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lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Life Is Amazing publisher
@lifeisamazing.bsky.social
1.4K followers 290 following 7.4K posts
I deal in rare books, write & publish books, give talks, present shows. I make my living from words.

If you're rude or aggressive I'll block - I am curating, that's all. I block habitual shitposters because I hate lies. I do not engage with the far right.
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lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Currently reading Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan in a lovely Victorian straight grain morocco binding, and also The Ticket That Exploded by William Burrroughs in the paperback first edition.

Here's the Bunyan...
December 1, 2025 at 8:07 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
This is great from the Pope. I'm reposting from the original poster with alt text added.
Cultural facilities, such as cinemas and theaters, are the beating hearts of our communities because they contribute to making them more human. If a city is alive, it is thanks in part to its cultural spaces. We must inhabit these spaces and build relationships within them, day after day. Nonetheless, cinemas are experiencing a troubling decline, with many being removed from cities and neighborhoods. More than a few people are saying that the art of cinema and the cinematic experience are in danger. I urge institutions not to give up but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value of this activity. The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what "works," but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above all, an invocation. When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console but challenges. It articulates the questions that dwell within us and sometimes even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.
November 17, 2025 at 9:16 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Working out a scene I'mwriting by using tarot cards. This is what I have. I think it works, structurally.
A classic celtic cross tarot draw with an extra line of cards along the bottom row. Key card include the world,the livers and the ten of cups.
November 3, 2025 at 7:11 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
The Victorians knew how to bind books. This one in red morocco with gilt frames and embellishments to boards, gilt spine, gilt edges and inner dentelles is a beauty. I read these sometimes just for the physicality of the medium. An embodied intellectual pleasure.
Front panel of book with gilt frames on dark red morocco. Spine of Sir Walter Scott's Marmion, gilt compartments and decorated bands with gilt stamped title. Gilt fore-edge of book with leading edge of boards also gilt. Inner corner of book with gilt stamped design to edge of pastedown.
October 30, 2025 at 8:23 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
George Eliot in the Mill On The Floss skewers the difference between the creative and business mind.
But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity-strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth.
October 28, 2025 at 6:04 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
So, I was trying to tell this guy who had come late to collect something from facebook marketplace that I wasn't going to come outside because I wasn't suitably attired, that he had my house number, and he should knock at the door.

Instead, I wrote this:
Sebi: Hello Matt I am in outside please Sebi: Can you please come outside I can't find your house number Matt: Okay. I am inside waiting for you. I am in my pyjamas.
October 28, 2025 at 10:02 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
George Eliot absolutely shredding the novelist's conceit that character is destiny...

The Mill On The Floss
For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. his questionable aphorisms-" character is destiny." But not Character," says Novalis, in one of the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in con-sequence. But if his father had lived to a good old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through life with a reputation of sanity notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in-law.
October 24, 2025 at 8:34 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
I'm not great at art. I struggle to make a decent drawing with pen and paper. Tonight I was invited to a friend's birthday painting party. We were given a painting to copy, image 1. Image 2 is the first painting on canvas I've ever done. I'm amazed. I love it!
Original image - acrylic painting of a black cat on a red and yellow background. My image - acrylic painting of a black cat on a red and yellow background, looking a bit druggy.
October 23, 2025 at 9:35 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Writers at the Guardian appearing not to know what a metaphor is.
Headline from The Guardian reading "Trump takes a wrecking ball to the White House in on-the-nose metaphor."
October 23, 2025 at 6:42 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Down the local boozer: Puccini, anyone?
October 19, 2025 at 3:51 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
ebay promised they would end transation fees for private sellers.

So I'd love to have these transaction fees explained to me.
What you earned Order total £899.21 eBay collected from buyer Sales tax -£71.21 Selling costs Transaction fees -£26.98 Order earnings £801.02
September 23, 2025 at 1:08 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert... etc

All looks very familiar.
Herr Goebbels Angered By Anti-Nazi Wit Comedians Banned For Humorous Remarks on Leaders BERLIN, Feb. 4- (U.P.)-When Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels yesterday blasted Germany's cafe society, he called it "society rabble and intellectual snobs," for laughing at comedians who make Nazi leaders the butts of their jokes. Goebbels turned his anger upon the "society rabble" after an-nouncing that German five actors had been banned from the stage for publicly rediculing Nazi party and state functionaries. He denied that there was any lack of humor in Nazi Germany, but said that it must be kept "good-natured, decent and clean." a "There is plenty of humor in Germany, more than enough," he said in three and one-half column editorial in the Nazi party's newspaper Voelkischer Beobachter, "But we do not per-mit ourselves to be ridiculed." The five actors were Wer-ner Finck, actor-author: Pete Sachse, vaudeville comedian, and Helmut Buth, Wilhelm Meissner and Manfred Dlugi, the latter three members of a vaudeville combination known "The as Three Rulands." The five were said to have been warned re-peatedly to stop making jokes about the Nazis.
September 22, 2025 at 7:46 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
A note to myself, sitting on the Phoenix pub, Southsea...
We accept the labels we are taught as a kid to such an extent that we forget that the words are simplifications of the territory. When we meet someone who doesn't conform to our set of criteria as to what a person is - it is not the territory that is wrong, but the concepts we have internalised.
September 16, 2025 at 9:02 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Genuinely hilarious seeing rightwing trolls try to start arguments on bsky. This one makes inflammatory challenges then takes the silence as evidence he's right rather than others seeing through his bullshit. On his timeline the only person to respond to ANY of his posts is himself. Well done bsky!
Drake ‪@burgerpup.bsky.social‬ Follow Come on!! Someone has to at least one example of Charlie Kirk being Anti-Black! You wouldn’t make such statement unless you have evidence… or else you’re looking pretty fucking stupid…like REALLY FUCKING STUPID…. A meme of Mr Bean waiting for something in an exaggerated way
September 13, 2025 at 2:49 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Portsmouth City Council posts they are saddened by the Duchess of Kent, and this is what someone replies. I dont think I've ever known the country so utterly deranged and afraid, so completely unmanned. Who are these crazy, mad obsessed people?
September 6, 2025 at 7:09 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
I knew I'd seen him somewhere before...
August 30, 2025 at 3:47 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Here's a little show I'm running in Portsmouth, UK!

The Holmes Fest Show is back with an all-new variety night of fun, laughter, music, sketches... and Sherlock Holmes!

@ The Groundlings Theatre, Portsmouth!

Get your tickets here: groundlings.ticketsolve.com/tick.../show...
August 30, 2025 at 3:44 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Q: How do you make a nationalist look stupid?

A: You don't. They do it for you.
A screen capture from facebook regarding a band being prevented from playing at The Victorious Festival, Portsmouth, because they showed a Palestinian Flag: Bradley Robinson: Good......only flag on stage should be the Union Jack or the Saint George is cross
August 24, 2025 at 12:19 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
While other companies are worrying about microplastics and reformulating their packaging to biodegradable forms, Parker decide they'll replace their serviceable iconic card boxes with this shitty blister pack. This will be the last time I buy Quink ink. Arseholes in the marketing team, for sure.
Quink ink bottle in massive wasteful polluting blister pack.
August 17, 2025 at 6:56 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Have been reconsidering Tade Thompson's Rosewater Trilogy, and i really think the ambition and joy in it are fantastic. A kind of mash-up of spy/detective/alien invasion/dystopian genres, there is something very cool about it. Tade is one of the greats of this generation. A one-off.
The cover of the first edition of Tade Thompson's Rosewater. A man in silhouette with back to viewer faces a murky pink fog with structures rising from it. A classic "quest" style image.
August 17, 2025 at 6:35 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
I've been a busy bee and have organised a Festival in Portsmouth this September. 10 days of events celebrating Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes while he lived in Southsea. The full programme is here www.lifeisamazing.co.uk. Please share this post! :)
August 16, 2025 at 10:50 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
I'm well aware of the unfashionable nature of sonnets... but this popped up on social media - something I wrote after the Charlottesville car attack in 2017, and the far right rally.

I think it's quite good.

I would replace "stepped" for "crept" in a redraft (which I have done in the alt text).
Charlottesville We grew complacent with democracy thinking time-worn populist tricks long past, beaten with care and common decency - and banished fascism had breathed its last. We didn't foresee how old dogs can learn new tricks utilising technology to raise the shade of old ideas and turn young minds to perverse ideology. No, our satisfied watchdogs fatly slept sung to sleep by conceit, while at the gate the subtle spectre saw them doze and crept past, to broadcast its daily dose of hate. It tweets, it blames; denies grief, pain or guilt - it feigns clean hands. As if no blood were spilt.
August 16, 2025 at 7:55 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Ecosia offers AI returns in searches when I specifically deactivated AI in my profile.

Which now leads me to think that this claim from Ecosia is a lie:

@blog.ecosia.org.web.brid.gy‬
A snip from Ecosia profile page with info about 15% renewable energy highlighted - see below. Collective impact The global collective impact you are having as part of the Ecosia community. €95,193,602 dedicated to climate action 70% Tree planting & regenerative agriculture We restore and protect biodiversity hotspots across the planet 15% Renewable energy Our solar panels produce enough energy to power all searches on Ecosia twice over 10% Green innovation We finance companies that help the planet with innovative solutions 5% Climate activism We partner with NGOs to fight for political change
August 6, 2025 at 4:10 AM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
This is my design for the little book that will accompany Holmes Fest this year. It's only around 50 pages, but it will be a nice souvenir edition for attendees, or anyone who's interested in Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes.

More on Holmes Fest here. www.lifeisamazing.co.uk
August 5, 2025 at 2:11 PM
lifeisamazing.bsky.social
Stumbled across notes I laid down for a novel 2 years ago. This pair of paragraphs stood out.
The AI calculated and manufactured a war in the Middle East, which ended in Israeli nuclear weapons attacking Iran, and Iran retaliating, wiping out Jerusalem. Whilst this horror was going on, it adjusted the mix in the food factories to ensure that adjacent refugees, in their billions in camps around the Middle East and further afield died within a few weeks. All this was blamed on religion.
June 21, 2025 at 4:25 AM