Do you know what I hate the most about book content? Book content. Not the here's-an-awesome-book-I-read-that-you-should-know about (or otherwise), or reviews, or discussions, or anything in that vein. It's the book/reading engagement farms that have been driving me up the wall.
The 2026 Australian Census is completely unrepresentative of my household, because tell me what my 8 month old should select as the main language he speaks when all he says are "mamamama", "bababababa", "nananana" and "SCREECH"?
It’s been widely reported that when he was chair of the Booker Prize judges in 1977, Philip Larkin threatened to throw himself out of the window if Paul Scott’s Staying On didn’t win. I’ve repeated it myself, and this week I’ve seen two bookish journo pals cite it. But I no longer think it’s true. 🧵
Combination of post-baby hormones and the sheer audacity has me foaming at the mouth when boomers (who have offered zero hours of childcare, and had all the help when they were raising kids but still like to claim they had it hard) tell me it's time to think of baby #2.
This reminded me of Marian Engel's The Bear @ds228.bsky.social (from Natalie Zemon Davis's Women on the Margins, Three Seventeenth Century Lives).
Sleep when baby sleeps. Absolutely always, always, put the baby to sleep in the cot. Lol. Guess who bought an expensive ass aesthetic cot and non-toxic mattress that only got used a few times before baby decided he would rather take over half the bed AND drink milk half the night?
Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · last wk.Hey parents of bsky: What are some theories of parenting you were very confident in right up until you had your own kids?
The enshittification of men. Jk. They were always kinda shitty to begin with.
When your baby's clothes have real pockets but yours don't.
Now Watching. It is my contention that most modern male leads have the charm of a goldfish.
One day kids toy manufacturers will re-discover that kids like colour. But it is not this day. This day it's pastel greige for parents who want to keep their homes as dead as their brains 🤮
I just saw a meme that said “get in losers, we’re reclaiming the emdash”. People. PEOPLE. Where are your STANDARDS? It CLEARLY should be “get in, losers — we’re reclaiming the em dash.”
Now reading. Nine months of mat leave has turned my brain to mush. Needed something to wake the grey matter.
Ceylon got colonised so the Brits can drink mud-coloured tea made from dust off tea factory floors.
Jacob Gifford Head@giffordhead.co.uk · 2w agoOne infuriating thing about British society is that people are obsessed with drinking tea & develop all these elaborate rituals for making it; yet they drink such rubbish. It's a tea bag. The grade of tea it contains it literally described as "dust"! Buy some high quality loose-leaf tea!
Really enjoyed reading this. Mosman is a weird place. Picked up some lights from there a while ago, and I felt like an intruder creeping through the hills in my car, buying secondhand George Nelson lights like a thief who pays for her pillage.
Elias Greig@eliasgreig.bsky.social · last yr.Writing thread/very modest archive: 1/6, 'The Whale Ghosts', an essay on whales, wealth, and their ghosts in Australia's richest suburb, "founded" by whale magnate and former slaver Archibald Mosman.
Stop making me sympathise with old man shaking fist at the sky.
Baby just unlocked a new milestone: vomiting squarely into my buttoned shirt just as the car was parking. As a result of his remarkable new ability, it pooled between my breasts and I was able to wet wipes the vom off with relative ease and go about my business.
“When I’m writing, I feel again what is apparently the only paradoxical certainty: that what gets in the way of writing is having to use words.” — Clarice Lispector, Too Much of Life
Mate, just move out and enjoy your books. We don't need an insufferable NYT article (a soft sell for his magazine) using religion/culture to justify owning lots of books. Some of us don't need elaborate excuses or the aura of a plonking wunderkind to own and enjoy books. We just do.
NancyKay Shapiro 📖🎸🎶🐶🗽🧶@nancykay-alt-acct.bsky.social · 4w agoWe think WE'VE got problems, huh @backlisted.bsky.social, @johnmitchinson.bsky.social, @iammilliam.bsky.social #booksky #books #reading
Jurassic Park in the cinema. I was so weensy, my dad would lift me onto the arm rest of the chair whenever there was some dinosaur action. I still remember being thrilled about the jello scene.
James Dalrymple@jamesewand.bsky.social · 4w agoIt's the kind of question that gets asked on movie podcasts but I thought it'd be fun to ask here: Film fans: what is your first meaningful moviegoing memory? Me: seeing The Dark Crystal (1982) aged four, which left me sad, scared, and confused in ways I'm not sure I've ever recovered from
Had a wee misadventure trying to acquire this book. Added a copy to the cart (cheaper, but yucky cover) with a bunch of other books, and I ended up with a book 1/5th actual size, with terrible typesetting and copy editing. Publisher an unheard of company called IMPORTANT BOOKS...
Two papers pin the introduction of smallpox on British colonists and suggest that Australia held far more people than previously believed. Learn more: https://scim.ag/3R2lLmf
Another contact nap read. And...I expected more. It felt like extracts from a creative writing project more than anything else. Poetic in places, but also would probably work better as the play Ravn wrote, on which it is based, than the novel-like thing it is.
I fucking love em dashes—I bathe my words in them; Imperial is drowning in them—so thanks a lot, AI, for ruining yet another thing I love. P.S. I, too, will fight you.
Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · last mo.My upcoming book is absolutely packed to the brim with em dashes—more em dashes than any well-adjusted human being could possibly need or want—and if any of you tries to claim they are the result of some soulless LLM rather than my own unhinged compulsion I will fight you.
All I need is a pat of Liam butter on a slice of Alice bread, topped with some Lola jam and some Bruce peanut butter, because everything we want now has to be given a Proper Name (and a 'white' one, no less) or else it will not be marketable, or indeed, worth existing. Waiting for a Gazala toilet.
