It’s time for a Q3 progress review on Nic’s (Dragon Rambles) Law of Fives reading bingo challenge! I’ve now read 40 books for this challenge, with most of them counting… The post Q3 2026 Law of Five Reading Bingo Progress – BINGO! appeared first on The Wallflower Digest.

Space Dwarf Attribution What Works Well? What Works…Less Well? Opportunities What’s Adaptable? Six Years Hence: Where Are the Joneses? part 4 Coming Attractions This week, our Free Culture Book Club plays Space Dwarf. To give this series some sense of organization, check out some basic facts without much in the way of context. For Clarity : You can best think of these posts like their titles suggest, as the seed of a discussion group (“book club”) to spark conversation about a Free Culture…

Laura by Vera Caspary published 1943 [A young woman's body has been found in a New York apartment, and the case has attracted a lot of attention...] Laura had become a Manhattan legend. Scarlet-minded headline artists had named her tragedy THE BACHELOR GIRL MURDER and one example of Sunday edition belles-lettres was tantalizingly titled SEEK ROMEO IN EAST SIDE LOVE-KILLING. By the necromancy of modern journalism, a gracious young woman had been transformed into a dangerous siren who practiced…

Best of the blogs ▷ brandib laments the loss of easily obtained (i.e., at the local department store) good quality professional clothing. Read When Did We Agree To Settle For Less? ▷ I gave up Twitter/X years before Elon took it over and made a bad place worse. But now John Gruber is saying — and I think he’d be among the last to say it if it were true — that the service has re-found its footing and there’s less political content there than on the other tweety services. Read X Once Again Marks…

Seasonal attractions

While only time will tell whether James S. A. Corey’s galaxy-spanning science fiction epic will come to be regarded as worthy to stand alongside such works as Frank Herbert’s Dune or Asimov’s Foundation series, The Expanse — nine novels, eight short stories, six televisions seasons, several comics, a board game, a roleplay system, and a videogame — has certainly earned a place in many sci-fi lovers’ top ten lists of the greatest settings of all time.

2023 historical mystery; eleventh in Huber's Lady Darby series (post-Regency amateur detection). The Gages rush to Sebastian's father, who was attacked and wounded on the road in Yorkshire, and soon find that this matter will go deeper than it appears.

Today for the #1949Club, I’m sharing some thoughts on a poetry book which was released in that year – “The Edge of Being” by Stephen Spender. I wasn’t able to find a huge amount of verse issued in 1949, and was reminded of Theodor Adorno’s statement “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”. It’s definitely worth remembering how damaged the world was after WW2; I could see a lot of that in Beverley Nichols’ book which I reviewed on Thursday. Nevertheless, Spender published this book in 1949…

Source Back in the 80’s when Booth and Wade brought them to the worlds’ attention again, Booth predicted it would be commercialized. It seems he was right. One of the worlds great gamefish. Booth and Wade’s book on them is still one of the best fishing reads. Prior post Tons more on his site. This showcases a nice alive one. A great fish.

Like Edward Gibbon, Yvor Winters tucks some of his best stuff into footnotes. Take this provocation from “English Literature in the Sixteenth Century,” published in the Summer 1955 issue of The Hudson Review and collected in The Function of Criticism: Problems and Exercises (Swallow Press, 1957): “At this point, I would like to interject one word of warning to the professors. Poets are not fools (I mean good poets); they are capable of perceiving in their early twenties facts which professors…

ROBERT WALLACE – The Corpse Parade. The Phantom Detective. First published in magazine form, December 1937. Reprinted as a paperback by Regency / Corinth in 1966. A series of evil murders stalks the streets of New York City. The victims are all connected with the automotive and trucking industries, the bodies found with amputated arms, being dragged behind ambulances, fire trucks and buses. Richard Van Loon, alias the Phantom Detective, answers a summons from publisher Frank Havens to find the…

My final book for the 1949 Club is a beautifully written, whimsical historical novel by Elizabeth Goudge (1900-84), a bestselling writer in her day, now best remembered for a children’s book, The Little White Horse, which won the Carnegie Medal for British children's books in 1946.Gentian Hill is set during the Napoleonic Wars in the coastal town of Torquay in Devon in the southwest region of England (its most famous celebrity, born many years after this book takes place, is Agatha Christie,…

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is not exactly realistic. We have billionaires in our reality, but instead of flying around in high-tech armor saving the day, they usually just tweet ignorant tripe or share their weird opinions on podcasts. We don't have any ancient Gods hanging around (besides claims of such from grifters and/or people suffering from mental illness) with cool superpowers. We haven't been invaded by aliens (as far as we know), and I’d bet anyone who has been exposed to extreme…

This week, I’ve been editing the final books of Chapter By Chapter, my guide to all 1,189 chapters of the Bible, and a question occurred to me: Why is Daniel a Major Prophet when it has only twelve chapters, but Hosea is a Minor Prophet with fourteen? It turns out the answer is really simple, but the reason the question arose reminded me of something interesting about how we read the Bible. How Long is Daniel? It turns out the distinction between Major and Minor Prophets comes from the lengths…

Borne out of the very first instance of corporate reputation-washing, the Standard Oil-produced 20-LP series "Our Nation's Heritage", a progressive history of America that never quite made those Big Oil linens sparkle but left a whole lot of really fine playwrighting in its wake, is now up in full on Archive.org: Vol. 01 Prologue to America Vol. 02 The New World Vol. 03 Exploring the New World Vol. 04 Europe in the New World Vol. 05 The English in America Vol. 06 The Colonial Frontier Vol. 07…

Friday, October 16, 2026 - 15:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project For years, as I've been reading historic research related to lesbianism, I've regularly come across topics and people where my first reaction is: "Why isn't the question of intersex being raised here?" A very few authors have integrated the topic into a general history of sexuality, but eventually I decided to pick up some more focused studies. Now I keep having to remind myself that intersexuality is tangential to my central…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Daniel Pope’s novel Go Help Yourself is an endearing debut, the Pacific Northwest slacker novel of the year! John Keene wrote of the book: “Corbin Taylor Moore, the Seattle-based anti-hero…

They Got It Wrong: the Guinness Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations — David Milsted This is one of those books that you keep by the toilet, to browse little segments of as the occasion directs. I thought I’d enjoy this, but in fact it was a grind. It opens with a chapter on political quotes, and they are pretty relentlessly depressing. As the book moved through quotes about the the arts and sciences I kept waiting for it to become fun, but it rarely did. Part of the problem is the consistently…

I occasionally post about a movie that prominently features language, and today’s installment is To the Ends of the Earth. Criterion Channel is currently featuring a dozen Kiyoshi Kurosawa films, and having worked my way up to 2019 I gave this one a try. (My favorite is still his first big hit, 1997’s Cure, but I like his style so much I don’t mind watching even the less successful ones.) It’s about a reporter for a Japanese travel program who visits Uzbekistan with her crew and has various…

I went for a swim with Julie the other day. It was cool and blissful - about the same water temperature as the day in spring when I took a call from photographer Alex Ramsay He rang to let me know we'd been offered an opportunity in Salt, Girona, at the Casa De Cultura Les Bernardes (CCLB) to exhibit Os - a collection of Alex's exquisite black and white photos of bones and my poems written in response.I took Alex's call on my Bluetooth earbuds while swimming head-out-of-the-water breaststroke…

Innovations in art to tend towards Mannerism. As a form matures it turns on itself, as creators, and some portion of the audience, become more interested in the form itself. So we get more art about art. The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) is young (age 22, 23) Francis Beaumont’s play about plays, where the sophisticated six-penny boys’ company audience gets to indulge in mockery of the vulgar taste of the petty bourgeois one-penny theater-goers. The play is supposed to be The London…

I killed a man for card games Shot him from behind His brains and hand were blown away I was caught and tried Trial, then I waited for Verdict on my crimes And in that moment whores were angels, looking down from High Innocent, theyd say So innocent, Im free and took a horse to run away before they'd come for to me With a rope around my neck I wondered How I was ever dealt this hand I guess dying's the life you lead when youre a gambling man

THE STORY: Wayne Schofield is planning a house party for his friends at his estate in Wilmington, Delaware. But business takes precedence and he heads to Philadephia leaving his friends to set up and instruct the servants on what to do. Little does Wayne know that two of the servants hired are imposters, thieves looking to rob the guests when time is appropriate. Also, among his closest friends two marriages are on the rocks and philandering lovers are in attendance providing ample opportunity…

I guess this post can be seen as an epilogue of sorts to my posts about the John Byrne reboot of the Superman titles in the mid-1980s. Essentially, I came across this 1988 issue of Superman from near the tail end of Byrne’s run: …where you might see this oddly-formatted blurb in the corner: Now around this time, DC Comics was making a big promotional push to let folks know the series was about to be released on a biweekly basis. To wit: Amazing Heroes #133 (the “Preview Special”) from earlier…

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was born in Nth Shropshire, learning at Shrewsbury Technical School. He went to Birkenhead Institute Liverpool & Shrewsbury Technical College, then worked as a pupil-teacher in a poor rural parish. So he had to start teaching in Bordeaux to earn money, just as war broke out in mid-1914.He enlisted in the British Army in 1915 and by Jan 1916 he saw active service in the trenches on the Western Front. Owen wrote poetry during this time, and his work was heavily influenced…

A Garden Of Spheres by Linnea Sterte is one of the best things I have read all year, and I've had a pretty good year of reading things. It is my favorite ever graphic novel. It is a near wordless science-fantasy journey across realms and generations, and has a story but you really shouldn't read for one. It is self-evidently one of the most beautiful things I've laid eyes on.

Aaron Worth (editor)British Library From the peaks of Eryri to hidden valleys and haunted mines, the storied landscapes of Wales have inspired centuries of myth and folklore. Over time, these tales of the unexplained and the Otherworld have formed a unique strain of weird fiction. Continuing the British Library's 'Gilded Nightmares' series of lavish hardbacks is this rather fabulous collection of stories exploring the darker side of Wales. One only needs to glance at the Welsh flag to…

Omniscient Reader's Viewpointby Sleepy-C, Umi, singNsongGenres: Fantasy, Manga Pages: 248 Series: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (manhwa) #3 Rating: Synopsis: With all the food destroyed by the goblin, Dokja’s group is forced to venture into the dark tunnels teeming with vicious creatures. But in the cruel new world, monsters are not the most dangerous enemies. When the atrocities committed by the “Major Group” come to light, chaos ensues in Geumho Station. And amidst the bloodshed, Huiwon’s…

"I used to send a list of 40 books of novels and poetry to the newly accepted students." — Juhani Pallasmaa, Designers & Books This morning I woke up reading a passage from Desiderare, a novel by the Italian neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara. In the passage, two characters are waiting for a bus near the ancient Temple of Segesta in Sicily. One of them begins describing an imaginary garden. The passage brought me immediately back to Juhani Pallasmaa. As he wrote in The Atmospheric Sense: "When…