It’s such a delight. Maybe it is the book that best reflects the charm and playfulness of Woolf herself. So many of her books seem to have come from loss and the past, but Orlando with all its masks lightly teases the reader (and the real Orlando) and then dances away to another age or topic.
I still have two left to read so I guess it’s subject to change…
but at a minimum it will be top three ;)
My favorite Elizabeth Taylor. Will be curious to see what you all think!
Happy Thursday! @bibliopaul.bsky.social and I got a chance to talk with @ofbooksandbikes.bsky.social about unclassifiable books, and I had a great time! Here is our new episode! open.substack.com/pub/mookse/p...
Kafka understood that an even greater indignity than being turned into a giant insect was still being required to go to work afterward.
Cover of "The Dancing Bear" by Frances Faviell. It features a black bear from the Berlin coat of arms against a red background with faint sketches of people. A street sign to the right reads, "YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE BRITISH SECTOR" in English and German. The title is at the top in white on a blue banner, with the author's name in script at the bottom.
Grab the powerful post-war memoir The Dancing Bear by Frances Faviell #freetillfriday 🎁
Berlin, 1946–1949, a city of ruins and black markets. A raw, honest, and compassionate look at life under occupation.
Don't miss this Dean Street Press gem! Download for free on Amazon now. 📚✨ [Links below 👇]
“Faithless, mutable, fickle, he called her; devil, adulteress, deceiver; and the swirling waters took his words, and tossed at his feet a broken pot and a little straw." Virginia Woolf
#SundaySentence
I’m experimenting with setting up lists hoping to get a more varied BlueSky experience. It has helped me find some of the varied voices I was missing (but not all)
What a great cover! Enjoy
“Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings…”
Henry V
#ShakespeareSunday
“Like a great philosophical babbler he is concerned not so much with the truth as with the sound of his prose.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
#SundaySentence
Event commemorating Book World at Politics and Prose on Connecticut Avenue at 5 o’clock February 21st.
If you’re in DC tomorrow and want to see a lot of bookish people in one place, I have good news:
WHITE HOUSE: "When you see it on Truth Social, you know it's directly from President Trump."
TRUMP 2 WEEKS AGO: "Somebody posted, a staffer posted ... somebody slipped. I didn't do it. This was done by somebody else."
This Princeton University Art Museum photo shows a blackware ceramic figurine of two stylised dogs which look as if they are dancing. They are standing upright on their hind legs, facing each other, their front legs raised, with paws resting against each other. The dog on the left has its face turned towards the viewer, with snout slightly raised and seeming to smile. The dog on the right, rests its raised snout against the cheek of its partner. The figures are rounded and smooth with short legs, pointed snouts, pointed ears, and short curved tails. Their bodies are decorated with incised lines, which according to the museum, represent folds of skin, indicating that these canines are Mexican hairless dogs. Museum info: “Comala, Late Formative Period, 200 BC –200 AD, Colima, West Mexico, Mexico, Mesoamerica, Dancing dogs. Blackware ceramic; 12.6 x 13.5 x 7.5 cm. Museum purchase (Object Number y1985-49)”
Delightful ‘Dancing Dogs’ figurine. Blackware ceramic, 200 BC - 200 AD.
Comala, Late Formative Period. Colima, West Mexico. 📷 Princeton University Art Museum artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/collecti...
#Archaeology
“There are thirty-two ways to write a story,” Thompson once remarked, “and I’ve used every one. But there is only one plot—things are not as they seem.”
From the archive for Dorothy Canfield Fisher #BornOnThisDay in 1879, my thoughts on THE HOME-MAKER.
I loved this beautiful novel about role reversal in marriage. If you liked R. C. Sherriff's THE FORTNIGHT IN SEPTEMBER, chances are you'll enjoy this too! 💙📚
jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2024/02/06/t...
Legend. RIP — Frederick Wiseman, 96, Penetrating Documentarian of Institutions, Dies
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/m...
Lafew: “Mine eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon.”
All’s Well That Ends Well
#ShakespeareSunday
The one, the only @causticcovercritic.bsky.social reflects on the best things he read in 2025. Bring your wallet!
eigermonchjungfrau.blog/2026/02/14/j...
Once made a pilgrimage to Nelson. It was so much smaller than I expected it to be. hogglestock.com/2019/09/02/r...
The redoubtable @gnatleech.bsky.social discusses his 2025 reading and teases a new plan
eigermonchjungfrau.blog/2026/02/12/n...
The Common in Nelson, New Hampshire, 1914
Soldiers Monument and Church, Nelson, New Hampshire
Christmas card with photo of Nelson, New Hampshire
An early undated photo of what would become May Sarton’s house
#SundaySarton I'm reading this week's pages of PLANT DREAMING DEEP and I was thinking about my trip to Nelson a few years ago, which I absolutely adored. Here are a few archival images of the town & May's house.
New on the blog today for #ReadIndies, I've written about some of my favourite books from NYRB Classics.
Featuring books by Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Comyns, J. L. Carr and more! @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social #BookSky 💙📚 #TranslationThurs
jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/s...
My first Singing Resistance Twin Cities event. I should’ve stopped singing when I recorded so you could hear the community sing better. Tonight we sang, organized, and raised rent relief funds for our neighbors in hiding. #abolishice
This book is transformative. Order it now.
Illustration of two stylised sitting cats, one tabby to the right, the other black and white, both facing forwards, the tabby bending it's neck to look sideways with large round curious eyes
Angela Smyth, contemporary artist & illustrator #womensart
This is awful. John is one of my favorite people in this business, a wonderful writer and a skilled editor who did a great job running a book section that covered more, and more interesting, ground than most. John has forgotten more about books than most people will ever know.
After 20 years, I've been laid off at The Washington Post.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
Shutting down (the stellar) books coverage at WaPo is a real telling move when your owner is literally Jeff Bezos
Adam Gopnik said that this novel “is the Trollope novel for people who don’t like Trollope novels.” People who do like Trollope also like the novel for the mildly ascerbic take down of what feels like current political realities. An engrossing novel, a fun conversation.
