So, it wasn't exactly a white-out, but the snow was evocative of the season while it lasted ❄😊

The gales of Storm Arwen have passed over our bit of North West England, bringing a fall of snow. Kid-me was delighted to get out for a walk while it was coming down. Adult-me is delighted that it is already melting and won't affect my work commute tomorrow. Cat-me is cosying up with The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, a spicy sweet potato salad, and a hot Vimto. Did a glug of red wine fall into my glass? Only Holmes could say 🔎🍷

"Overtures to Death", as might be suggested by the title, is not a collection of joyful poems. Even those poems using beautiful nature imagery do so to reflect upon mortality. There is much of war, obliquely and directly, in particular the war against fascism in Spain, and of social injustice. Particularly powerful is the exposure of judicial and cultural hypocrisy in "Sex-Crime", which is still too relevant. Looking up references was educational.

"Black as vermin, crawling in echelon
Beneath the cloud-floor, the bombers come:
The heavy angels, carrying harm in
Their wombs that ache to be rid of death.

This is the seed that grows for ruin,
The iron embryo conceived in fear.
Soon or late its need must be answered
In fear delivered and screeching fire.

Choose between your child and this fatal embryo."

- Bombers

"Infirm and grey
This leaden-hearted day
Drags its lank hours, wishing itself away.

Grey as the skin
Of long-imprisoned men
The sky, and holds a poisoned thought within.

Whether to die,
Or live beneath fear's eye -
Heavily hangs the sentence of this sky."

- February 1936

This recently-acquired 1946 edition still has some uncut pages! It's quite enjoyable to slice them, knowing that after all those years, I'll be the first person to actually read the freed leaves 😊🗡📖

"Maple and sumach down this autumn ride -
Look, in what scarlet character they speak!
For this their russet and rejoicing week
Trees spend a year of sunsets on their pride."

- Maple and Sumach
#autumn #trees #poetry

A couple of poetry books by authors I probably should have read already, but haven't. The Heany is a nice clean second-hand edition, the Day-Lewis a little more careworn but, as a 1946 edition, it's in fairly fine fettle for its age. Each priced at £1.50, so it would have been rude not to 😏📚

I love this drawing by Alan Lee of the Princess Libane, cursed to sit beneath the sea next to the well she negligently allowed to overflow and drown the land. I can almost see the kelp and the Princess's hair billowing in the current.
The story is summarised in a few sentences, and beyond it being included in the Celtic section of tales, I've never been able to identify the source, the bibliography being sparse and the internet bare of results.

Garner's return to Alderley Edge is a complex work, allusive more than explicit, opening multiple possibilities & interpretations, while suggesting that any & all of them could be valid. It's a cerebral book, which certainly got me thinking, but more so is it emotional: heartbreakingly sad, with a tinge of hope.
Colin's struggle with his trauma shifts the perception of the earlier books, adding depth to those already atypical children's stories.

Re-reading Weirdstone... & Moon of Gomrath was preparation for a 1st reading of Boneland, last book of the Alderley trilogy. Written & set 50 years after the first books, this isn't a children's tale, rather an account of the psychological impact of childhood trauma (I think: I'm on page 30). So far, we have the parallel stories of Colin, now an astrophysicist at Jodrell Bank, & a Neolithic skywatcher, which I'm assuming will cross at some point.

A slightly darker sequel to "Weirdstone", focusing on a different aspect of British folklore: The Wild Hunt. Susan dominates much of the action, as her brother, Colin, is captured & held hostage by evil forces, Susan's increasingly desperate attempts to rescue him being a clearer inversion of traditional roles than in the previous book.
I also like how Garner adds details, such as making Susan the young aspect of the Celtic triple moon goddess.

This is a definite comfort read for me, redolent of childhood, magic, night fears & heroism against all odds.
Written in 1960, twins Colin & Susan are depicted as brave, resilient & scared as each other, Susan often taking the lead at a time when "boys & girls" were more often given stereotypical gender roles.
Garner's novel is often criticised as a Tolkien pastiche on a simpler level, but I don't think that's fair. They were drawing from the ??

Although there are no product placements in the book, I'm 100% convinced that the lemonade Colin and Susan are drinking while lost in the Svart tunnels under Alderley Edge can only be R. White's Lemonade!🍋

There are good stories in here, but too many have aged poorly, misogynistic attitudes being particularly rife.
Of the good are those by W. W. Jacobs, Jack London, Jack Cope, Arthur Gordon, A. Neil Lyons and (of course) Edgar Allan Poe. At 43% of the content, I guess that's a reasonable amount.
It is with an unsteady hand that I place this book on the Charity Shop Pile 😱 It's a species of personal growth for me to not keep *every* book I've read!

"Keeping the Wolf Out" by Philip Palmer (not on Litsy) is an audio-drama set in '60s Hungary, centred on idealistic police detective, Bertalan Lázár, and his devoted, and underestimated, wife, Franciska. As Berti fights to maintain his moral centre in a corrupt police state, Franciska begins to rise up the hierarchy of "The Ministry", from lowly archivist to ruthless and feared spymaster.
There's a good balance between crime & espionage plot ??

Some funny looks from the neighbours as I stood in the street taking a photo of a book and a tree! This tree is one of the loveliest in the neighbourhood, though, when it's catching the late autumnal sun 🍂☀️ The grey clouds coming in from the Atlantic hold a promise of livid skies later.
And, the book looks like it should be good, gruesome fun 🗡💀🙃

Re-reading an old favourite. That Illustrator, Alan Lee, gets top cover billing is a sure guide that the focus of the book is visual, and it is lovely at that. The book is beautifully made, printed on high-quality paper which is as crisp and glossy as the day I bought it on 10th October 1984, which I know as I was in a bookplate phase at the time. I'm not keen on defacing my books anymore, which is what bookplates feel like for me now.

"The bright mirror I braved; the devil in it
Loved me like my soul, my soul:
Now that I seek myself in a serpent
My smile is fatal."

- Cleopatra to the Asp

Painting, "Cleopatra", 1900, by Marcel Lenoir

I had a whole big thing in my head to write about this book, but it was too much. Suffice to say, it's a fantastically layered prose poem which resonates with many historical and contemporary themes, nuclear war, geopolitics and environmental apocalypse being the most obvious. I'm putting it next to Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" on my top podium for Best Books of the Year (So Far).

A green level of lily leaves
Roofs the pond's chamber and paves

The flies' furious arena: study
These, the two minds of this lady.

First observe the air's dragonfly
That eats meat, that bullets by

Or stands in space to take aim;
Others as dangerous comb the hum

Under the trees. There are battle-shouts
And death-cries everywhere hearabouts

But inaudible, so the eyes praise
To see the colours of these flies
👇🏼

"Our congregation numbers the gulls"

These gulls were congregating because, being proper Northern gulls, they were after a bit of me pasty! ?

A rather grey Wednesday, though thankfully absent of woe. I ran some ironing to my parents and picked up another load of washing, as their washing machine has broken. Ordinary and simple errands, though I'm grateful that they're still here for me to do them.
During the round, I took time for a bookshop visit, and the cover for Ness seems to fit the colour and feel of the day. I'm personally less grey-feeling than this post might suggest 💛

"His heart beat awfully against his side;
And to his heart he inwardly did pray
For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide
Stifled his voice, and puls'd resolve away-
Fever'd his high conceit of such a bride,
Yet brought him to meekness of a child:
Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!"

I love this detail from Millais' painting of a scene from Keats' "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil". Lorenzo is so intense, and Isabella is willing him to ??

I cannot begin to express the feeling of unbounded joy that leaped within my chest when I discovered this cheaply produced, but much loved, little volume of Keats' poetry which I thought I'd lost and have just discovered in a forgotten pocket of a rucksack. It's seen me through some times, good and bad, and I'm surprised (not-surprised) at my intensity of feeling! ❤📖❤

Freud's analysis of Hoffman's "The Sandman" focuses on the mc's "castration complex" as a means of resolving the 'good' and 'bad' father figures in his psyche. Freud consistently misapprehended the accounts of childhood abuse his clients told him of, because how could the respectable burghers of Vienna who brought to him their wives, daughters and sons, be the same monsters who plagued their dreams, or the same men who paid his fees? ??

The Sandman is a nightmarish figure from the childhood memories of MC, Nathanael, & to what degree the characters Coppelius & Coppola are actually daemonic creatures or projections of Nathanael's fears, Hoffmann leaves the reader to decide. The most horrifying element for me was Nathanael's extreme narcissism, in which he was very much a pitiable victim as well as, ultimately, an abuser. There's lots of psychology to unpack, which Freud did, badly

Not *that* Sandman, but rather E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 gothic novella, being one of the stories from which Offenbach took inspiration for his opera, "The Tales of Hoffmann". It also provided grist for Sigmund Freud's mill, and this edition includes an extract from his essay, "The Uncanny", in which he examines the story from a psychoanalytic perspective. Sounds enticing! ?

Simbi is a vain young woman who, from boredom with her pampered life, decides to experience poverty and punishment. There is a dark humour in just how quickly her desire is fulfilled, and her lamentations provoke laughter rather than mercy from her persecutors. However, Simbi proves herself to be a strong, resilient and resourceful woman, who overcomes the trials of the Path of Death and the Dark Jungle, with its noxious Satyr. 👇🏼

There's a lot more going on in "Benighted" than I caught the first time I read it. This time, beneath the gothic elements I was previously distracted by, and which still work marvellously, is an allegory on English post-war society, the rottenness of the class system and the aristocracy, coupled to a demonstration of the levelling and humanising effect of meeting others openly and honestly.
I upped my rating to 5 well-deserved stars.

Like Siddhartha, Simbi has led a life of comfort and ease, her happiness being marred when her friends are kidnapped. Simbi decides that she should learn about poverty and punishment, despite her mother's warning that she will bitterly regret it. Unlike the Buddha, Simbi does, indeed, immediately regret her decision, and I've a feeling that their stories will have very different outcomes.
I love the covers of the Faber editions of Tutuola's books❤

"Gin is saddening," Penderel admitted, "but it's not so saddening as no gin." ?

'Tis a dark and stormy night at Bookwomble Towers, so just the right atmosphere to settle down with a whisky and re-read Priestley's classic old, dark house chiller 💀

More of a creature-feature than the mind-bending horror of Ito's "Uzumaki". At the beginning it leans more towards "Jaws", moving into a John Carpenter's "The Thing" crossed with "Tetsuo, the Iron Man" vibe. And, I guess if there are that many influences blended together, it ultimately becomes an Ito thing. Body horror, weirdness and engaging artwork, I'd have preferred the plot to have held together a little more cohesively. 3.5 ⭐

This is a strong contender for the best book I've read this year. Beginning as advice on the poetic impulse and the creative process from Rilke to a literary admirer, they become deeply heartfelt explorations of the human condition. Every page has something quotable, and despite its brevity (slow-reader me read it in an hour) it packs in so much. Undoubtedly a book to be re-read and reflected upon. All the stars ⭐

[With added cat silhouette 🐱]

I don't always have to have *just* the right bookmark for what I'm reading, but I love the cover design of this edition of Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet", and knew I had an appropriate bookmark to go with it.
Cover designer, Daniel Pelavin, has, I think, been inspired by the Vienna Secession art movement of Rilke's native Austria. I got the bookmark, with a design by artist Koloman Moser, on a visit to Vienna a few years ago. ?????

"You see, my people, my motto this night is that this world is not equal. One who has a head has no money to buy hat and one who has money to buy hat has no head on which to put it."

Can't argue with that ??

"Between thought and expression lies a lifetime"

?❤?

This is my third book by Amos Tutuola, and I've ordered some others, thinking I might have a little binge-read. I love his idiosyncratic language, which seems to have been critically appreciated and deprecated in equal measure.
This book is a mini 1001 Nights, the narrator being an old village-chief who, over 10 nights, entertains his people with stories of his youthful adventures in the land of the Jungle Witch Feather Woman. 👇🏼

A lovely edition of Gray's Elegy, with beautiful engravings by Agnes Miller Parker, one illustration for each of Gray's stanzas. The introduction by Carol Rumens is interesting and useful, as an introduction should be. 4.5⭐

Well, here I am 24 hours later, and I've devoted a full day to this book and Bowie's music, coming out the other side with zero regrets. I can't objectively rate it as it was more of a personal life experience than sitting with a book: David's been such an integral part of my life that reading this was a cross between nostalgic reminiscence and therapeutic catharsis. I can only rate it 5✴, but that's really not a very reliable indicator for you.

I try to know little about John Lennon's murderer, so found it chilling to learn his Plan B if he got free from the one assassination was to murder David. David was on Broadway in The Elephant Man, & the day after the murder there were three empty seats in the auditorium: those for John & Yoko, and that for the arrested murderer.
It was touching to read Yoko and Sean Lennon's accounts of the support David gave them in the aftermath of the tragedy.

I bought this intending to keep it for Christmas - Oops! 😏
The author has pulled together 300 anecdotes about Bowie's meetings with celebrities from before he was one himself through his own stellar rise to fame. I couldn't resist the temptation to read it now!
And, that cover photo! 🤩😍
#booksandbowie

It's taking me some time to read this slim book as I keep stopping to ponder 🤔 The promotion of the work ethic as morally good, and the reciprocal vilification as social parasites of those unable to work, is used by capital to keep the labour force producing, and the commodification and monetisation of leisure keeps it consuming the products labour itself has made.

"This edition's Big Story inspects how workers the world over are being squeezed. There is no shortage of ideas that envisage a future where we reorganize society in such a way that work becomes at most a part-time adjunct in a world of shared plenty. We look at some of those. But in the short-term, the changes are age-old - struggles for greater autonomy, dignity and fairness".

This is one of Mrs Bookwomble's favourite childhood books, although I've never read it myself. When I saw this cover peeping out from the pile on the charity book table, I couldn't resist it, so now I may just have to read it in order to justify my purchase 😏📖

As a werewolf tale, I enjoyed rereading Howard's weird-pulp take on this horror staple, in which there is mystery, intrigue, adventure and supernatural shenanigans in a gothic castle.
I approach pulp stories of the '20s/'30s in the knowledge they will contain attitudes I wouldn't accept in a modern story. I'd read this before and, knowing it's set in an African slaver settlement, prepared myself to read around "problems", but I was still ??

"In the Forest of Villefère" is the first of two short stories Howard wrote about werewolf encounters featuring the enigmatic de Montour of Normandy. Atmospheric as this story is, set in a moon-haunted forest in which a traveller by night is unwise to tarry, it is little more than a prelude to the second, longer, story, "Wolfshead".
A de Montour series would've been good, but Howard had other things to write and, sadly, too little time ?

This is Sophia from The Summer Book, grown to adulthood and into possession of her own island cabin. That it's a memoir of Tove and Tooti's life on the small rock skerry of Klovharun is both incidental and central.

As with much of Tove's adult writing, this is a quiet book, telling of little moments which seem inconsequential and mundane, and which fit together into an intimate picture of life and lives shared.
👇🏼

"Now the good old days are done
Now it'll all be over
So now the gents are going home
Leaving the ladies in clover
So we say farewell as a strong wind dies
With a lump in our throats and tears in our eyes."

- Brunström's Farewell Verse