Happy year of the fire horse [Mark Rothko, Red on Red, 1969]

« Mon refuge et mon orage » : pourquoi Arundhati Roy ne dira jamais tant pis

Here's a banger that makes me teary even though I don't understand a single word. youtu.be/vqRdlr3uD1U?...

Plus I think more women should have swords.

Back in my bookshop days, I often said that pocketbooks are the perfect technology. It's still true. Today's reading, and a few pics of my collection:

fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick

Always great to see so many browsers out and about in Grasmere this time of the year.

Rain Light ~ W. S. Merwin

Fascinating (and long) piece on John Cheever and the art of the New Yorker short story

Remembering my brilliant philosophy professor. She had a dog, Henry, who was half-wolf. She reminded me of Kafka, if Kafka had been a neurotic Italian-American outta Boston. Women & the Art of Revolution Knowledge of the Sacred Women and Power Loves Sacred and Profane Philosophy of the Irrational

When I left Paris for the countryside, a brilliant artist told me she regretted not spending more time in my bookshop. To console herself and give me a parting gift, Jena Pham Selle designed a LEGO set. For #InternationalLegoDay here's my old bookshop in bricks. That's me in the stripey shirt.

Today is #InternationalLegoDay so here's Robert Leighton as Lego minifigure, & smallest book in Dunblane's historic Leighton Library beside #Lego minifigure - book is "De imitatione Christi" by Thomas a Kempis. Robert Leighton made many notes in this book - in tiny handwriting

Count Basie at the bandshell in Grant Park when I was a tiny tot in Chicago. My mom took me there because she was impossibly cool.

From The Oxford Book of American Verse, edited by F. O. Matthiessen

📚 drop a comment if you do👇🏻

We got here because white supremacy and misogyny are not tied to age. Fascism has never been something that would die out by ignoring it. It's the political equivalent of ivy, mint, and kudzu. Only less useful. It spreads endlessly, working on expanding every crack in every wall. We must uproot it

The antidote to both apathy and despair is action. Doing anything is better than nothing. You’ve got this.

#OnThisDay, 4 Jan 1944, Anne-Marie Walters parachutes into France as a British Special Operations Executive agent. SOE supported the French Resistance to Nazi occupation. In Aug 1944 she escapes over the Pyrenees. She writes a book about her work. #WorldWar2 #WomenInHistory #WomensHistory 🗃️

In the early 90s I was a house manager at the Public Theater in NYC. During the intermission of a play, Jackie O approached me in the lobby and asked for directions to the ladies' room.

When French farmers protest, there are cookouts, bonfires, plenty of vin chaud, and neat stunts like this motocross champion jumping over tractors. There's joy in this resistance.

The little free library in a nearby town is pretty wild. Found this treasure there a few days ago, and it reminded me of finding Kathy Acker's essays and A Confederacy of Dunces in a stationery store in Casablanca.

We are the absent ones #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social #poetry

Every summer, a lady of a certain age would arrive in Paris and stay in the hotel right across the street from my bookshop. Once she settled in, she'd fling open her windows and call out my name punctuated by a YOO HOO! I'd go to my front step, wave, and welcome her to town.

I went to an estate sale in a nearby village to scout for books. The house belongs to an elderly English lady who has lived in this tiny village for 25 years, and is now moving back home to expire (her words). Judging from various inscriptions and bookmarks I found, her books are very well-traveled.

24hrs in London last Saturday.

Sometimes, on the way to my bookshop, I'd walk down rue Jacob and stand before her old house. I imagined my way into le Temple de l'Amitié. One day, an elderly customer told me his family lived next door to it when he was a boy. He beamed with the memory of the glamorous women of rue Jacob.

New Halloween costume just dropped in France...

If you are still awake, take a moment you look up at the moon. Currently untroubled by living humans. Still a place of ghosts, gods and 20th century wreckage.

Books have always mattered. Only the imagination can challenge the fatalist mindset of capitalist realism. Only the impossible has the power to battle what power wants us to accept as the given. (I’m probably not making sense but yes books matter so much and always)

Joe Brainard’s ‘I Remember’ (1970-1975) is a small book that is immense inside, not least because of the way it—generously, wittily, companionably—opens up the reader to their own worlds of memory and feeling. There’s no such thing as an everybody book, but this is one. @dauntbookspub.bsky.social.

It's no wonder that criticism is getting gutted at outlets right now, because understanding how to process art on more than a surface level is antithetical to the monolithic "my way is the right way" edict of our current fascist regime. There's no room for interpretation or nuance. And that sucks.

Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. -Adam Zagajewski Resharing a favorite. [trans. Clare Cavanagh, published in TheNewYorker’s Sept 2001 special issue] #everynightapoem

Of the many pleasures I find in used books, this one is a doozy. My copy was previously owned by a French-speaking person, so the margins are filled with translations of English words into French. I can't imagine a better book for a French reader to learn the word twinkle.

There she is! A proof of No Friend, hanging out at the wonderful @book-ish.bsky.social in Wales! 🙌📚 I’m so touched by all the support from indies. That’s why we made a special edition just for them, with sheeptastic spredges and endpapers, signed by me… 🐏 👉 www.book-ish.co.uk/product/nata...

Now listening to the soothing sounds of the 1957 Baseball All-Star Game. The starting lineups are wall-to-wall legends: Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Stan Musial. Once again, @archive.org hits it out of the park.

Will I ever tire of looking at dust jacket art on vintage mystery fiction? Absolutely not

The view from the back door this morning. My cat is chilling in front of the car, and two not-my-cats are taking it easy after a heatwave. #caturday

Never forget that #SesameStreet once did a sketch based on Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, which involved a Swedish fisherman counting seals until he found the seventh one.

I moved some books around today, and finally figured out what to put in the tiny alcove in the kitchen. Its intended purpose is a religious statue, but I put Saint Royko there instead.

It doesn't matter how long I've lived in France or how well I know the language. I cannot help but laugh at seeing "le New Jersey" in print.

Post a banger that's not in English. youtu.be/OPVtricblNM?...

From Al Lowe: Schickele Mix was a radio program hosted by Peter Schickele for 175+ episodes, combining diverse music into suites that demonstrated how different songs could unexpectedly share a similar musical technique or idea. archive.org/details/Schi...

Arrêtez tout ce que vous êtes en train de faire. Cette nouvelle image du JWST est hallucinante. Au centre, un amas de galaxies à 4,5 milliards d'années-lumière de nous. Sa masse est tellement énorme qu'il dévie la lumière des galaxies en arrière-plan. Cela forme ces arcs de cercles impressionnants!

As a Chicago-born person, I was baffled by this image of one hotdog surrounded by 17 wrong ones.

lil note for the "every available legal remedy" types, please note that my man has a sword. what is the sword for? it's for giving the fascists what they deserve. note also that he's got a bandolier. what is the bandolier for? it's for giving the fascists what they deserve.

One of many commemorations held this year marking the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the liberation of concentration camps, and in remembrance of those who fought in the French Resistance. People read poems and letters dating from WWII while accompanied by the local orchestra.

Going after libraries under the guise of “protecting children” will result in censorship of ALL library materials and services; vilification of librarians, resulting in us being targeted and attacked; and further defunding and even closure of libraries to “protect” the community. Fascism 101.