I keep thinking I’ll use Cosmos for this prompt, and then remembering that I’ve already used it for ‘dinosaurs‘. But I could use Heavy Ice for ‘dinosaurs’ as well as ‘planets’, so it all works out in the end.
Category: 100 untimed books
100 untimed books: comforting
It’s been a while since I cooked anything out of this book, and years since I lived in a bedsit, but I still turn to it when I need a dose of Katharine Whitehorn’s humour and realism. It makes me believe that I can get through pretty much anything, and reminds me that I’m free of the mice and the leaking roof, too.
100 untimed books: borders
Imaginary countries have borders, just like any others. If you’re interested in where the Ruritanian border might be, here‘s a good post on the question.
I really ought to move the Bronte juvenilia up here, but that would mean moving the other Brontes there, too, and anyway the Buchans are only on this shelf until I complete the set of the red Nelson edition on the shelf above (not shown), and, and…
I don’t have enough bookcases.
100 untimed books: no idea how I feel
Much in here to feel ambivalent about, much to be ashamed of, much to be proud of.
100 untimed books: steps
I’m going to walk the Camino Inglés to Santiago de Compostela next year. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so they say. The Camino Inglés isn’t anywhere near that long – it’s less than a hundred miles, in fact. Last time round I walked five hundred miles of the Camino Francés, but these days I have a full-time job.
Anyway, I reckon the journey starts with a decent guidebook.
100 untimed books: best years
I picked this book up because of the title; I’ve been thinking a lot about spirals and labyrinths, and the recursive nature of experience, of late, and this does have some things to say about that.
Molluscs only ever make a single shell, but it’s one they’ll never grow out of… They are among the few animals on the planet that wander around carrying with them the same body armour they had as babies; the pointy tip or inmost whorl is the mollusc’s juvenile shell. Day by day, the mollusc shell slowly expands, making room for the soft animal growing inside.
A mollusc carries its best years around with it. It carries all its years around with it.
100 untimed books: instructions
We didn’t have a television when I was growing up. This did not stop me collecting all the Blue Peter annuals I could find. (I collected Brownie annuals, too, and there wasn’t a pack near me to belong to.) I was mostly interested in the ‘makes’: step-by-step instructions of how to make various craft projects.
100 untimed books: music
Plenty of music in this house; this happened to be what was on the top of the pile. I bought it solely for the fourth of the Vier Ernste Gesaenge, though the whole book’s too difficult for me as yet.
100 untimed books: friends are so cute
‘Cute’ is not a word that I use. Ever. At least, not since I was about six and was reproved for bringing it home from school, having picked it up from one of my friends.
This was my favourite book at that time, and I went on liking dolls and dolls’ houses for quite a long time after that. It’s always irritated me that dolls are seen as ‘creepy’ while other, less gendered or differently gendered, toys are not. The one in the picture is my first doll; she’s called Katie.
100 untimed books: hunting
There are lots of things to hunt in labyrinths. Minotaurs. Yourself. The fastest way to Waterloo.
This book was a birthday present this year. In a lovely bit of serendipity, we found a labyrinth in the shape of a diplodocus the same day.
Kathleen Jowitt 