Welcome to Litsy!

Really good!

“It is always worth making a garden no matter how temporary your stay.” This speaks to my heart.

The following LitHub article was from last month, but it is a fantastic look at the iconic villains of literature:
https://lithub.com/the-best-villains-in-literature-bracket/

Book mail

This fabulous edition of John Milton's epic poem came in the mail a few days ago.

The illustrations by Gustave Dore are spot on.

When I purchased this huge tome, I didn't realize the actual size of the book. A pocket book it's not... 🙄😆

But I'm glad I got it, all the same.

I probably won't start this baby for a few weeks until I finish up some of the multitude of books I've started.

#bookmail #poetry #epicpoems

Nonbinary British writer Olivia Laing‘s experience of renovating a garden in Suffolk is entwined with an exploration of the role of gardens in history & in particular their connection with sociopolitical issues. The role of gardens in the lives of queer folk during a time when it wasn‘t good to be gay, the therapeutic effect of gardens to this day, the lush botanical language: there‘s so much that I love about this book! #LGBTQ

Sameness was anathema to William Morris. What he liked was individuality amidst common purpose, each person as distinctive as flowers in a meadow.

The study of botany was an exercise in looking. It made the ordinary world more intricate and finely detailed, as if I had acquired a magnifying glass that trebled the eye‘s capacity.

There‘s no point looking for Eden on a map. It‘s a dream that is carried in the heart: a fertile garden, time and space enough for all of us.

Morris thought everyone‘s environment could be & should be more beautiful. He believed it was people‘s right to live in beautiful, unspoilt, unpolluted places & he thought, like Ruskin, that beauty was not a luxury & that luxurious & unnecessary things were actually unbeautiful, since beauty was so closely aligned to necessity & nature.

What makes a garden such an important constituent of a utopia? It is neither a farm nor a wilderness, though it can push up hard against either of these extremes. This means it betokens more than just utility, encompassing beauty, pleasure & delight, while remaining emphatically a site of labour as well as leisure, a place to please puritans & sybarites alike.