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wjpme.bsky.social
John ‘the importance of ideas & information’
@wjpme.bsky.social
600 followers 1.5K following 1.6K posts
#ceasefire #nevervotetory Outsider | not in the Meursault way | Cymro #AntiTory since 62 | republican ‘…let’s exalt the importance of ideas and information.’ Loves reading & enjoys a pint or two! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇵🇸
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wjpme.bsky.social
Absolutely pissed off with this capitalist shit show. Ridiculous. Untenable. Get all railways back in public state ownership now!!
Privatisation of railways is a disaster. This is why UK is fucked.
November 2, 2025 at 6:08 PM
wjpme.bsky.social
the gangster show having concluded seasons ago, and fashion having moved on.’ @newyorker.com Thanks for introducing me to Mr Ferris.
The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris Eleven deliciously dark, funny and perceptive short stories exploring how we live now.
October 30, 2025 at 8:35 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
I really, really enjoyed this short story collection by Penelope Mortimer. The accounts of ‘ordinary’ lives are brilliant with people revealing their deep thoughts and neuroses. I particularly enjoyed The Parson and The Renegade. @dauntbookspub.bsky.social @dauntbooks.bsky.social
Saturday Lunch With the Brownings by Penelope Mortimer
October 25, 2025 at 8:59 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
The Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem - The Cry of the Children - and your excellent analysis of it prompted me to look up the royal commission’s report. I found this.
Extract from royal commission on children working in industrial settings in the nineteenth century.
October 23, 2025 at 5:32 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
@cathamclarke.bsky.social Professor. I bought the book & it’s wonderful. Thank you. #poetry #history #England
This is the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, which connect us directly with the nation’s past, and the experiences, emotions and imaginations of those who lived it. These poems open windows onto wildly different worlds – from the public to the intimate, from the witty to the savage, from the playful to the wistful. They take us onto battlefields, inside royal courts, down coal mines and below stairs in great houses. Their creators, witnesses to events from the Great Fire of London to the Miners’ Strike, range from the famous to the forgotten, yet each invites us into an immersive encounter with their own time. A History of England in 25 Poems is a portal to the past; a constant companion, filled with vivid voices and surprising stories alongside familiar landmarks, and language that speaks in new ways on each reading. Catherine Clarke’s knowledge and passion take us inside the words and the moments they capture, with thoughtful insights, humour and new perspectives on how the nation has dreamed itself into existence – and who gets to tell England’s story.
October 22, 2025 at 6:36 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
I will definitely have a listen yet hope that it will not lead to more book purchases [not really] like these because of Take Four Books! #BookSky 💙📚
Pictures of three books purchased on account of listening to Take Four Books!
October 5, 2025 at 7:26 PM
wjpme.bsky.social
‘Mr Bridge took a sip of water, wiped his lips on the napkin, and said, 'Alex presumes a great deal. Civilization may not be rotting. My personal opinion is that if Roosevelt and his left-wing advisers do not undermine the freedom and security of this nation we should see advances in many fields
Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his prejudice, self doubts and narrow outlook - his Christmas gifts to the family are stock certificates, which he immediately takes back to manage on their behalf - yet he is also kind and charitable, loving his wife while never able to tell her so. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations, and a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.
October 1, 2025 at 6:21 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
In this novel sometimes what is unsaid is as revealing as what is not said! #BookSky 💙📚 #MrBridge #IAmReading
Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his prejudice, self doubts and narrow outlook - his Christmas gifts to the family are stock certificates, which he immediately takes back to manage on their behalf - yet he is also kind and charitable, loving his wife while never able to tell her so. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations, and a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.
September 24, 2025 at 7:16 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
Along with its companion! #BookSky #IAmReading 💙 📚 #GreatAmericanNovel
Cover of Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell Mrs Bridge is a housewife and mother in Kansas City, bringing up her three children and making a home for her husband, Walter. She shops, plays bridge and goes to the country club, but as time passes she finds that her life is unfulfilling and she cannot even ask herself the questions that trouble her. And while the children grow up and become strangers to her, Mrs Bridge - kind yet bigoted, rich yet simple - is left uncertain of her place in the world. In a series of comical, subtle and shattering vignettes, Evan S. Connell captures perfectly the contradictions, narrow margins and fear that can shadow a life of comfort.
September 24, 2025 at 6:22 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
‘In an effort to rid himself of them he thought about them deliberately; and doing so he remembered the psychiatrist commenting at lunch one day that it is not what a man does that he later regrets but what a man has failed to do.’ Is this not the great American novel? #BookSky #IAmReading 💙 📚
Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his prejudice, self doubts and narrow outlook - his Christmas gifts to the family are stock certificates, which he immediately takes back to manage on their behalf - yet he is also kind and charitable, loving his wife while never able to tell her so. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations, and a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.
September 24, 2025 at 6:22 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
I strongly recommend this book. Unputdownable to be fair. At times it’s very emotionally charged. The characters are brilliantly drawn. The ups & downs make you want to keep reading. There’s a message & it’s a crucial one for our societies. 💙📚 #BookSky #Reading @scribnerbooks.bsky.social
NESTING by Roisín O’Donnell AN EXTRAORDINARY AND URGENT DEBUT BY A PRIZE-WINNING IRISH WRITER, NESTING INTRODUCES AN UNFORGETTABLE NEW VOICE IN FICTION. On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan's relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another. What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan's control - and what will be the cost? Tense, beautiful, and underpinned by an unassailable love, hope and resilience, this is the story of one woman's bid to start over.
September 23, 2025 at 8:41 PM
wjpme.bsky.social
Drifted. Got through each day. Focused on the minutiae. First shoes. Vaccinations. Chesty coughs. Sweet-potato purée.
Made a religion out of motherhood. A cult that blocked out everything else.’

Brilliant summing up of a woman’s suffocation from Roisín O’Donnell’s debut novel Nesting. 💙📚 #BookSky
NESTING by Roisín O’Donnell AN EXTRAORDINARY AND URGENT DEBUT BY A PRIZE-WINNING IRISH WRITER, NESTING INTRODUCES AN UNFORGETTABLE NEW VOICE IN FICTION. On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan's relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another. What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan's control - and what will be the cost? Tense, beautiful, and underpinned by an unassailable love, hope and resilience, this is the story of one woman's bid to start over.
September 23, 2025 at 10:30 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
Great description of a seaside town out of season especially this ‘and the rococo doors of the carousel are boarded over and if one peers through a knot-hole into its gloom the horses, which buck and plunge through summer prosperity, 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading
THE ANATOMY LESSON and other stories EVAN S. CONNELL, JNR. Evan Connell's short stories, one by one, have been earning a reputation in knowledgeable quarters. Already this young writer has appeared in major annual 'prize' collections, including The O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1949 and 1951, and Best American Short Stories of 1955. Now the publishers feel that it is time to present the tales as a collection and that the presentation signals the opening of an exciting career. Unlike most first books of stories, this one exhibits the versatility and explosive force of a talent already mature. From the title story, which deals with the remarkable lecture an art class receives from its usually taciturn master, to "The Yellow Raft," an unforgettable sketch of a flyer who crashes into the sea, these are stories with a wide range of subject matter, each achieving a precise and profound effect in its own distinctive manner. Mr. Connell has travelled widely—has lived in France and Spain— so that the impact of these American stories is strengthened by a cosmopolitan background. Wrapper design by Elizabeth Grant
September 18, 2025 at 6:14 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
A wonderful description of the perfect kiss. ‘‘This man kissed you like it was what he was created to do. He tasted of mint, his lips were soft but had perfect pressure. He knew how to use his tongue, gently at first, then deep as you greedily drank him all in. 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #kissing
Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad by Damilare Kuku There's a story of a young lady who tries to find her oyibo soulmate on the streets of Lagos; another of a pastor's wife who defends her husband from an allegation of adultery; of a wife who takes a knife to her husband's penis; and of a night of lust between a rising musician and his Instagram baddie that takes an unexpected turn...
September 18, 2025 at 4:13 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
‘The man is no good. He's no good, I tell you. He never was any good. He never will be any good!'’

Mr Bridge is in no doubt about Senator Horton Bailey. Do we know if he is blue or red? I suspect blue! 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #TuesdayReads #TBR
Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his prejudice, self doubts and narrow outlook - his Christmas gifts to the family are stock certificates, which he immediately takes back to manage on their behalf - yet he is also kind and charitable, loving his wife while never able to tell her so. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations, and a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.
September 16, 2025 at 7:44 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
So, early tomorrow, I must get up again to do what I have done today. I will get up early to do this, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and there is nothing to discuss.’
Mr Bridge’s life is not one to envy. It’s a day to day slog. It must be unbearable. He’s like Sisyphus. 💙📚 #BookSky
Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his prejudice, self doubts and narrow outlook - his Christmas gifts to the family are stock certificates, which he immediately takes back to manage on their behalf - yet he is also kind and charitable, loving his wife while never able to tell her so. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations, and a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.
September 16, 2025 at 7:38 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
Dr Foster does not appear to have any saving graces! ‘Bland was the word for him. He was a fifty-year-old Boy Scout. He had no more sinew than a dish of custard.’ 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #TBR
Cover of Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his prejudice, self doubts and narrow outlook - his Christmas gifts to the family are stock certificates, which he immediately takes back to manage on their behalf - yet he is also kind and charitable, loving his wife while never able to tell her so. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations, and a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.
September 16, 2025 at 7:34 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
He smiled and shut his eyes. He remembered the fears he used to have. He remembered that he had cried himself to sleep many nights because he believed that on the day he became twelve years old he would be forced to leave home and seek his fortune. 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #TBR
Mr Bridge by Evan S. Connell Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his prejudice, self doubts and narrow outlook - his Christmas gifts to the family are stock certificates, which he immediately takes back to manage on their behalf - yet he is also kind and charitable, loving his wife while never able to tell her so. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations, and a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.
September 13, 2025 at 8:13 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
As exemplified in this excellent book Offshore: Stealth, Wealth and the New Colonialism by @ebharrington.bsky.social
Offshore: Stealth, Wealth and the New Colonialism by Brooke Harrington AN EYE-OPENING ACCOUNT OF OFFSHORE FINANCE: THE SECRETIVE SYSTEM MAKING THE RICH RICHER WHILE CORRODING DEMOCRACY, CAPITALISM, AND THE ENVIRONMENT. How do the rich keep getting richer, while dodging the long arm of the law? From playboy billionaires avoiding taxes on private islands to Russian oligarchs sailing away from sanctions on their superyachts, the ultra-rich seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. That world is called off-shore. Hidden from view, the world's ultra-rich can use offshore finance to escape tax obligations, labor and environmental safety regulations, campaign finance rules, and other laws that get in their way. In Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism, sociologist Brooke Harrington reveals how this system works, as well as how it degrades democracy, the economy, and the public goods on which we all depend. Harrington spent eight years infiltrating this secretive world by training as a wealth manager, traveling from glossy European and North American capitals to developing countries in South America and Africa, and to islands in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean, and South Pacific regions. Through interviews with dozens of wealth managers in nineteen countries, Harrington uncovered how this global network of offshore financial centers arose from the remnants of colonialism and has created a new, hidden imperial class.
September 12, 2025 at 5:25 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
‘Often she sat up with a start, and after a desperate glance at the clock she would be ashamed to learn that two or three hours had gone by while she was thinking. She had given up working at the charity center; there were more than enough volunteers, 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #TBR
Cover of Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell Mrs Bridge is a housewife and mother in Kansas City, bringing up her three children and making a home for her husband, Walter. She shops, plays bridge and goes to the country club, but as time passes she finds that her life is unfulfilling and she cannot even ask herself the questions that trouble her. And while the children grow up and become strangers to her, Mrs Bridge - kind yet bigoted, rich yet simple - is left uncertain of her place in the world. In a series of comical, subtle and shattering vignettes, Evan S. Connell captures perfectly the contradictions, narrow margins and fear that can shadow a life of comfort.
September 11, 2025 at 6:47 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
The Kansas City Tattler magazine - in Evan S Connell’s Mrs Bridge - really was a mid-century [perhaps entire century] version of Facebook?
‘Of all the things in The Tattler she was most impressed with the philosophy. 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #MondayReads #TBR
Cover of Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell Mrs Bridge is a housewife and mother in Kansas City, bringing up her three children and making a home for her husband, Walter. She shops, plays bridge and goes to the country club, but as time passes she finds that her life is unfulfilling and she cannot even ask herself the questions that trouble her. And while the children grow up and become strangers to her, Mrs Bridge - kind yet bigoted, rich yet simple - is left uncertain of her place in the world. In a series of comical, subtle and shattering vignettes, Evan S. Connell captures perfectly the contradictions, narrow margins and fear that can shadow a life of comfort.
September 10, 2025 at 5:28 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
‘Could she explain how the leisure of her life - that exquisite idleness he had created by giving her everything - was driving her insane?’

Insanity caused by wealth; is it worse than insanity caused by poverty? 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #MondayReads #TBR #Veblen #EvanSConnell
Cover of Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell Mrs Bridge is a housewife and mother in Kansas City, bringing up her three children and making a home for her husband, Walter. She shops, plays bridge and goes to the country club, but as time passes she finds that her life is unfulfilling and she cannot even ask herself the questions that trouble her. And while the children grow up and become strangers to her, Mrs Bridge - kind yet bigoted, rich yet simple - is left uncertain of her place in the world. In a series of comical, subtle and shattering vignettes, Evan S. Connell captures perfectly the contradictions, narrow margins and fear that can shadow a life of comfort.
September 10, 2025 at 5:10 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
I have just started reading Wilfred Burchett’s book: Shadows of Hiroshima.
SHADOWS OF HIROSHIMA By WILFRED BURCHETT ‘I Write This As A Warning To The World'. This headline in the London Daily Express on 5 September 1945 was the first cry of alarm that the age! of threatening nuclear catastrophe had dawned. Wilfred Burchett, who became the most famous radical journalist of his generation, wrote it and the accompanying story in the ruins of Hiroshima. He was the first Westerner of any kind to enter the city after the atomic blast. The story of his efforts to reach Hiroshima is retold in this dramatic book. It shows how the politics of nuclear confusion was inaugurated before the ashes of the city had cooled. Burchett details the attempts by the US government to deny the effects of radiation sickness described in his reports. He reveals the pressure to silence him through deportation from Japan, and in a telling analysis he uncovers once more the political calculations that led Truman to drop the bomb. The other major character in this book is the population of Hiroshima itself. The survivors of the attack and their children have lived with the legacy of nuclear war for two generations. The author, a regular visitor to the city recounts their experience of callous treatment, medical neglect, social isolation and eventual reinvigoration through the Japanese peace movement. Wilfred Burchett (1911-1983) covered every major war and revolution in the Third World from the end of the Second World War until his death. A personal friend of Ho Chi Minh, and a major figure in the movement againsti the Vietnam War, he was treated as an outcast by the government of his native Australia. He travelled constantly between Europe, Africa and Asia despite increasing ill health. This is the last book he was able to complete before he died.
September 9, 2025 at 11:55 PM
wjpme.bsky.social
But the bandits took Mr Porter's keys, and after telling everyone not to move for thirty minutes they ran out the side door. Heywood Duncan immediately phoned the police while Dr Foster, who had dropped in unexpectedly and who had been robbed the same as the others, 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading
Cover of Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell Mrs Bridge is a housewife and mother in Kansas City, bringing up her three children and making a home for her husband, Walter. She shops, plays bridge and goes to the country club, but as time passes she finds that her life is unfulfilling and she cannot even ask herself the questions that trouble her. And while the children grow up and become strangers to her, Mrs Bridge - kind yet bigoted, rich yet simple - is left uncertain of her place in the world. In a series of comical, subtle and shattering vignettes, Evan S. Connell captures perfectly the contradictions, narrow margins and fear that can shadow a life of comfort.
September 9, 2025 at 11:49 AM
wjpme.bsky.social
Well,' said Madge Arlen, who was shuffling the cards with a cigarette in her mouth and one eye closed against the smoke, 'you can thank Grace. She sent the mayor a telegram.'’ A wonderful image. 💙📚 #BookSky #AmReading #MondayReads #TBR
Cover of Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell Mrs Bridge is a housewife and mother in Kansas City, bringing up her three children and making a home for her husband, Walter. She shops, plays bridge and goes to the country club, but as time passes she finds that her life is unfulfilling and she cannot even ask herself the questions that trouble her. And while the children grow up and become strangers to her, Mrs Bridge - kind yet bigoted, rich yet simple - is left uncertain of her place in the world. In a series of comical, subtle and shattering vignettes, Evan S. Connell captures perfectly the contradictions, narrow margins and fear that can shadow a life of comfort.
September 9, 2025 at 11:39 AM