Zebydeb
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zebydeb.bsky.social
Zebydeb
@zebydeb.bsky.social
100 followers 200 following 570 posts
Hello. I’m a fairly unsocial social media user. This is a personal account, nothing to promote.
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zebydeb.bsky.social
This has been on my coffee table for dipping in for about two years, but this morning I read the final essay. Pullman is worth reading on any topic he chooses. Art, literature, religion are recurring themes of course. 💙📚
Front cover of Daemon Voices by Philip Pullman. Subtitle is On Stories and Storytelling.
June 26, 2025 at 11:12 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
If you see this, post an image you saved because it made you laugh.
Front page of a new magazine. Main headline is: corpse crisis, mortuary overflowing with bodies. Overlapping that, an advert that says: need storage space? Install a loft ladder!
June 26, 2025 at 7:20 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Just finished reading Tom Hanks’s novel. It’s a heart-warmer. Unexpectedly, it reminded me of The Martian: lots of problem solving. 💙📚
Front cover of the novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.
June 21, 2025 at 7:12 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
I’ve been reading Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford, an autobiographical novel of growing up in the 1910s to 20s in genteel poverty around Europe. It’s charming, bookended with sadness as she loses one parent and then the other. 💙📚
Front cover of the novel Jigsaw, with a painting of a Mediterranean seaside.
June 11, 2025 at 8:47 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Something unusual from the Siena exhibition at the National Gallery. A holy baby has been born, but not the one you’re thinking of.
Part of a painting. A haloed woman in purple reclines while midwives bathe her baby, which also has a halo.
June 6, 2025 at 9:26 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
The bluesky elders, always watching.
Reddish clay sculptures of two big hairy human-sized but not human figures.
June 1, 2025 at 3:55 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Presumably, one could take a job like this and use AI to do all the work of generating twaddle.
Screenshot from LinkedIn promoting the role of viral TikTok screenwriter.
May 21, 2025 at 7:36 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
I have finished reading SPQR with a sense of achievement, because it’s huge and took me a long time! Sobering in the current moment, though, to read about how a somewhat-democratic republic changed quite smoothly into the autocratic Roman Empire… 💙📚
Front cover of SPQR A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard.
May 19, 2025 at 10:42 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
I’ve just read two novels that each have a distinctive narrative voice of a stubborn, frustrated older woman. Very enjoyable, perhaps because I am also stubborn, somewhat frustrated and no longer young! The Fraud and The Apology. 💙📚
Front cover of The Fraud, a novel by Zadie Smith. Front cover of The Apology, a novel by Jimin Han.
May 9, 2025 at 5:03 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
SPQR by Mary Beard. Outside in the sun!
A book and a mug of tea.
April 11, 2025 at 2:19 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Repost with a favourite book from childhood. 💙📚

Janet Ahlberg’s art is unforgettable.
Front cover of Peepo! A children’s book by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. The illustration is a baby peering out of an old-fashioned pram.
April 9, 2025 at 7:57 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Beautiful Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. It escaped the fashion for remodelling in the eighteenth century, so you can really feel what a medieval-into-Tudor house was like.
A leaded glass window and wood-panelled walls. A large Manor House with stone walls, leaded window panes and battlements.
April 3, 2025 at 8:52 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
We had very good sunlight today.
Frontage of St Albans Abbey. Late afternoon sunlight gives the pale stone a warm tint.
March 20, 2025 at 8:10 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
I’ve been reading Hild and Menewood by @nicolaz.bsky.social These books are just so, so good. Hild is very attuned to her natural environment so a lovely seasonal read for early spring, even though I can’t interpret the buds and birds as well as she can. 💙📚
Front cover of the novel Hild by Nicola Griffith. Front cover of Menewood by Nicola Griffith. Artwork shows the character Hild.
March 3, 2025 at 9:35 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Hemel Hempstead now has its first Little Free Library! Not showing on maps yet, but it’s located at The Denes shopping centre on Barnacres Road. Nice mixture of books there including plenty for kids. 💙📚
A little free library. That is, a hutch full of books, mounted on a pole.
February 12, 2025 at 3:59 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
I have been reading another accidental double bill, about cities: Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz and The Reflection of Sand by Tan Gang. 💙📚
Front cover of Four Lost Cities. Front cover of Clarkesworld magazine issue 213.
February 6, 2025 at 7:51 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Took a different route through Bloomsbury the other day and stumbled upon this little bit of bookselling history. 💙📚
An old brass sign for W H Smith, the bookseller and newsagent. There is a hole in the sign. A plaque below explains that this was Smiths head office and the sign was damaged by shrapnel during a 1940 air raid.
February 3, 2025 at 3:49 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Been reading an outer space double bill:
Front cover of A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? Front cover of As Many Ships as Stars.
January 24, 2025 at 8:07 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Without downloading new pics, where are you mentally?
Drawing of a troll doll with ginger hair. Caption reads: Troll hair, don’t care.
January 24, 2025 at 12:58 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Panel from a Doonesbury comic strip. Duke looks dazed. Honey says “What was once a charming American myth is now officially true - anyone can be President!”
January 20, 2025 at 5:19 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Lots of interesting pieces in the British Library exhibition on medieval women. This medical manual amused me. If I wanted to learn the practice of cupping, not sure how much this would help. www.bl.uk/whats-on/med...
Drawing of a woman in medieval dress placing round objects on the semi-naked body of a patient.
January 17, 2025 at 9:14 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Really enjoyed The Wager by @davidgrann.bsky.social, a page-turning narrative of an eighteenth-century shipwreck. It is astonishing that anyone was able to survive everything they went through, let alone create seaworthy boats to escape. Best read about from the safety of home! 💙📚
Front cover of The Wager by David Grann. It shows a sailing ship in high seas.
January 7, 2025 at 1:11 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Finally setting foot inside Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire, after years of curiosity!
Looming columns and portico over the entrance to a stately home. Chandelier hanging from an ornate ceiling. Detail of a ram’s head that is part of a marble fireplace surround.
December 31, 2024 at 10:22 AM
zebydeb.bsky.social
Probably the last book I will finish reading in 2024: The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Fascinating medical detective work, intense stories of illness and sometimes recovery, and enough basic explanation that an ignoramus like me can follow along. Recommended! 💙📚
Front cover of the book The Song of the Cell.
December 29, 2024 at 8:09 PM
zebydeb.bsky.social

Post a pic you took to add some calm to the timeline
A secluded garden square among old Dutch houses, with a statue of a woman in old-fashioned clothing. There are spring leaves on the trees and the sun is shining.
November 30, 2024 at 10:58 AM