Great writer, great translator, wise reviewer…

Boris Dralyuk@bdralyuk.bsky.social · yesterday

What a perceptive and moving conclusion to @nadyawilliams81.bsky.social’s new review of Andrey Kurkov’s Kyiv Mysteries in @plough.bosky.social… Thank you! @quercusbooks.bsky.social @harpercollins.bsky.social www.plough.com/articles/and...

Each time I read this, it gets more complex…

Comics Outta Context 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️@comiccontext.bsky.social · yesterday

Happy 69th birthday to saxophone legend Dean Fraser. Over the last 50 years Dean has played with everyone from Dennis Brown to Tarrus Riley. Here's an early 7" of him playing a reggae version of Dave Brubeck's Take Five... youtu.be/ZBdycOUxk-Q?... #reggae #reggaesky #vinyl #music #musicsky

I do think that tolerance for swearing is quite individual? Because I like to read books aloud to my children I am very aware of the swear levels of books One thing I find hard to read is pseudo swears—I am with Dorothy Parker 3/3

New life goals having visited the home of Vita Sackville West. She had a writing tower (I will also need a lift and air-conditioning) and she and her husband had a library each and combined ‘extra’ one. Their collection included Sinclair Lewis - if more people had read this we wouldn’t be here.

2/ Larger gatherings of sandwich terns than I've seen here before, seemingly peaceful together with gulls.

"My children’s dimensions change too. They are all around, but I can’t see their faces. Just as they begin to come into focus, I must again climb out the window, down the rope ladder into the house next door." Stunning @kathyfish.bsky.social

The Bulb Region@bulbregion.bsky.social · last mo.

“We pass through each other in the rooms and on the staircases. […] I discover a room filled with beds and ornate furniture, scattered and illogical.” The amazing Kathy Fish (@kathyfish.bsky.social) returns to The Bulb Region with a kaleidoscopic, mazelike experience. 🔗 ↓

It was a pleasure to read some of my Margery Kempe poems yday! Margery Kempe in Tesco went down especially well 😁 (with thanks to Victoria Craggs for the fantastic graphic design, turning my poem into a Tesco receipt!) #NCS2026

Dr Laura Varnam@drlauravarnam.bsky.social · last wk.

#NCS2026 It’s my paper this morning at 11am! In our paired Medievalism sessions organised by the brilliant Anna Opanasenko & Philomena Wolf (2nd session is after lunch). Come along, hear some poetry, & grab one of my #TeamMargery pins!

From Victoria MacKenzie’s Substack, partly on Old Filth: “The novel deals with what is probably my favourite subject of novels - the discrepancy between a person’s public life (and how they are perceived by those who scarcely know them), and their secret inner lives - their real lives, to my mind.”

Vicky MacKenzie@vickymackenzie.bsky.social · 3d ago

Good god, it's August already. The monthly Substack newsletter is now live, I know you've been on tenterhooks... open.substack.com/pub/victoria...

“To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.” Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

Important 🧵

Steven Sheil@scsheil.bsky.social · 3d ago

When schools were locked down during Covid, our daughter was one of the people interviewed by The Guardian about how lockdown was adversely affecting teenagers’ mental health. She was part of the group whose GCSEs were cancelled. It was a fair and sympathetic article, focusing on the teens' concerns

Your inner life — that little spark of battered beauty

“What should we do to celebrate the first national Vespa meeting?” “Let’s take them all to see the Pope.” (1949)

More Agnes Owens reissues, coming September. This now completes the republication of all her fiction in uniform editions.

What a joy to be kicking off the start of the Fringe with our pals at @fringeofcolour.bsky.social If you're an Artist of Colour taking part in any of the Edinburgh Festivals this summer, come through for FOC's Welcome Link-Up on 7 Aug 8.30-11PM at the bookshop. See you there!

A table at Feltrinelli Firenze Santa Maria:

"One of the reasons I love My Dreadful Body so much is that I identify very closely with how Egana writes about the limitations that society, traditions, and family members inflict on women." @olgaz.bsky.social's Q&A with @lizoksbooks.bsky.social puncturedlines.com/2026/07/15/c...

Creating a Vivid World: A Q&A with Lisa C. Hayden, the translator of Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body

The publication of Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body by New Vessel Press earlier this year is an important contribution to feminist russophone literature available to readers in English translati…

puncturedlines.com

"...a bewildering tapestry of myth and lore..." #twistedspoonpress #20BOS26 Book 18 kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/07/27/a...

“…a bewildering tapestry of myth and lore…” #twistedspoonpress #20BOS26 Book 18

Back in 2017 I discovered the German-Czech author, Johannes Urzidil, when a collection of his short Bohemian fables was published by Pushkin Press. I thoroughly enjoyed these stories, so when the P…

kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com

Osamu Dazai’s books have become a surprise literary hit in recent years. I spoke to his translator and publishers to find out why, and how the shorthand of bleak nihilism in his work isn’t always true:

From author to anime hero: the unlikely revival of a Japanese literary star

More than seven decades after they were first released, the dark novels of Osamu Dazai have become a publishing sensation, as a new generation of readers engage with his bleakness, humour and brillian...

theguardian.com

I got my hair cut by a man who wanted to talk about books. He talked *so* much about books, often stopping for a solid 5 minutes to make his point. It was great - my ideal hair appointment, except now I realise he has cut one side much shorter than the other. That's the price you have to pay.

In London. Two days to go: www.thi-wurd.com/writing-icon...

A peerless silent film shot--I swear the attrition of the circus began with the talkies. (E. A. Dupont, "Variety," 1925)

“In Germany, I learned how often young men on leave had confided hideous things they had seen to their mothers or sisters. In the last year of the war, the fear that gripped Berliners was not just of military defeat but of vengeance.”

Yuliya Komska@ykomska.bsky.social · 2w ago

“The cheery normality of Berlin showbiz – theatres, cinemas and dance halls – was partly designed to turn attention away from a very different reality: the concentration camps, the Gestapo torture chambers,” rations. My book will have more on “less bread, more circuses” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Many thanks to @peterkravitz.bsky.social for his generosity with time and words. Read his full text on the book page: www.blackheraldpress.com/what-lies-ah... 🙏

Black Herald Press@blackheraldpress.bsky.social · 2w ago

“Rather than mirrors, Clark offers us doors and windows, inviting us to walk and peer, to better understand what we might otherwise pass by.” @peterkravitz.bsky.social about @cclarklewes.bsky.social ´s WHAT LIES AHEAD www.blackheraldpress.com/what-lies-ahead

Hurrah for @wiltonsquare.bsky.social — picking up from the crash of Unbound, my anthology celebrating #AlanGarner, First Light, is available again. Here are Pullman, Atwood, Ali Smith, Stephen Fry and many more on a true hero of literature: wiltonsquarebooks.com/products/fir...

First Light

A group of well-known writers and artists celebrate the inspirational life and work of Alan Garner

wiltonsquarebooks.com

One of the things that surprised me when I went looking into the failure of a battery plant in Northumberland last year was the degree to which government support for tech is an immense structural failure underpinned by a myriad mutually reinforcing boosterish PR departments

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 3w ago

It’s a mistake to scrap DSIT, which as far as I can tell the Labour case against it is simply “not invented by us, ewww“, but even if it were a good idea, a mistake to do so when have only 18 months left to deliver anything:

It's a little known fact that Wordsworth wrote over 500 sonnets. Yet the few that everyone remembers were among his first. I tried to account for why he didn't improve here:

"They are of the sky"

Why Wordsworth's 1802 sonnets are his best

someflowerssoon.substack.com

“We have consumed so much of nature. Right now we are on the edge of being consumed by nature.” Sylvia Earle

Janine Gibson@janinegibson.ft.com · 3w ago

A fascinating lunch with an amazingly knowledgeable and admirable person, nonagenarian oceanographer Sylvia Earle as.ft.com/r/04bfa49c-0...

Joseph Plumb Martin details the Connecticut demonstration in his memoir. He's a cheeky soldier with an exceptional view of the war. allthingsliberty.com/2013/02/priv...

Private Yankee Doodle by Joseph Plumb Martin - Journal of the American Revolution

This book is must reading for anyone interested in the American Revolution.  It is by far the best account written by a private soldier.  Some officers wrote about their experiences but few private so...

allthingsliberty.com

Her T shirt reads I WORK IN A BOOKSHOP Hong Kong national security police raid 2 independent bookstores, arrest 5 for alleged sedition hongkongfp.com/2026/07/15/b...

Police raid 2 independent bookstores, arrest 5 for alleged sedition

Hong Kong police have raided two independent bookstores and arrested five people suspected of committing a sedition offence.

hongkongfp.com