AC Fick 📚
LightNews LightNews
banner
acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚
@acfick72.bsky.social
1.4K followers 580 following 2.8K posts
Reader; Emperor of Solitude; self-ironising Don of #NorthJozi; Anarchosyndicalist Czar of All Tolstoyan Russian Multiverses; House Fuller-Hallim; Mr Havisham.
🤴🏽📚🤓📖📝🌍
Obsolescent isolate losing hearing & sight in the twilight of this incarnation. No trolls.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚 @acfick72.bsky.social · 15d
Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.
▫️Anne Sexton, 1975

Morning: #LateImperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🛋🌍
Bookcases along two walls in the Nonfiction Room, volumes alphabetised by author or editor surname from Karen Armstrong and Nancy Armstrong through Betty Friedan and Steven Friedman. Bookcases along two walls, surplus fiction to be remaindered stacked on the left, fiction alphabetised by author surname from Christopher Hope and Michel Houllebecq through Ursula K. Le Guin and Rosamond Lehmann. Bookcases along a wall interrupted by a passage, the fiction alphabetised by author surname from Soazig Aaron and Hectoe Abad through A.S. Byatt and Italo Calvino. A table with a container of 100 paracetamol tablets juts into frame on the left. A sofa and a table and chairs in front of two walls of bookcases on which the volumes of fiction are alphabetised by author surname from Jim Crace and Stephen Crane through Philip Hensher and Frank Herbert.
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood.
February 16, 2026 at 8:13 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Last night one came home to the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi to these mysteries, got all excited, and was then imperially underwhelmed by the 'prose' inside.

🫅🏾📚📦📦🤓📖📑🫣🫤☕️
Two book boxes, each containing a recently published "book", on a polished pine table in front of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Jostein Gaarder and William Gaddis through Abdulrazak Gurnah and Rosa Guy.
February 16, 2026 at 5:41 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Sunday morning post-breakfast acquisitions for the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi found in #KalkBay just before heading to the airport.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑☕️🍳⛱️🌊🌍☀️
From left to right and top to bottom, copies of Pedro Almodóvar's THE LAST DREAM (2023), Haruki Murakami's NOVELIST AS A VOCATION (2022), Octavia E. Butler's DAWN (1987), and Denis Hirson's MY THIRTY MINUTE BAR MITZVAH: A MEMOIR (2022).
February 15, 2026 at 10:32 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
I sensed I was being invited to participate in the life of the past, in that world they spoke of together and which I now saw they no longer intended to exclude me from, even though I already knew that I'd never be able to enter it.
▫️Jacqueline Harpman, 1995

#BookSky 📚💙
Photograph of False Bay on a cloudless day with the Coastal Mountain Range of the Southern Cape on the horizon (it has a much more offensive name to mark the conflict between Dutch settlers and the indigenous Khoi from the seventeenth century onwards); the overhead cables of the southern railway line can be seen in the top left hand corner. The main post is a quotation from Jacqueline Harpman's I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN (1995; translated by Ros Schwartz from MOI QUI N'AI PAS CONNU LES HOMMES as THE MISTRESS OF SILENCE in 1997).
February 15, 2026 at 4:19 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Seaside sojourn . . .

🫅🏾☕️🌊⛱️🌍☀️
Waves on a beach with a village backed by mountains on the southern reaches of the Table Mountain range on the far side of a small bay along the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula at the southwestern tip of Africa. Blue sky over rocky mountain. Blue sky over rocky mountain. Bright disc of the sun against a bkue sky over rocky mountain.
February 15, 2026 at 8:28 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Five days at the southern tip of Africa, and we must haul these back over the escarpment to the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi later today. First, coffee, then a stroll.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📑☕️🌬🛫🌍☀️
A stack on books on a green chaid whicb has two jackets draped over its back; from top to bottom, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's HOMECOMING (1972), C. J. Driver's DAYSPRING (2024), Mphuthumi Ntabeni's THE BROKEN RIVER TENT (2018), Maryse Condé's LAND OF MANY COLORS & NANNA-YA (1997), Gayl Jones's THE UNICORN WOMAN (2024), Alex la Guma's A WALK IN THE NIGHT (1962), George Saunders's LIBERATION DAY (2022), Andrey Kurkov's DIARY OF AN INVASION (2022), Yevgeny Zamyatin's X AND OTHER STORIES (2024), Cyprian Ekwensi'a BURNING GRASS (1962), J. M. Coetzee's THE POLE AND OTHER STORIES (2023), Nadia Davids'a CAPE FEVER (2025), and Ivan Vladislavić's THE NEAR NORTH (2024).
February 15, 2026 at 6:06 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Quite..

#BookSky 📚💙
Extract from I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN by Jacqueline Harpman (1995; translated by Roz Schwartz from MOI QUI N'AI PAS CONNU LES HOMMES in 1997 as THE MISTRESS OF SILENCE) They'd wanted something all their lives, but now they had it, they didn't recognise it. Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness. That is something that I, who have only experienced absurdity, can only suppose.
February 13, 2026 at 10:38 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Kurdish coffee and falafel in high summer at the southern tip of Africa: the official imperial tour has begun in 26 ⁰C.

🫅🏾☕️🤓📖📝🌳🌍🌤
Kurdish coffee. Table Mountain under a blue sky with clouds seen from the bottom of District Six. A fragrant blossom. Clouds across a dry interior along the southwestern coast of Africa.
February 11, 2026 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
artsofexistence.bsky.social
"Don’t let the bastards grind you down."
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
#BookSky
February 10, 2026 at 8:32 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Today at the office, high summer in #NorthJozi . . .

🌳🍃🌍🌥
Southern steps from the orchard to the vegetable beds. Northern steps from the herb enclave to the love seat. The steps down from the love seat to the herb enclave. The steps down from the vegetable beds to the orchard.
February 10, 2026 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
sastenio.bsky.social
10 out of 10 LIBRARIANS AGREE

👩🏻‍🏫 💙📚
A DAY WITHOUT BOOKS IS LIKE (just kidding, I have no idea)
February 10, 2026 at 1:30 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Abundance: between 200 and 250 granadillas on the vine already. Summer swings seriously into its second half on the crest of the Witwatersrand in #NorthJozi.

🌍🌥
Granadillas on a vine. Granadillas on a vine. Granadillas on a vine. Granadillas on a vine.
February 10, 2026 at 5:44 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Having been introduced to gospel gqom by urban youths last week, one stumbled onto "Pop the Balloon" today . . . and now one needs to take a wire brush to one's consciousness and use high voltage cables to erase memory. Pace Zoë Wicomb, cerebral rinse loading in the #LateImperialLibrary.
🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🧠🚿🗝🚪🌍🌗
Shelf of fiction of Leo Tolstoy volumes: six editions of WAR AND PEACE (in various English translations), ANNA KARENINA (9 English translations, 1 German translation) 2 copies of THE DEATHH OF IVAN ILYICH, 1 copy of WALK IN THE LIGHT WHILE THERE IS LIGHT, 1 copy of RESURRECTION, and 1 copy of HADJI MURÁD. Shelf of fiction: Voltaire's CANDIDE, Elizabeth von Arnim's ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN and THE SOLITARY SUMMER (x2), THE ADVENTURES OF ELIZABETH IN RÜGEN, VERA, THE ENCHANTED APRIL, Johann von Grimmelshausen's MOTHER COURAGE, Alexander von Humboldt's PERSONAL NARRATIVE, Heinrich von Kleist's THE MARQUISE OF O— (x2), Kurt Vonnegut's PLAYER PIANO (x2), THE SIRENS OF TITAN (x3), MOTHER NIGHT (x2), CAT'S CRADLE (x4), WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE, SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 (x4), BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, SLAPSTICK OR LONESOME NO MORE, JAILBIRD, DEADEYE DICK, GALÁPAGOS, HOCUS POCUS, FATES WORSE THAN DEATH, TIMEQUAKE (x2), BAGOMBO SNUFF BOX, A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY (x2), LOOK AT THE BIRDIE, ARMAGEDDON IN RETROSPECT (x2), WHILE MORTALS SLEEP, COMPLETE STORIES, and Gregor von Rezzori's MEMOIRS OF AN ANTI-SEMITE. Shelf of fiction: Rebecca West's THE HARSH VOICE, THE MEANING OF REASON, A TRAIN OF POWDER, THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS, THE BIRDS FALL DOEN (x2), THE YOUNG REBECCA (x2), THIS REAL NIGHT, THE ONLY POET, and SELECTED LETTERS; Kjell Westö's LANG; Edith Wharton's THE TOUCHSTONE, SANCTUARY, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (x3), ETHAN FROME (x3), THE REEF, THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY (x2), FIGHTING FRANCE, SUMMER (x2), THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (x5), GLIMPSES OF THE MOON, THE CHILDREN (x2), ETHAN FROME AND OTHER STORIES, THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY AND OTHER STORIES, Edith Wharton's THE OLD MAID and Henry James's THE REAL THING in 2x2: INVENTING THE REAL; Shelf of fiction: Virginia Woolf's THE WAVES (1 of 4), KEW GARDENS, FLUSH, THE YEARS (x3), ROGER FRY, BETWEEN THE ACTS (x2), A WRITER'S DIARY (x2), A HAUNTED HOUSE, LEAVE THE LETTERS TILL WE'RE DEAD: THE LETTERS OF VIRGINIA WOOLD 1936-1941 (Vol.6), SELECTED LETTERS (x2), SELECTED SHORT STORIES, CARLYLE'S HOUSE, STREET HAUNTING, CONGENIAL SPIRITS (x2), A MOMENT'S LIBERTY, MELYMBROSIA (x2), Virginia Woolf and Quentin Bell's THE CHARLESTON BULLETIN SUPPLEMENTS, Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey's LETTERS, Michael Worsnip's REMITTANCE MAN, John Wray's THE LOST TIME ACCIDENTS, Richard Wright's UNCLE TOM'S CHILDREN, NATIVE SON (x2), BLACK BOY (x2), EIGHT MEN, PAGAN SPAIN, AMERICAN HUNGER, and RITE OF PASSAGE.
February 9, 2026 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
acfick72.bsky.social
Choose 20 MORE books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BookChallenge

Day 1B
Cover of Fred D'Aguiar's novel "Feeding the Ghosts" (1997). Cover illustration is of an 18th or 19th century ship st Sea, in mostly brown and green and bronze and ochre, credited to Marianna Kennedy. Notes from the inside sleeve of the dustjacket: 'The sea is slavery. Sea-water boils in Its own current, Salt gives the sea the texture of fabric, something thick and close-knitted, not unlike the fine dust of a barn seen floating in a shaft of light. Sea receives that body as if that body had come to rest on a cushion, one that gives way to the body's weight and folds around it like an envelope . . .' Returning from Africa, the Zong -- a slave ship -- falls prey to disease which spreads quickly through its human cargo. Captain Cunningham orders his crew to seize sick men, women and children and to throw them overboard,l. One hundred and thirty-two slaves are thrown to their deaths. They are lost to history, their bodies registered as strokes in the Captain's log, their names never set down. But one slave survives drowning, by climbing back on to the ship and hiding in the food store. From there she attempts to rouse the slaves to rebel against the killings, becoming a secret force on the ship, stirring up unease among the crew, a voice and a conscience they seem to be unable to silence. On his arrival back in London, Captain Cunningham submits an insurance claim for the loss, confident that he will receive full compensation for the sick slaves. But the claim is challenged, and the voice of the slave who returned from the dead is heard again. Fred D'Aguiar's powerful new novel is about history and distortions of the truth, about the importance of memory and testimony in the struggle against oblivion. Richly atmospheric, full of suspense, profoundly moving, this is undoubtedly Fred D'Aguiar's finest book to date.'
November 30, 2024 at 1:56 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
It really has been more than 20 years since I'd strut from Domplein to Kromme Nieuwegracht for seminars on Deleuze, then strut via Servetstraat, Zadelstraat, Mariastraat and Mariaplaats to Hoog Catherijne and rail to Amsterdam for book shopping and flirtation . . .
NS rail ticket for a return journey between Utrecht and Amsterdam from 4 December 2005, found in a copy of J. M. Coetzee's DIERENLEVEN.
February 8, 2026 at 9:31 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
But we don't believe in hell anymore, and brimstone is now the name of a butterfly — a nice moral transition […] With hell gone, and the Tragic Age well past, our use for hot stones nowadays is in massage therapy.
▫️Julian Barnes, 2026
February 8, 2026 at 8:43 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Time for an affogato in the #LateImperialLibrary at the end of the hot day: 27 ⁰C after sunset in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🍨🗝🚪🌇🌍

PS—clearly no sleep until 3am.
Moka pot, single cup of espresso, scoops of vanilla ice cream, tablet, and spoon on a pine table in front of bookcases.
February 7, 2026 at 5:18 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
We can and should trust novelists when they tell us the beautiful lies of their fiction. But we are allowed to be genially sceptical when they talk about their working methods (those heavy hours they all claim to put in) and disclose 'where they get their ideas from'.
▫️Julian Barnes, 2026

#BookSky
Extracts from Julian Barnes's DEPARTURE(S) (2026). It's hard to think about the brain, because it involves using that very same brain to do so: a complicated and perhaps in the end futile enterprise. Yet most of us feel that we are somehow in charge of our brains, rather – though this might be the wrong metaphor – as a submarine captain is in charge of his vessel. Periscope up! Scan the horizon! Intruders ahoy! And so on. We imagine that we tell our brains in which direction to point its torpedoes, and when to fire them. Yet such an assumption of orderliness and control on our part doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Our brains have far more on us than we have on them: they know all that we know, whereas we know only some of what they do.
February 7, 2026 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
sevenstories.bsky.social
Today is the 82nd birthday of Dr. Angela Y. Davis.

To celebrate her life and work, we’re proud to share an excerpt from our 2005 pamphlet “Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture,” an extended set of interviews with Dr. Davis conducted by the late philosopher Dr. Eduardo Mendieta.
Q&A with Dr. Angela Y. Davis
An excerpt from “Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture”
open.substack.com
January 26, 2026 at 6:05 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
In that life one abandoned, this would be a paper on the quixotic project of literary realism, the 18th century origins of the English novel, late style, and counterpoint in postmillennial Coetzee, McEwan, and Barnes. Now it is enough to just think about this in the #LateImperialLibrary.

📚💙 📚🖋
Copies of Laurence Sterne's TRISTRAM SHANDY, Edward W. Said's LATE STYLE, J. M. Coetzee's THE POLE AND OTHER STORIES, Ian McEwan's WHAT WE CAN KNOW, and Julian Barnes's DEPARTURE(S).
February 7, 2026 at 7:13 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
skipbolden.bsky.social
“Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.”
~ François Truffaut
February 7, 2026 at 1:56 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Forgot to flip the calendars in the #LateImperial; where is the non-existent time disappearing to in these end days?

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌇🌍🌤
Calendario Romano open to February hanging from the end of a bookcase; beyond it on the left side of the frame is a pine table on whicblh some books, a laptop, a tablet, and tchotchkes can be seen, as well as bookcases with fiction. The photograph of the calendar is of a youngish man with a tanned Mediterranean face, wearing a priest's cassock and dog collar, and a Cappello Romano. On the left a Calendario Romano open to February hanging from the end of a bookcase, and on the right bookcases of fiction under and perpendicular to windows, in a room in which there is also a sofa and a pine table. The photograph on the calendar is of a dark-haired young man with a receding hairline wearing cassock. White clouds in a blue sky over Johannesburg's north. The sun setting to the west of Johannesburg, the top of the Charlotte Maxeke public hospital and its nurses' hostels (along with a construction crane) on the ridge of the Witwatersrand at the bottom of the frame.
February 6, 2026 at 4:41 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
The new inductees have arrived in the #LateImperialLibrary; time to dive deeply into these volumes in hottest #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝📦🗝🚪🌳🌍☀️

#BookSky 📚💙 📚🖋
On a polished pine table in front of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Paul Auster & J. M. Coetzee throuvb Italo Calvino, copies of Jacqueline Harpman's I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN, Mphutumi Ntabeni's THE WANDERERS, and Julian Barnes's DEPARTURE(S). On a polished pine table, the back covere of copies of Jacqueline Harpman's I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN, Mphutumi Ntabeni's THE WANDERERS, and Julian Barnes's DEPARTURE(S) still in the plastic packaging. An open box with packaging paper and three books in plastic wrapping. A sealed box (company logos and tracking labels erased) on a polished pine table in front shelves of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Saul Bellow through Peter Carey in a room with buffed parquet flooring.
February 6, 2026 at 8:16 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Surprise package in #NorthJozi: we love it when people send books to the #LateImperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝📦🗝🚪🌳🌍☀️

#BookSky 📚💙
Marzia Milazzo's COLORBLIND TOOLS: GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES OF RACIAL POWER (UJ Press 2025; originally published by Northwestern University Press, 2025).
February 6, 2026 at 8:04 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
The week has ended; we begin Friday with espresso, awaiting delivery of the new inductees into the #LateImperialLibrary and a daytime high of 30 ⁰C in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍☀️
Two black cups of espresso on a polished pine table in front of a wall of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from J. M. Coetzee through William Gibson. A shelf of fiction: Margaret Cavendish's THE BLAZING WORLD, Louis-Ferdinand Céline'a DEATH ON CREDIT, Javier Cercas's THE SPEED OF LIGHT, and 9 of 11 editions of Cervantes's DON QUIXOTE in English translation. A shelf of fiction: J. M. Coetzee's SUMMERTIME (3 of 5 copies), SCENES FROM PROVINCIAL LIFE (2 copies), THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS (3 copies), THREE STORIES, THE SCHOOLDAYS OF JESUS (3 copies), THE DEATH OF JESUS (3 copies), THE POLE (1 copy), "Growing up with THE CHILDREN'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA" in ENGLISH IN AFRICA 48(3); Albert Cohen's BELLE DE SEIGNEUR, Leonard Cohen's THE FAVOURIRE GAME and THE BEAUTIFUL LOSERS (2 copies), and Teju Cole's OPEN CITY. A shelf of fiction: Miles Franklin's MY BRILLIANT CAREER (14 of 16 copies), MY CAREER GOES BUNG, and a compendium of MY BRILLIANT CAREER & MY CAREER GOES BUNG in one volume; Jonathan Franzen's THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY, STRONG MOTION, THE CORRECTIONS (3 copies), THE DISCOMFORT ZONE (2 copies) and FREEDOM (2 of 3 copies).
February 6, 2026 at 5:23 AM