#bookwormsat — Public Fediverse posts

"The cat was on the stairs to-night. I think it sits there always. There is no kitchen cat."

'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral', M. R. James #BookwormSat #Caturday

🎨 Arend Hendriks - The Trap (c. 1930s)

"When to a cherished cat my gaze
Is magnet-drawn and then returns
Back to itself, it there discerns,
With strange excitement and amaze,

Deep down my own self, the rays
Of living opals, torch-like gleams
And pallid fire of eyes, it seems,
That fixedly return my gaze."

- Baudelaire
#BookWormSat

Dick Whittington's cat chases away all the rats plaguing the Sultan's, from 'Arthur Rackham's Fairy book'.
#BookWormSat #caturday #Rackham #art

Muscled, black with steel-green eye
swishing through the rye grass
with thoughts of mouse-and-apple pie
Tail balancing at half-mast

Look out, little furry folk!
He's the all-night working cat
Eats but one in every ten
leaves the others on the mat

Jethro Tull lyrics for #BookWormSat
#Cats 😾

I'm very impressed at just how much Welsh literature was mined for #BookWormSat yesterday. I wish now I'd made more contributions of my own. But I just couldn't find the time on Saturday (mainly because I was drinking a lot of cider, an excuse which would only have been tolerated by Dylan Thomas).

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:psxqvphhzccmqz7fwf3hu2b5/post/3mryifrjg7c2t

"Huw Llwyd of Cynfael was the seventh son of a family of sons, and therefore a conjuror. He increased his knowledge of the black art by studying magical books, and he ate eagle's flesh, so that his descendants could charm for the shingles."
- W. Jenkyn Thomas, "The Welsh Fairy Book"
#BookWormSat

"On Cader Peak, there was a school for witches where the doctor's daughter, teaching the unholy cradle and the devil's pin, had seven country girls. On Cader Peak, with the cellar echoing and a cross reversed above the entrance to the inner rooms."
- Dylan Thomas, "School for Witches"
#BookWormSat

"Here are solemn, mighty walls, turf grown; circumvallations rounded and smooth with the passing of many thousand years. Here came Morgan daily, as he said, to dream of Avalon, to purge himself from the fuming corruption of the streets.'
- Arthur Machen, 'Out Of The Earth'
#BookWormSat #Machen

From 'Green Willow And Other Japanese Fairy Tales', Warwick Goble, 1910.
#BookWormSat #birds #Japan #illustration #art

Well, I posted this only yesterday but now I've seen the #BookWormSat theme, I shall post it again!

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:b2hyz7hdcoiglhniwkwykt3f/post/3mrflhd2pa22j

#BookWormSat

"They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death. But England belonged to them. That, besides companionship, was their reward ...”

E M Forster - Maurice

"This was the sort of resident who was content to do nothing but sit in his over-priced apartment, watch television with the sound turned down, and wait for his neighbours to make a mistake."
J G Ballard - 'High Rise'
#BookWormSat

"It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so."

- Jerome K Jerome, 'Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow'
#BookWormSat #BookChatWeekly

Queen Anne, Queen Anne, has washed her lace
(She chose a summer day)
And hung it in a grassy place
To whiten, if it may.
...
Queen Anne, Queen Anne, is dead and gone
(She died a summer's day),
But left her lace to whiten on
Each weed-entangled way!

By Mary Leslie Newton #BookwormSat

"What favourite flowers are mine, I cannot say -
My fancy changes with the summer day.
Sometimes I think, agreeing with the Bees,
That my best flowers are those tall apple trees,
Who give a Bee his cyder while in bloom,
And keep me waiting till their apples come."
- W H Davies
#BookWormSat #poetry

flowering gorse bush
leaning over
towards the sea
as if its growth
were towards completion
of yellow in blue

Thomas A. Clark (2014)
🎨 Peregrine Mulvogue Feeney (c.1885)
#BookWormSat

flowering gorse bush
leaning over
towards the sea
as if its growth
were towards completion
of yellow in blue

Thomas A. Clark (2014)
🎨 Peregrine Mulvogue Feeney (c.1885)
#BookWormSat

"Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes."

- Wordsworth, 'Lines Written In Early Spring'
The charming painting (of less fortunate primroses - ahem!) is by Miles Birket Foster
#BookWormSat #poetry

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light
The world is sweet in sound and sight
Glad thoughts and birds take flower and flight
The heather kindles toward the light
The whin is frankincense and flame

Swinburne, The Tale of Balen
#BookWormSat

In Susan Cooper's 'Over Sea, Under Stone' (1965), some standing stones loom over the village of Trewissick. Mr Penhallow tells the children that ‘people thought the rocks were haunted, and unlucky, and he sounded as if he believed it himself. He said they call them the Gravestones.’ #BookWormSat

I loved C S Lewis, I loved Leon Garfield, I loved 'Stig Of The Dump', I enjoyed Alan Garner and I loved Susan Cooper. But above all of them was John Gordon's 'The Giant In The Snow' (1968). Original, suspenseful, terrifying, it remains a masterpiece of what I now know as #FolkHorror.
#BookWormSat

The most important fantasy literature for me growing up were the Target #DoctorWho novelisations, most written with brio by former script editor Terrance Dicks, the others by the writers of the original teleplays. It was a thrill as each came out: you never knew which story it would be!
#BookWormSat

The most important fantasy literature for me growing up were the Target #DoctorWho novelisations, most written with brio by former script editor Terrance Dicks, the others by the writers of the original teleplays. It was a thrill as each came out: you never knew which story it would be!
#BookWormSat

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

- Albert Camus
#BookWormSat #Camus

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
🎨Gustave Dore
www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/3536... #BookwormSat #art #fineart #giftidea #literature #bookchatweekly #wallart

Flowers in a Landscape, Summer...

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
🎨Gustave Dore
www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/3536... #BookwormSat #art #fineart #giftidea #literature #bookchatweekly #wallart

Flowers in a Landscape, Summer...

In Forrest Reid’s ‘The Garden God’ (1905), a boy’s love for a new friend binds him to ‘the great god Pan himself; the Hamadryads, who inhabit the forest trees; and Oreads, and Naiads, and Hyades – the deities of water-springs, and streams, and showers of summer rain.’ #BookWormSat

🎨 David Teniers

"In this pause, I suddenly saw something very clearly. Whatever it was I wanted from my mother was simply not there to be had. It was not her fault. And it was therefore not my fault that I was unable to elicit it." - Alison Bechdel, "Are You My Mother?" #BookWormSat #PrideMonth

"Let us honour if we can The vertical man, Though we value none But the horizontal one!" - W H Auden [Pictured, right, with Christopher Isherwood] #BookWormSat #Pride #PrideMonth #poetry

"Only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell." - Truman Capote, 'Other Voices, Other Rooms' #Pride #BookWormSat

Because we two who never did them harm, And never dreamt of harm ourselves, find men So eager to perplex and alarm And scare from us our dove-like thoughts, well then Since 'twixt the world and truth must be our choice, Let us seem vile, not be so, and rejoice. - M A Raffolovich #Pride #BookWormSat

There's a popular story about a staging of 'Antony & Cleopatra' at the Lyceum in the 19th C. During an Act 2 scene of bacchanalian excess in Cleopatra's court, an old lady in the front row was heard to comment: 'Dear! Dear! What a contrast to the home life of our own dear Queen.' #BookWormSat

After some unknown tiff between dandy supreme Beau Brummell and the Prince of Wales, they met again at a society event in 1813 hosted by Lord Alvanley. The Prince Regent pointedly snubbed Brummell, who responded by asking: 'Alvanley, who's your fat friend?' His days at court were over. #BookWormSat

‘I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?’ — Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi #BookWormSat 🎨 Hossein Behzad, ‘Rumi’ (1957)

I have a gentle cock, Croweth me day; He doth me risen erly My matins for to say. I have a gentle cock, Comen he is of gret; His comb is of red coral, His tail is of jet. His eynen arn of cristal, Loken all in aumber; And every night he percheth him In mine ladye's chamber. - 15th C #BookWormSat

RELIGION: A goodly tree, in which all the foul birds of the air have made their nests. - Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dicionary' #BookWormSat #AmbroseBierce #satire