In the poem 'Spring Voices' which is (I suppose) about suburban timidity: The small householder now comes out warily
Afraid of the barrage of sun that shouts cheerily
Spring is massing forces, birds wink in air
Battlemented chestnuts volley green fire.
But really, however much I feel that I am sitting here gazing into the contemporary equivalent of ( Read more... )

UK libraries and museums unite to save ‘astonishing’ lost library from private buyers - wouldn't it be nice, though, if the people who can afford to buy up this sort of thing would do so to give them to publicly available collections?
And, talking of fun things found in public collections, this is an amazing Twitter thread about an astonishing find ( Read more... )

(Okay, I can't make this Friday's slots, but it says 'check back'.)
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In other news:
Dept of, retrocity: refund from British Telecom due to change of landline provider - by cheque, fortunately I have a few deposit slips left around, but, really: why not in predecimal currency, eh?
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Dept of, it's a very niche thing: the first time I saw ( Read more... )

Magdalene College Cambridge has discovered a treasure trove of women’s intellectual history (I am always narked at claims of 'Ahead of Her Time' when obviously she was very much part of it): and I will describe this as 'lost in the patriarchal stacks of an institution which did not admit women until 1988': The college was the last to accept female ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished The Virago Story about which I was distinctly meh - noticed several niggling errors in names and titles of books and stories in areas where I have some expertise and honestly, where does she get off saying the Women's Library is closed? It moved, there was masses about it in the press, and she was talking about that same Women' ( Read more... )

Charles Darwin: Notebooks worth millions lost for 20 years: The notebooks were last seen in November 2000 after "an internal request" to remove them from a special manuscripts storeroom to be photographed. They were taken to a temporary studio, which at the time was in a temporary building in the grounds of the university library because building ( Read more... )

Alas that it is a problem beyond removing a pump handle (all dr rdrz know about John Snow and the Broad St pump and cholera, right?) but we feel dear old Flo would be smiling somewhat grimly in gratification about the 'soap and water' recommendations.
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Apparently libraries staying open while everything around them closes is a thing? In the days ( Read more... )

Today I went over to an Institution of Highah Learninz in the Whitechapel vicinity, which is located on the site, following changes of name and mergers and so forth, of an institution I used to visit in, believe it or not, the 1980s, to consult a Very Significant Research Library that had fetched up there.
That particular library is no longer there ( Read more... )

I encountered this article this morning via Twitter:
I can’t stand the earnest worship of books as objects - it’s literary posturing of the first degree.
I mean, there is some 'sharp young columnist' posturing itself going on there -
- but I really don't think that one can jump from what she's actually saying, which is, more or less, mostly ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished The October Man, which was okay, I guess, but one would like more of the main narrative to which it is an appendage.
Lisa Goldstein, Ivory Apples (2019), very good: creepy, rivetting, and the rl (as it were) horror is worse than anything supernatural. One of her best.
Rose Macaulay, Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of ( Read more... )