Well, I couldn't not get the latest edition of Mojo when it has the Starman on the cover and a 15-track CD of Glam Nuggets! 🌟⚡🌟

"[Bobby] Graham had started out as Joe Meek's in-house drummer before joining Joe Brown & The Bruvvers. He was still with The Bruvvers when Brian Epstein approached him during the autumn of 1962 with an offer to replace Pete Best in The Beatles. Graham declined the invitation...because he couldn't see the point in quitting an established act for one he'd never heard of." - Pocket Guide To Glam Rock
I know hindsight is 20/20, but still ???‍♂️

#ReadingAfrica2022 #Kenya 🇰🇪
I'd read this described as magical realism, but I don't think it's that, rather it describes the effect of trauma and the psychological strategies humans use to survive it, using as its patterns the Kenyan folkloric and cultural motifs natural to its protagonist.
I enjoyed the way the story flowed and gradually opened out, integrating the reader into the experience of the MC's disintegration and reintegration. 👇🏼

I read Nimphidia for the first time last month, & felt moved to re-read, enjoying it just as much the 2nd time around. Despite Tolkien's criticisms, his poem "Errantry" has something of a similar flavour.
Briggs's entry on Nimphidia is collected under the topic Diminutive Fairies, which gives a potted history of the development of the Small People in Elizabethan times. I also found a blog which gives a more detailed & informative review of Drayton

"Up! up! my Friend and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

- The Tables Turned: An Evening Scene on the Same Subject

"Where are your books? - that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind."

- Expostulation and Reply

"December staggered in like a weary mud-encrusted vagabond who had been on her way to someplace else, but whose legs had buckled and now she was here."
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
I know it's Saturday, but I'm always late...??‍♂️?

"He found the little he had stored to meet
The hour of accident, or crippling age,
Was all consumed... 'twas now
A time of trouble: shoals of artisans
Were from their daily labour turned away
To hang for bread on parish charity."
- The Ruined Cottage, 1797

Picture: Tory Mayor and Council Leader of Dartford having jolly larks opening a food bank, May 2022.

There's no shame in needing to use a food bank, it's shameful that people still need to.

Switching up the mood from glum to glam!⚡I think I'm going to breeze through this 😁

"Forgive her.
Sometimes she forgets
she is painfully the same
as stagnant water,
hollow ditches,
foolishly imagines
she has a right to exist.
...
Forgive
this woman who's crumbling inside,
but whose eyelids tingle still with dreams of light,
whose useless hair still quivers hopelessly,
infiltrated by love's breath."

- Forgive Her

I loved this book, but it is a bleak view of a life lived under the oppression of family, marriage and society. Farrokhzad doesn't flinch from her despair, and it feels sad to see her image reflected in the distorting mirror of her depression.
There is beautiful imagery in Wolpé's translation of Farrokhzad's poems, and useful contextual information about Forugh's life and contemporary Iranian history and society. 👇🏼

"Perhaps life is a choked moment where my gaze
annihilates itself inside the pupil of your eyes"
- Reborn

Scott Walker's four eponymous albums seemed the perfect soundtrack to Farrokhzad's poems: both contain intensely emotional stories of fractured love, intense longing & alienation, shifting into social and political commentary. Then, the magical synchronicity of reading these words by the poet whilst listening to this album by the musician ?

“What matters, is to cultivate and nourish one's own positive characteristics until one reaches a level worthy of being a human.”

"Her mama cut up the mousse torte. Ayosa bit into her piece, and its filling of cream cheese and fudge brownie melted on her tongue.
Fuck-toad! she whispered."

New expletive locked and loaded! ?

The Fourteenth Doctor! 🤩
#DoctorWho #14thDoctor

Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa announced as new Doctor Who

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61371123

Some unevenness in quality as expected in a set of short stories, but nothing awful in it. My main quibble would be the number of cursed Egyptian scarab stories which the collection opened with.
Of the stories new to me, The Captivity of the Professor was best, with Beyond the Star Curtain a close second. The latter was a far-future story which reminded me of the classic Hothouse by Aldiss 💚
I feel in the mood for a Creature Feature now! 🕷🐜🎥

"All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others."

#ThinkPositiveBePositive
@fredamans

Whoop, whoop! I won a free book from the Library Thing Early Reviewers program 😁👨🏼‍🎤🎸
Glam Rock is one of my favourite genres, and definitely the sound of my childhood. Obviously Bowie is still hugely important for me, even if he rapidly transcended Glam. Marc Bolan is another hero, and both figure prominently in this rock history.
I've scanned a few pages, and the proof reading seems like it could have been better, but I'm still excited 👇🏼

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away, Toshiro Mifune *was* a Jedi Knight 😌💭
#MayThe4thBeWithYou

The seventh story in the collection, "The Captivity of the Professor" by A. Lincoln Green (a pseudonym which, apparently, has not been penetrated) is the best story so far, notwithstanding that Poe & Wells have gone before.
The Professor, not heeding the warnings of his Amazon forest guides, enters a forbidden area of the jungle, where he is made the slave of a community of intelligent ants. It's a wonderful blend of science fiction & fairy tale.

#ReadingAfrica2022 #Kenya ??
"Okwiri Oduor's strikingly original debut novel sings with Kenyan folklore and myth as it traces the fragile, intoxicating bond between a mother and daughter like no other." - From the blurb.
A surreal novel of magical realism which is compared to Amos Tutuola - sounds good! ?
@BarbaraBB @Librarybelle

"Big Oil has had decades to do the right thing - it can't, and it won't." - New Internationalist # 537, "Beyond Big Oil"

"Scary Monsters and Super-Creeps
Keep me running,
Running scared" - David Bowie

When reading and listening align ??
#BooksandBowie

Bit of a change of pace💀🦋💀
As with most of these collections of out of copyright stories, I've read a fair few already, but when they're by authors like Poe and Wells, revisiting is a pleasure. And, there's also a fair few I haven't read, so hopefully some new favourites to find 🤞🏻📖

“I'll make my declaration:
in my unsullied hands
there's no lust to clench my fists or strike out
I'm not going to get roaring drunk
I don't think it's glorious to kill people
I wasn't raised at the table
of male supremacy"

- Birthplace, Tahereh Saffarzadeh

I wish I were like the fall..I wish I were like the fall
I wish I were like the fall, silent, with no desires at all
My wishes' leaves would one by one turn sallow-gold
My eyes' sun would grow cold
The heaven of my breast would fill with pain
& suddenly a storm of grief would seize my heart
Like rain my tears would start
& stain my dress
Oh..how lovely then, if I were like the fall
Feral & bitter with colours seeping into one another, so beautiful

My last push on "The Mirror of My Heart" (which makes it sound like a chore, which it isn't) fueled by ends of stinky cheese I need to eat before they develop a hive mind! ???

"Some days are like a placid horse; some rear
And buck and plunge, this way and that they veer;
As Fate has always been, so it will be -
Time is our friend, and then our enemy,
It's day, then night, its revolutions bring
December's snows to us, and then the spring."

- Parvin Etesami

"The roses have all gone; "Goodbye," we say, we must;
And I shall leave the busy world one day; I must.
My little room, my books, my love, my sips of wine,
All these are dear to me, they'll pass away, they must."
- Jahan Malek Khatun

"Britain was the last developed country where beating schoolchildren was respectable. This was outlawed last year [1988] - by one vote in Parliament. Parents are now almost the last people left who can hit children without fear of penalty, as long as it's moderate and fitting punishment...the language of authority still derives from violence, mistakenly, tragically."

"This government has represented benefits as somehow shameful. The point about *universal* benefits is that they affirm the value of such social tasks as having children, rearing them, or caring for relatives; they make benefits themselves an expression of collective approval for the endeavour, not begrudged hand-outs, stigmatising the recipients as beggars and failures."

I loved the dry humour of Clarke's tales, as sharp on the one side as her dark, grotesque menace is on the other. It was pleasing to see her reference to Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Kindoms of Elfin", as that book is a definite predecessor of Clarke's conception of fairy.
One story which seemed very familiar as I was reading it was revealed as a retelling of the folktale "Tom Tit Tot", which sent me to Katherine Briggs' wonderful ??

"Magic comes from the dark and dreaming heart."

This has definitely been too long on my tbr. I've picked it up now partly from the box-ticking exercise to be reading more women authors, partly because I loved reading Drayton's Elizabethan poem, Nimphidia, earlier this month and want to return to Faerie, but mainly being reminded what a wonderful writer Susanna Clarke is. My dark and dreaming heart is ready to be immersed in magic ???‍♀️?

I fully expected to love this book, but it actually left me rather cold (sorry 😔). The main character is a narcissistic abuser who repeatedly terrorises the woman who is the target of his obsession, vindictively punishing her when she has the temerity to object.
Yes, it is surreal and has a kaleidoscopically shifting viewpoint in which the characters may actually be aspects of the same fractured personality, but I found it hard to get past the...

"No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure."

- Prometheus Unbound

I wonder whether it will be relevant to bear in mind Mary Shelley's subtitle to Frankenstein: "The Modern Prometheus", while reading PBS's verse drama?

Painting: Gustave Moreau

From the real-life dystopia of Nazi Europe to the imagined dystopia of glacial climate change. Contrasting the icy conditions of the book with a sunny afternoon tea 🌞

"The road that was in your head
Has already found you walking:
When you looked up ahead,
It was your footsteps waiting."

- The Imaginary Road

A diverse collection of poems, from the poet's grandfather in the trenches of WWI to the Scottish lochs and forests, from urban Glasgow and Manchester to Haworth and Patrick Brontë, and from the sublime to Nigel Farage (doubtful he will include "Planet Farage" amongst his press clippings) and, perhaps not unconnected, to the experience of refugees in Britain. 3.5 ⭐

The comedy, for me, was certainly very minor, to the extent that I assume the title is meant ironically, because while there were certainly the makings of a very dark farce, Keilson didn't take his story that way (unless I just don't get German humour 🤷🏻‍♂️). None of which is intended as criticism, as the story was very affecting & emotional, detailing the effects of living in a real-life dystopia, that of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

"People veil a body in fabric and clothing so that the blaze of its nakedness does not blind too deeply the eyes that see it, people veil life itself with precious garments, behind which, as under ashes, the double-tongued fire of creation smoulders."

It took me a couple of reads of John Toland's chapter, Christianity Not Mysterious, to understand his point, which I gather is that where the Bible does not accord with evident common sense, it should be taken figuratively not literally, as the latter leads to the building of layers of inconsistency and circular arguments of no useful meaning. I imagine he'd despair of modern-day fundamentalist creationism, 400 years following the Enlightenment.

Tolkien hated it, but I loved it! I'd imagine it a source of inspiration for painter Richard Dadd's "The Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke".
It's not high poetry, but it's evocative & suited to its theme and folkloric roots. The story is simple: the fairy knight, Pigwiggan, & Queene Mab agree on a tryste, King Oberon discovers he is to be cuckolded & completely loses his shit. Puck is dispatched to punish the Queene, while Oberon sets out to kill...

This issue's cover of New Internationalist Magazine #537 is striking: "Silhouetted against a gas flare, a woman sets tapioca out to dry, in Warri, Delta State, Nigeria. Warri is a port city and an oil hub."
The Big Story is How We Stop Big Oil.
Other features include The Perils of Child Sponsorship; Is Ethical Tax Avoidance Possible? (I'm guessing, no); Dispatch from Kyiv, and; Turkey's LGBTQI+ community.
Lots of articles for #ReadingAfrica2022

Yesterday's full #bookhaul 📚
The tagged book sounds amazing - farcical & heartbreaking. A Dutch couple shelter a Jewish man during the Nazi occupation, but when he dies they have the potentially fatal problem of disposing of his body.
The Penguin is The Mirror of My Heart, a 1000 years of Persian women's poetry 💚
Bantam is a book of poetry steeped in the author's Scottish roots 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
I've already posted about Tolkien & Drayton🐉🧚🏻‍♀️

What a beauteous artefact 😍 Ok, so I've already read them all, and I've already got two of the books in the same edition, but hear me out - it was heavily reduced in price as two of the books have printer's ink on the top edge, but those are the two I already have, so I can swap them out! 😃 Bargain! 📚

"This Pallace standeth in the Ayre,
By Nigromancie placéd there...
The Walls of Spiders legs are made,
Well mortizéd and finely layd,
He was a master of his Trade,
It curiously that builded:
The Windowes of the eyes of Cats,
And for the Roofe, instead of Slats,
Is cover'd with the skinns of Batts,
With Mooneshine that are guilded."
??‍♀️???‍♂️

Unexpected (who am I kidding? 😏) #bookhaul I went for one book I'd ordered and came home with eight! 😒📚📚
This one is the prize, I think. A 1921 limited edition of 510 copies, of which mine, Precious, is number 149 😊
Originally published in 1627, it's a poem of 88 8-line stanzas, set in the Fayrie Court of Queen Mab and King Oberon, involving (based on my initial scan) the romance between the faerie knight, Pigwiggen and the fay, Nimphidia 💚

• The French are the most expert in social manners.
• Society depends on women.
• A somewhat austere style of manners, political quarrels, and wars of religion combined to make you [the English] awkward and unpolished in behaviour.
• Poets have thus no idea, in all other countries, and even in England, how love was conducted among truly civilised people.
- Voltaire, "On Politeness in Drama", 1736

"Grief returns with the revolving year."
- Adonais

I'm finding Shelley's elegy for Keats, "Adonais", slow going only because it is so wonderful and I keep having to re-read passages to let his words and meaning sink in.
My work with bereaved people has had added poignancy the past few years as I'm of an age when I'm losing my own loved ones, and I need to process my grief so that I can support theirs. Poetry helps, and this line feels very real.

"O that I might sail into this night,
Draw on my course in the teeth of the summer gale,
Divide the silver furrows of the sea,
Following the moonwake on the waves,
And at the cold hour of the windfall meet with the dawn.

O to be there now: the noise of the summer sea
About me, as summer scents from the land blown,
Wild thyme from the cliffs, honeysuckle & mown
Sweet hay, the rhythm of the tide to bear me
Onward, myself the wind, myself the sail"

In the inmost recesses of consciousness,
The wound opening inwards,
The spirit too proud to admit an injury,
Incessantly grazed and torn again
By the insensitive, the enemy that hates
Difference, quality that escapes submission
To common complacency, impure hypocrisy-
That would annihilate what is uncommon,
Challenging their meanness, their lack of standards
With something electric and alive, a vibrancy
That offers not a new Heaven and a new Earth