This has been a good week for seeing well-known people in unusual settings doing interesting things.

On Friday, d_floorlandmine and I took ourselves off to the Barbican to see Bright Phoebus Revisited.

A bit of backstory required here - Bright Phoebus was a seminal modern folk album released in 1972 by The Watersons and friends. The songs were written mostly by ( Read more... )

Already asked this on Facebook, but in case anyone here has any ideas ( Read more... )

Oh no, apparently Ray Bradbury has just died :(

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_20794779/ray-bradbury-dies-california

Popping out to the shops this lunchtime, I stuck my head into the local charity shop, mainly to see if they had any nice summer frocks. The book section in there is normally a haphazard mix of dime store romances, airport blockbusters and those jokey 'History of the World According to Alan Titchmarsh' type books ( Read more... )

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/forum/cd/discussion.html/ref=cm_cd_fp_ef_tft_tp?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx198HO82WL6898&asin=0575077018&cdThread=Tx1XS3NPTMUAO4HRead more... )

The book I am reading: I'm never reading just one thing. Currently I have The City & The City by China Mieville (but I left it at d_floorlandmine's on Monday) , The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (last years Hugo and Nebula winner) at home, and Smoke and Mirrors, Neil Gaiman's short story collection, as a commuter book.

The book I love most: Seriously impossible ( Read more... )

fire_kitten  posted this last night and it made me laugh and cry in equal parts, and that's about as good a measure of brilliance that we're going to get in this lifetime. (Why isn't 'wistful' an LJ mood?)

Date a girl who reads

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she ( Read more... )

Re: Glenda's inner monologue in Unseen Academicals:

"Why are you so angry all the time? What went wrong? I'll tell you what went wrong! When you got there, there was no there there. You wanted to see Quirm from an open carriage while a nice young man drank champagne out of your slipper, but you never did, because they were a funny lot in Quirm, and ( Read more... )

Well, it turns out that the big, strange-looking abandoned house in Streatham that I've been pondering a poke around for ages is actually the former home of occult writer Dennis Wheatley.

It's currently under threat of demolition as property developers want to clear the site to put up modern flats.

English Heritage have refused to give the building ( Read more... )

£5 tickets to see Neil Gaiman & Ian Rankin if you know the sekrit password. Details here: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/bookfest09