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@MrJohnWemmick
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My home office was getting unbearably higgledy-piggledy with numerous piles of books around.
So I sawed, stained, and sealed some wood, made some shelves, and tidied it up a little bit.
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The Secret Barrister’s whole schtick is writing a massive thread explaining that the rules and procedure in Kafka’s The Trial were properly followed, actually.
Feel bad for Josef K.? Here’s why you and the Daily Mail are wrong… 1/217
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Outside of the tactless theological debate, it is lost on me at how someone can listen to Cranmer’s English, the language of the King James Bible, the music of Parry and Bach, and come away thinking “this was terribly empty and platitudinous”.
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Spent the past month cutting, sanding, staining, and sealing wood. Then made some bookcases for our many, many books. Very happy with the outcome.
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Very poor form.
Also: Britain is one of the few developed worlds where a former high-ranking government minister does not need to be surrounded by armed heavies.
Actions like this denigrate that very precious public trust. See also, metal detectors in art galleries.
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Pitch perfect.
And in the background is the constant drone of stultifying twee adverts: “Here’s to you, Britain, have a brew on us. Whether you’re a local zero or an NHS hero. For the good times and the bad. A biccy and a brew, just for you.”
Life in Britain be like
"you are no 237 in the queue, please stop phoning us, don't bully the staff, services prob aren't running, download this app, are you sure you need a hospital/electricity/train? check your nearest hub, no appointments for 10 weeks, remember BE KIND !!"
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"Pubs forced to call last orders early in new Labour nanny state blow
"Crackdown on drinking under consideration as ‘fun police’ Government sets out plan to improve health and tackle anti-social behaviour"
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Hard to view the past 12 years in British politics and society as anything other than wasted opportunity and managed decline. Britain in 2022 doesn’t look that different than Britain in 2010.
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Hearing reports on who the new head of Great British Railways is...
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I made some Smoking Bishop, a wonderful 19th century mulled port & wine drink. Dickens mentions it in A Christmas Carol when a redemptive Scrooge invites Bob Cratchit in for some.
I used a recipe book from 1829 written by the delightfully named Dick Humelbergius Secundus.
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In my effort to read the Ninety-Nine Novels on Burgess’s incredibly idiosyncratic list (or at least the ones I haven’t read), I yesterday finished Golding’s The Spire. This is one that will stay with me for a while. A spectacular and haunting little book.
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Possibly the best $50 (£37) I’ve ever spent: a set of Dickens by Scribner’s from 1901, clothbound, gold leafed, in immaculate condition.
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Remember, everyone: the past is an awful place and things are so much better now.
We are pleased to authorise Thanet Parkway Station, ahead of its opening on Monday 31 July 2023.
More details ➡️
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This is my second woodwork project this year, after I built a set of bookcases in my living room in April.
Spent the past month cutting, sanding, staining, and sealing wood. Then made some bookcases for our many, many books. Very happy with the outcome.
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“You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.”
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The Kennet & Avon Canal, winding through parts of Hardy’s Wessex, is a picturesque paradise now, but up until the 1990s it was abandoned. Totally renovated by volunteers, Boy Scouts, and prisoners.
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In Freud’s collected works, there are more references to the writings of Shakespeare and Goethe than there are of any psychiatrist.
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It's a beautiful day when James O'Brien is trending for telling a listener a child's death is on him, and then later is trending again because BBC2 airs a programme on Carl Beech, an incident which should have ended JOB's career as a journalist.
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Fantastic Christmas gift from my wife: original bound volumes of Dickens’ Household Words from the 1850s.
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Big name actors who began as Shakespearean stage players really are a cut above, and it shows.
Dame Judi, Patrick Stewart, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Jacobi, Helen Mirren, James Earl Jones, Burton, Ian Holm, McKellan, etc., etc…
Judi Dench was on Graham Norton last night to push her new book about her life and work with Shakespeare. After making the point we quote Shakespeare daily without knowing it, this happened:
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Where did
@BucketsOf_Rain
mention “woke”? There’s not even a political bend to her tweet. I don’t even think it’s implied in her very fair criticism of modern housing being, like most of modern life, simply rubbish.
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“Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency.”
~ Dickens, Little Dorrit
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Purchased from a Cambridge secondhand bookshop a few weeks ago.
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“Dickens was paid by the word” is the most dishonest depreciation of the author that reveals much about the utterer. Like many lies, one that just won’t die.
At a writing conference I told a famous author how much I admire Dickens. His reply: "He was paid by the word."
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A Dickens Shelfie is a grand idea. Here’s mine. (Although some days I think it looks more like a shrine than a shelf.) And yes—those are Dickensian cigarette cards from 1912.
We agree with
@JulianPinnick
that there should be a
#Dickens
#Shelfie
Day, and maybe it could be every day!
But for now, drop us a picture of your
#Dickens
shelf, whether you have one book or a thousand, we want to see how he surrounds you!
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Netflix only having three pre-1975 films is such an indictment of the streaming era.
Netflix has added 3 Hitchcock films for October.
Previously they had no American films released before 1975.
Halloween truly is the season of miracles. 🎃
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The utterly magnificent John Rylands Library in the middle of Manchester city centre.
Not just a beautiful building; a testament to how the public sphere once considered how knowledge and wisdom should be stored, presented, and accessed.
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Probably the oldest books in my library: a set of collected bound volumes of The Spectator Magazine from 1750.
They are in incredibly delicate condition.
Here’s one of these 273 year old beauties:
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A professor of mine compared Dickinson to Kant.
The German Philosopher never left Königsberg, the American Poet only ventured a few miles from Amherst a handful of times.
But both were able to comprehend to depth of the Universe well beyond even the most well-travelled.
At her modest, west-facing writing desk in Amherst, Emily Dickinson crafted a life more profoundly rich and meaningful than any contemporary globetrotting IG influencer could ever aspire to. Emily is the true Top G. Take a cue from her and emulate.
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Feel the same as when the accusations against Marilyn Manson came out.
Why ignore normal human instincts about obviously chaotic and hazardous lunatics? Because being edgy and transgressive is “cool” and riling up boring stuffy old reactionaries is hilarious? Yes well.
🔺 EXCLUSIVE: Russell Brand has been accused of rape and sexual assaults by women who have broken their silence on alleged attacks between 2006 and 2013
This is a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and
@C4Dispatches
✍️
@RosamundUrwin
@char_wace
@pmorganbentley
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"It is a great comfort, to my way of thinking, that so little is known about the poet. It is a fine mystery, and I tremble every day lest something should come out."
~ Dickens on Shakespeare.
#ShakespeareDay
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“Song of Myself!,” a strip Walt Whitman’s poetry drawn in the style of Jack Kirby, by R. Sikoryak. Just terrific.
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Rereading Notes From Underground. Probably my third or fourth time over the years I’ve read this masterpiece. It’s a little slip of a book, yet it is so brimming with the most profound observations and unique conjectures that it requires such constant pause and reflection.
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I finish what has been rightfully called Trollope’s masterpiece.
A fantastic examination of what it means to be unscrupulous.
Also: “Squercum” and “Bideawhile” are two of the best names for lawyers I’ve seen in fiction.
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There is something quite striking that Porridge could cover topics like this (prison criminal empires fixing boxing matches), drug smuggling, sexual frustration, male loneliness, etc., and yet could still be so inexplicably cosy and comforting.
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Today’s find. Burgess’s account of colonial collapse.
“The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” ~Ulysses, Tennyson
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Excellent new addition: the collected essays, journalism, and letters of Orwell.
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IBM Selectric II Typewriter (1973). A work of supreme beauty.
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Finally got my hands on an absolutely outstanding scholarly achievement: the complete Autobiography of Mark Twain, published a century after the author’s death, according to his wishes, by the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley.
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Bloody hell, what I'd give right now to be out of the house and be back home in Blighty walking along a windy Morecambe Bay seafront with a big bag of fish and chips.
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Another day, another reason that Larkin’s poem “Going, Going” hits harder than ever.
“And that will be England gone…”
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David Copperfield, Dickens
Jane Eyre, C. Brontë
Middlemarch, Eliot
The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas
Moby-Dick, Melville
Les Misérables, Hugo
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner
The Code of the Woosters, Wodehouse
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
In no order:
Tha Magic Mountain, T. Mann
Under the Volcano, Lowry
Moby-Dick, Melville
The World of Yesterday, Zweig
Great Expectations, Dickens
Jude the Obscure, Hardy
Blood Meridian, McCarthy
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
The Leopard, Lampedusa
As I Lay Dying, Faulkner
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About a month ago I dipped into the first few pages of The Count Of Monte Cristo. I wasn’t planning to read it; I just wanted to get a feel for the 1200 page beast.
I just finished it last night. I dropped everything else and was engorged by this book. Just a wonderful story.
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Conrad was a great admirer of Dickens, calling him “the master”.
Of Bleak House, he had “an intense and unreasoning affection, dating from the days of my childhood, that its very weaknesses are more precious to me than the strength of other men’s work”.
#BOTD
Joseph Conrad, writer, Dec. 3, 1857
“Facing it — always facing it — that's the way to get through.”
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Had a terrific time at the absolutely lovely Elizabeth Gaskell House today. Brilliant restoration work and great volunteers.
@EGaskellsHouse
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A brilliant show by
@TheRestHistory
’s top lads
@holland_tom
and
@dcsandbrook
in Washington DC tonight.
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@Kulambq
I only recently learnt that when Dostoevsky was exiled to Siberia, he read (and re-read) only two books: The Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield.
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Revisiting Earthly Powers for the first time in about a decade, and this sly parody of John Betjeman’s poetry is painfully well-crafted (and I say that as a Betjeman devotee).
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I did not know that A. Burgess held such strong admiration for FMF. I am unsurprised however, as I am currently knee deep in Parade’s End and utterly transfixed. The treatment of the subject matter, the elegiac tone, the prose.
Ford Madox Ford was, according to Anthony Burgess, ‘the greatest British novelist of the 20th century.’ Looking forward to this new biography by
@SaundersMax
from
@reaktionbooks
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In my first Civ Pro class, I naively asked Prof. Heppner “How do I know that fraud is a state law claim, and not federal?”
He took a sip of his coffee and said “Well, this is law school. Here you shall learn.”
And I did. And I certainly learned a lot from that snappy dresser.
Three (academic) years ago, I taught my first Civ Pro class
@DuquesneLaw
. Today, I'm so excited and proud to see those former 1Ls graduating.
#DuqLawGrad
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TIL: one of the passengers on the ill-fated RMS Lusitania in 1915 had in his possession Dickens’ personal copy of A Christmas Carol, complete with annotations by the author and Wilkie Collins. Sadly, both it and the owner sank to the ocean floor.
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No documentary series quite like it. Television today pales in comparison.
The World at War is 50 years old today. The 26-episode documentary, then the most expensive factual series ever produced, was narrated by Laurence Olivier.
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A journey along the Potomac through the Appalachian Mountains, featuring some bald eagles, on an absolute beauty of American rail history from 1952.
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Only a couple brief chapters separate The Grand Inquisitor from The Teachings of Elder Zosima. In those 100 pages, Dostoevsky scaled a summit of literary and theological expression and insight that few, if any, have ever reached.
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Grant Wood, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931
“Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, / On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: / Hardly a man is now alive / Who remembers that famous day and year.”—“Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1860)
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Some good news: today I hit my goal and read all of the books for my 2020 Goodreads reading challenge.
Oh and I also passed the Bar Exam.
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Can’t wait to see Putin mention The Slap in his next speech.
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“Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,” it suddenly occurred to him. “But how could that be, when I did everything properly?”
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Found this yesterday in a secondhand bookshop and had to grab it. A signed first edition of Anthony Burgess’s The Kingdom of the Wicked. Gorgeous stuff.
@IrwellEdition
@anthonyburgess
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Stumbled upon a complete set of our English Tacitus this weekend.
“Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?”
~ Prince William Henry, 1781.
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For fans of Westerns and classic American cinema, Horizon Ch. 1 is a delight.
A meld of How The West Was Won, The Big Country, Once Upon A Time In The West, and Fort Apache. But it’s not mere pastiche. This isn’t a vanity project for Kevin Costner, it’s a serious labour of love.
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Argument: modern housing is so rubbish I would rather live in a leaky old Victorian home because at least it has charm.
Response: oh you want to own the libs by living in squalor!?
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“Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try an’ find Jesus on your own”
On this day in 1971, John Prine released his first album!
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This is also interesting. Biden will be Queen Elizabeth II’s 14th President. 14th! All these big boys come and go, but one constant remains.
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"Dickens meant a lot to me, for example, because there was a rage in Dickens which was also in me." ~ James Baldwin, born
#OTD
in 1924.
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My current audiobook.
I read this book one summer when I was 17 upon the recommendation of my head of sixth form. It was one of my most enjoyable reading experiences, and will always conjure the fond remembrance of sunlit salad days. The audiobook is a delightful revisit.
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Kirk Douglas, who only died last year, was alive at the same time as Tsar Nicholas II.
Charlie Chaplin was in the world at the same time as 50 Cent.
Stan Lee shared a world with Wyatt Earp.
Neil Armstrong was 17 when Orville Wright died.
What bit of historical perspective gives you an existential crisis? Mine is that Harriet Tubman was born in Thomas Jefferson's lifetime and died in Reagan's.
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For MLK Day, the man himself in his office. I like this photo because he, like so many of us, is surrounded by higgledy-piggledy piles of books. Some of which, if greeted with a strong gale, could maim a small child.
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This is the key to understanding Dickens.
Some of the most profound (and, in many ways, darkest) thinkers of the past two centuries have cited Dickens as someone they are indebted to.
Reducing him to a “political” writer or a sentimentalist misses the point entirely.
Dickens is frequently cut down to size then criticised for being "small", but he's admired by many great writers like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, & Kafka.
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“Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead.”
Haunting words on a powerful and awful monument, perfectly delivered by Olivier.
"Down this road the soldiers came". OTD, 10 June 1944, in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, 190 Frenchmen, 247 women and 205 children were murdered in cold blood. They had committed no crime. The culprits were Adolf Diekmann's 1st Bn/4th Pz-Gr Regt/2nd SS Division.
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A fine companion on my flight back into Manchester last night.
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“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.” ~ Wilde
Activist poet Amanda Gorman at the DNC: "We gather at this hollowed place because we believe in the American dream. We face a race that tests if this country we cherish shall perish from the earth and if our earth shall perish from this country."
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I am now the proud owner of a fully functioning 1955 Hotpoint super-stor refrigerator. The kind of thing you could survive an atom bomb blast in.
Very excited to get this baby cleaned up and refurbished.
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"Aahh, a great first day in my new role as a contract drafter for the European Commission. Just going to take a swig of the ol' cuppa joe and check my emails..."
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Today I took the Oath of Allegiance and became an American citizen. 🇺🇸
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I'm sitting here in the dark. I can't see anything. Google has turned off the chip inside my head. I'm only allowed to access Twitter. No one in my family can see or talk to anyone. We are alone, lost in the vacuousness of modern man's misplaced technological optimism.
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Stopped by an old bookshop yesterday and was very happy with what I found there.
Two new additions to my Burgess library that I’ve never read before—collections of his non-fiction pieces—and a first edition of 1985 that I just could not resist.
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“I am afraid”, replied Elinor, “that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.”
The book I’ve been buried in this long weekend. Not read it in about 10 years.
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Phenomenal stuff.
James Shapiro’s book on this incredibly busy period of the Bard’s life is excellent.
Shakespeare in his prime.
How can any one mind achieve so much over a span of time so brief?
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This is almost as good as Richard Dawkins struggling to understand Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
those ridiculous "backgrounds" in scenes involving cars highlight the artificiality of Hitchcock in general & this frankly silly concoction in particular. he certainly is an overrated director--really a cynical puppet-master manipulating gullible audiences.
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Britain in 1990 was nothing like 1979. Britain in 2010 was nothing like 1997.
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Feel genuinely sad about dear old Britain. Didn’t think it was possible. The future under Labour will be abysmal. Stakeholder hubs, Citizen Assemblies, and finger-wagging. I have nothing but disdain for the Tories and their endless weak-willed incompetence. Zero seats.
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RL Stevenson is due for a favourable reappraisal. He’s something of a proto-Conrad.
Treasure Island, Jekyll/Hyde, and Kidnapped were absolutely elemental books to my childhood, but he has so much more. And a fascinating life. There’s a “RL Stevenson State Park” in California!
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“Sooner or later everything in Finnegans Wake made sense: it was just a question of waiting.”
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The window alcove and desk, as well as the surrounding stacks, at the library where Marx and Engels regularly met and studied in 1845 before they wrote The Communist Manifesto.
Chetham’s Library, Manchester. The oldest public library in the English speaking world.
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Spotted on my dog walk: a 1970 Chevy Monte Carlo (with the keys in the ignition).
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Burgess’s ability to create detailed and immersive fictional worlds rivals any deep fantasy author. This aside on Jakob Strehler, his fictional winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize for Literature (a year when it was not awarded), is exquisite.
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OTD in 1870, Dickens died. Shops were closed, flags were lowered. A newspaper wrote: “Wherever the English tongue is spoken—amid the endless pine forests of Canada, the luxuriant pastures of Australia, or the sun-scorched plains of India—will the news fall like a heavy blow.”
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Four books.
Four friends.
Many of my usual friends have been tagged already, and so I invite everyone and anyone to share their own selection of four books.
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