotten it's going to happen again - they send me a pack of weird little postcards publicdomainreview.org/support/

I didn't even think it was possible to *have* a favourite page of a freezer manual…

very good wikipedia page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-l...

Every place I've ever bought socks is all "oh noooo please fill in this form to tell us what we did to anger you :-(" when I unsubscribe from their Daily Sock newsletter but there's never a form for the newsletters where I want to explain at great length what really annoying thing they just did

some nice animal illustrations from 1658 pdimagearchive.org/galleries/so... Lots of earnest attempts at animals that turned out not to exist but I think my favourite is the bear (gorgeous) or the beaver (startled)

The @societyofauthors.bsky.social wills and inheritance guidance is great - informative but with occasional tiny moments of fond mockery of, like, the entire concept of writers: * "Authors seem to love the idea of having literary executors" " "If you are sufficiently eminent..."

Enjoyed this little article on harlequin ladybirds www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/why... via the Today Things newsletter (todaythings.substack.com), which correctly identifies the best single sentence in it, re whether humans are at risk from a ladybird STD:

Haven't posted enough cat videos recently, so here's one from this morning, in which they saw a BIRD

Incredible article about a bunch of children - now in their 50s and 60s - who were taught to read using a doomed alternate alphabet invented by a Tory MP www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Books on the Wall in Chester is LOVELY, great books, really solid board game selection to play in the shop, and also: ONE POUND for a chocolate brownie (!!)

@stfj.net I mean I get why bongo doesn't give its "not a weird wordgame word" points for swears but I will say this particular arrangement of bonus squares and letter availability is really rubbing it in

I made a new game zine! 👀 Colour match TINY KAMI ("little spirits") with objects in your surroundings to find them all! 🩷⭐🔷🟢🟪 heyitshelen.itch.io/tiny-kami ❄️ Created for Sticky Institute's Winter Zine Game Jam. ✨ Physical copies available at Sticky Institute for a limited time.

The cafe at @sohotheatre.bsky.social Walthamstow is SUCH a good place to work for my incredibly specific needs: * you can see outside * not too hot inside but also not freezing aircon * good general kerfuffle of people going in and out * loads of tables so you don’t feel bad about staying ages

The real reason Australians in London deal so well with summer isn’t that we have a constant rotation of secret antipodean tricks (“why not: put a teatowel in the freezer!”), it’s that we love patronising English people SO much

really fun set of questions to get asked to give recommendations for! ah I love having opinions

Bookshop cat!

Asked some passing-by Torontans how you catch a tram and in accordance with its “Canada’s Melbourne” atmosphere the answer was “ohhh yeah sorry you sort of… you see some people who might be waiting and you stand near them and it should come, I think there should be a sign? Usually there’s a sign?”

Enjoying the Tim Tam international push - US keeping the “there is no substitute” messaging but calling them dark cookies, Canada going for 3 irresistible layers / couches irresistibles, and a glowing light

Do you, like me, have a couple of email newsletters that you don't read and don't remember signing up for but that you don't unsubscribe from because they're just pleasantly inexplicable in the inbox? Mine are: * "Right Now in New Jersey" * "Surgery International"

would you like to see five sun bears investigate a six hundred kilogram pumpkin www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKNJ...

I'm gonna be in and near Toronto in a couple weeks! Doing some events! Free; full info and booking links are here: www.hollygramazio.net/events The Toronto one is part of @torontogamesweek.com - talking to @jimmunroe.net about books, games, rom-coms and all sorts Come along if you're around!

Ah neat, @peckhamdigital.bsky.social has a call out for its "festival celebrating creative computing" in Oct www.peckhamdigital.org - they're looking for "artists, creative technologists, and creative coders to exhibit artworks, present talks, and run workshops", pays £216 for a selected artwork

This was a really lovely little exhibition at House of Annetta on Princelet Street! Apparently there's a cat who lives in the house who likes to sleep in the hanging-fabric piece, and the curators have to wake it up and clean the hair off every morning.

Reading too much Agatha Christie as a child gave me half my foundational sense of what London neighbourhoods were like so I was quite surprised when I first went to actual Seven Dials

Polish edition of the book feat. Gelato??? Presumably coincidence but I'm gonna imagine the cover illustrator looked at my instagram and decided to draw him

They’re cats of great dignity

Finally got to the new @presentcorrect.bsky.social store, which is great. I assume they're basically friends with Choosing Keeping but I do feel like there's scope for some fun horoscope/Myers-Briggs personality analysis of London-based fancy-stationery fans re: which one they prefer.

Going through more Berlin photos - this gravesite expiry notice is quite something ("Usage rights expired. Please contact the cemetery administration", says google translate)

Walked by this cafe in Berlin - does anyone know the alphabet on the right-hand side of the sign? At the time I thought it might be Thomas More's alphabet for Utopia but I've now looked it up and nope, although I do think it has a bit of that feel

New York update: walked past a box of HELLO SPRING newsletters, very seasonal