- if not really directly related.
The Queer Case of Catherine/Giovanni Vizzani Vizzani’s story is one of several featuring persons assigned female at birth, but who, at some point in their lives, decided to wear men’s clothing and “pass” as men. If and when those persons decided to marry a woman and live with her as husband and wife, they were ( Read more... )

Happy 117th birthday, Barbara Hepworth - the video to go with today's celebratory Google Doodle.
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I was initially cynical about an interview with a sexual psychophysiologist and neuroscientist but it's wonderfully It's All More Complicated about simplistic views about sexuality, sexual arousal, ideas of the gendered brain and patterns of arousal ( Read more... )

What I read
Well, it was all Cat Sebastian, all the way (re-reads): read The Turner Series, in order: The Soldier's Scoundrel, The Lawrence Browne Affair, The Ruin of a Rake, and the short after-pieces Redressed and A Little Light Mischief. Then on to Regency Imposters: Unmasked by the Marquess, A Duke in Disguise, A Delicate Deception. Then Hither ( Read more... )

Not quite sure why a 2016 blogpost was surfacing via Facebook just now, but I was thrilled to see this very extensive account of Sisterwrite Bookshop in Islington , by Lynn Alderson (I was at school with her! we used to walk from the bus-stop to the school together! and then numerous years later encountered her at Sisterwrite! and then we lost ( Read more... )

But my response to this article on used bookstores is 'huh?' and 'sweet summer child' and 'whut'.
What I Learned From Visiting Over 50 Used Bookstores In Six Months: They have a charm that can’t be matched by the large corporate chains
Well, duh, because large corporate chains have pretty much all the same books that came out within the last brief ( Read more... )

As my flight is this evening, checked out of my room and checked my luggage and set off to walk to Downtown.
I contrived part of this through a nice park with a lakeside meandering Japanese garden, but then struck streets again and came to the realisation that the trouble with the map is that it leaves out numerous streets and avenues so gives a ( Read more... )

I have noticed, over the last couple of weeks or so, outcries mostly on Twitter about ebook piracy. And certainly I have some feelings on this as I have noticed that there appear to be sites out there offering downloads of my own very modestly-priced works, what is this that this is even?
But this has segued, for some writers, it would seem, into ( Read more... )

This involved a certain amount of faff and hassle about making sure we were buying the right kind of ticket for the train which would also give us free rides on public transport, ascertaining which platform the train in the right direction left from, etc etc. And then when we arrived a) finding the right stop for the tram b) missing the stop we ( Read more... )

The end: Yorkshire Dales 'bookseller from hell' quits his shop
Doesn't say how long this charmer has been running a business, if you can call it that, but what I should have liked to have seen would have been a face-off between him and Driff Field, author of successive editions (last in 1995) of the idiosyncratic Driff's Guide to All The Secondhand ( Read more... )

Choosing a Book in the Twenty-First Century.
I do not think it is a function of being old and jaded that I was going WHAT? NO! at this: Most bookworms know that it is almost impossible to walk into a bookshop without wanting to buy every single one because the thought of missing out on any of them is almost unbearable.
Or maybe the writer is the ( Read more... )