Dave C
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duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Dave C
@duckpondsreview.bsky.social
940 followers 3.1K following 790 posts
Retired and reading quite a lot in a quiet corner of Australia.
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duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Meet Monty, he's been living around us for the last 15 years (we can hand feed him) but he is currently suffering from a totally dislocated lower hip joint which means he's helping raise two youngsters on one leg. Comes for a rest on our deck every afternoon on this chair.
#australia #birds
Male Australian Magpie resting on a seat back.
November 11, 2025 at 4:43 AM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
2020 #1
The first novel from one of the great writers of the 20th century. In 1940s Ohio, a poor black girl wishes for the blue eyes of her white schoolfellows leading us into a tale of racism, sexual abuse and self-hate. A most assured debut.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
📚💙
#booksky
#books
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison . Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio. Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterised her writing.
November 5, 2025 at 12:28 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Post a book you love from the 80s. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky #bookchallenge #readingchallenge #readingcommunity #booktok #bookish #books
November 4, 2025 at 10:54 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
November reading 🧵
Started the month with this, undoubtedly the strangest work from Thomas McGuane. Follows the misadventures of the highly dubious Nicholas Payne with plenty of strange goings-on and equally strange language. Witty and weird, more in the alt text.
⭐⭐⭐
📚💙
#booksky
#books
The Bushwhacked Piano, by Thomas McGuane. As a citizen, Nicholas Payne is not in the least solid. As a boyfriend, he is nothing short of disastrous, and his latest flame, the patrician Ann Fitzgerald, has done a wise thing by dropping him. But Ann isn't counting on Nicholas's wild persistence, or on the slapstick lyricism of Thomas McGuane-highlights include a ride on a homicidal bronco and an apprenticeship to the inventor of the world's first highrise for bats. The result is a tour de force of American Dubious.
November 1, 2025 at 11:39 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Usually see 8 or 9 species of Orchids in a given year while walking in the Brisbane Ranges and here's a few of the best seen so far (names in alt text). #orchids #wildflowers #australiannativeflora
Spotted Sun Orchid Slender Sun Orchid Leopard Orchid Waxlip Orchid
October 31, 2025 at 1:56 AM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
New resident in the kitchen. She was eyeing up my breakfast for some reason...
#spider
Huntsman Spider
October 8, 2025 at 9:50 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Ordered these from the publisher in the UK just 7 days ago and they've already turned up down here. Nice! More Recovered Books from Boilerhouse Press and @neglectedbooks.com and they haven't let me down with anything in this series yet.
#booksky📚💙
#books
And So Did I, by Malachi Whitaker. Solitary Confinement, by Christopher Burney. Trance by Appointment, by Gertrude Trevelyan.
October 8, 2025 at 6:07 AM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
20/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Palaeolithic cave paintings, Altamira, Spain. Artists unknown.
October 5, 2025 at 10:09 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
19/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
The company of Frans Banning Cock preparing to march out, known as the Nightwatch , by Rembrandt van Rijn.
October 5, 2025 at 1:14 AM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
18/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
The Plain by Mont St.-Victoire, by Paul Cezanne
October 3, 2025 at 9:24 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
17/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Studio in Rue de La Condamine, by Jean Frédéric Bazille.
October 2, 2025 at 9:38 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
So October starts with this fine set of stories from Chile's Alejandro Zambra. There's a nice blurb in the alt text and as always Megan McDowell's translation helps bring the writer into our language very nicely indeed. Just more excellence from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social
⭐⭐⭐⭐
#booksky💙📚
#books
My Documents, by Alejandro Zambra, tr by Megan McDowell. My Documents is the latest work from Alejandro Zambra, the award-winning Chilean writer whose first novel was heralded as the dawn of a new era in Chilean literature. Whether chronicling the attempts of a migraine-afflicted writer to quit smoking or the loneliness of the call-centre worker, the life of a personal computer or the return of a mercurial godson, this collection of stories evokes the disenchantments of youth and the disillusions of maturity in a Chilean society still troubled by its recent past. Written with the author's trademark irony and precision, humour and melancholy, My Documents is unflinchingly human and essential evidence of a sublimely talented writer working at the height of his powers.
October 2, 2025 at 1:59 AM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
16/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gate St. Lazare, by Claude Monet
October 1, 2025 at 9:56 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
15/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper.
September 30, 2025 at 10:04 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
14/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Adoration of the Magi (1475), by Botticelli (Alessandro Filipepi - that's him on the right.)
September 29, 2025 at 10:54 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
13/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Wheatfield with Crows, by Vincent van Gogh.
September 28, 2025 at 10:29 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
12/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
In England (Eugene Manet on Isle of Wight), by Berthe Morisot
September 28, 2025 at 3:02 AM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
11/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
The Bar at La Folies-Bergiere, by Eduard Manet.
September 26, 2025 at 11:07 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
10/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino unseats Bernardino della Carda at the Battle of San Romano, by Paulo Uccello.
September 26, 2025 at 12:11 AM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
9/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
The School of Athens, by Raffaele Sanzio (Raphael)
September 24, 2025 at 9:31 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
8/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Het interieur van de Sint Catharinakerk, Utrecht, Pieter Jansz Saenredam, 1636.
September 23, 2025 at 9:36 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
7/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
The Third of May 1808 by Francisco Goya.
September 22, 2025 at 10:05 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
6/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, by Georges-Pierre Seurat
September 21, 2025 at 9:53 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
5/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
The Slave Ship, by J.M.W. Turner
September 20, 2025 at 9:54 PM
duckpondsreview.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.
4/20

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Bal du moulin de la Galette, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
September 19, 2025 at 9:49 PM