Gemma Bristow
@konallis.bsky.social
UK. Technical writer with a background in humanities. Posts about the Imagist poets, children's books, history, and green politics. All comments personal, all errors my own.
Added to my collection of Penguin Peacocks, with this 1969 TV tie-in edition of The Owl Service by Alan Garner. Not much design effort was spent on this edition; it looks exactly like a Puffin with the Peacock name and logo swapped in.
November 8, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Added to my collection of Penguin Peacocks, with this 1969 TV tie-in edition of The Owl Service by Alan Garner. Not much design effort was spent on this edition; it looks exactly like a Puffin with the Peacock name and logo swapped in.
Today's Virago find: Whole of a Morning Sky by Grace Nichols. I've never read Nichols. The Fat Black Woman's Poems was a set text when I did A-level English, though my class did the metaphysical poets instead.
October 25, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Today's Virago find: Whole of a Morning Sky by Grace Nichols. I've never read Nichols. The Fat Black Woman's Poems was a set text when I did A-level English, though my class did the metaphysical poets instead.
#FridayReads Gogmagog by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard, an inventive, watery fantasy that has a decidedly British flavour despite featuring hybrid humans on an alien planet. Thanks, @unamccormack.bsky.social!
October 24, 2025 at 5:29 PM
#FridayReads Gogmagog by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard, an inventive, watery fantasy that has a decidedly British flavour despite featuring hybrid humans on an alien planet. Thanks, @unamccormack.bsky.social!
Today's Virago Modern Classics find. Anyone like or dislike this one?
October 18, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Today's Virago Modern Classics find. Anyone like or dislike this one?
Solidarity with the Jewish people of Britain and the right of all of us in this unsettled country to live, work and worship (or be irreligious) in security and happiness.
October 2, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Solidarity with the Jewish people of Britain and the right of all of us in this unsettled country to live, work and worship (or be irreligious) in security and happiness.
#AmReading The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell's investigation into the poverty of England's industrial north.
I haven't read this book before, but I've heard that Orwell was a great guy and we shan't see his like again.
I haven't read this book before, but I've heard that Orwell was a great guy and we shan't see his like again.
September 27, 2025 at 1:58 PM
#AmReading The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell's investigation into the poverty of England's industrial north.
I haven't read this book before, but I've heard that Orwell was a great guy and we shan't see his like again.
I haven't read this book before, but I've heard that Orwell was a great guy and we shan't see his like again.
Penguin imprint aimed at teenagers in the 1960s and 70s.
September 25, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Penguin imprint aimed at teenagers in the 1960s and 70s.
#FridayReads Quicksand and Passing, two novels in one volume, by Nella Larsen.
September 19, 2025 at 5:32 PM
#FridayReads Quicksand and Passing, two novels in one volume, by Nella Larsen.
Lo, I have pleased the thrift gods! (Somehow.) For they have given unto me a Fantasy Masterwork what I had not got.
September 13, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Lo, I have pleased the thrift gods! (Somehow.) For they have given unto me a Fantasy Masterwork what I had not got.
#FridayReads A Game of Scandal by Laura Wood. Third book in Wood's YA series about The Aviary, an all-female, high-society detective agency at the turn of the 20th century.
September 5, 2025 at 5:31 PM
#FridayReads A Game of Scandal by Laura Wood. Third book in Wood's YA series about The Aviary, an all-female, high-society detective agency at the turn of the 20th century.
Calliope: A Collection of Poems by Various Authors, published in London in 1806. Impractically small to read, but it did need to fit in the pockets of those tight Regency pantaloons.
September 4, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Calliope: A Collection of Poems by Various Authors, published in London in 1806. Impractically small to read, but it did need to fit in the pockets of those tight Regency pantaloons.
#FridayReads The Squire's Daughter by F.M. Mayor. Not liking this as much as The Rector's Daughter, mainly because too many characters are simply irritating. (1920s cocktail set or county set, both pursuing in their different ways a round of unemployed nothings.)
August 22, 2025 at 5:57 PM
#FridayReads The Squire's Daughter by F.M. Mayor. Not liking this as much as The Rector's Daughter, mainly because too many characters are simply irritating. (1920s cocktail set or county set, both pursuing in their different ways a round of unemployed nothings.)
#AmReading A Box Full of Murders by Janice Hallett. It's Hallett's first mystery for children, framed in her signature style of amateur detectives going through a cache of incriminating documents. Can you, the reader, get to the solution first?
August 15, 2025 at 5:25 PM
#AmReading A Box Full of Murders by Janice Hallett. It's Hallett's first mystery for children, framed in her signature style of amateur detectives going through a cache of incriminating documents. Can you, the reader, get to the solution first?
On top of a set of shelves in my garden, there's a cunningly constructed house inhabited by a small occupant. I hope nothing happens to its mum.
August 9, 2025 at 6:37 PM
On top of a set of shelves in my garden, there's a cunningly constructed house inhabited by a small occupant. I hope nothing happens to its mum.
Me: Christmas stuff in August? Oh no, you hellbeasts!
Me, 30 seconds later: Ooh, I could pop that in my stash...
Me, 30 seconds later: Ooh, I could pop that in my stash...
August 9, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Me: Christmas stuff in August? Oh no, you hellbeasts!
Me, 30 seconds later: Ooh, I could pop that in my stash...
Me, 30 seconds later: Ooh, I could pop that in my stash...
Charity shop find of the day: The Squire's Daughter by F.M. Mayor. I read The Rector's Daughter by Mayor last year.
August 9, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Charity shop find of the day: The Squire's Daughter by F.M. Mayor. I read The Rector's Daughter by Mayor last year.
#FridayReads The Laws of Connection by @davidarobson.bsky.social. The psychology of building better social relationships, based on academic research and presented lucidly by a science journalist.
July 25, 2025 at 12:17 PM
#FridayReads The Laws of Connection by @davidarobson.bsky.social. The psychology of building better social relationships, based on academic research and presented lucidly by a science journalist.
Although the greater part of Hunter's collection was destroyed by the Luftwaffe, the museum still has thousands of his labelled jars and bones. Animals from all over the world, plant specimens, and (not pictured) human remains.
July 11, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Although the greater part of Hunter's collection was destroyed by the Luftwaffe, the museum still has thousands of his labelled jars and bones. Animals from all over the world, plant specimens, and (not pictured) human remains.
Visited the Hunterian Museum in London, dedicated to the history of surgery and anatomy. The core of the museum is the collection of specimens preserved by pioneering 18th-century surgeon, medical researcher and naturalist John Hunter.
July 11, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Visited the Hunterian Museum in London, dedicated to the history of surgery and anatomy. The core of the museum is the collection of specimens preserved by pioneering 18th-century surgeon, medical researcher and naturalist John Hunter.
Dream not deferred.
July 10, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Dream not deferred.
#AmReading The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah, one of the new cases of Hercule Poirot. Enjoying it so far. Interesting plot, in which several people are anonymously accused of the same murder, and while it doesn't evoke the frequent foreboding of Christie, it nails the dry humour well.
July 10, 2025 at 1:45 PM
#AmReading The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah, one of the new cases of Hercule Poirot. Enjoying it so far. Interesting plot, in which several people are anonymously accused of the same murder, and while it doesn't evoke the frequent foreboding of Christie, it nails the dry humour well.
Happy birthday to poet, novelist, critic and translator Richard Aldington, born in Portsmouth #OnThisDay in 1892.
July 8, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Happy birthday to poet, novelist, critic and translator Richard Aldington, born in Portsmouth #OnThisDay in 1892.
Bonus Marin Cilic (who won the men's Challenger event at the same venue) on the practice court.
June 22, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Bonus Marin Cilic (who won the men's Challenger event at the same venue) on the practice court.
Quarter finals day at the Nottingham Open. The stars were out and the rain stayed away.
June 22, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Quarter finals day at the Nottingham Open. The stars were out and the rain stayed away.