iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

A funny paragraph to reach in the audiobook as I crochet a blanket...

Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"How many friendships have you known formed upon principles of virtue? Most friendships are formed by caprice or by chance, mere confederacies in vice or leagues in folly." -Life of Johnson

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"The world passes away, and we are passing with it." Woof, Sam. Cheer up.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Only 6 hours left?? Better hit that bucket list, Sam.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Ok, my new specialty is children's authors mentioning Sam Johnson and now my collection is up to two! (Beverly Cleary, who took a college course on Johnson, and now Sandra Boynton quoting him.)

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Happy Johnson & Boswell's first meeting-iversary! 🥳

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Omg, lecture on Hester Thrale Piozzi at NYU in April! How exciting! as.nyu.edu/departments/...

as.nyu.edu

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Interesting theory of mental health you got there, Samuel Johnson.

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Reposted by Laura B.

LilGemGem @lilgemgem.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

This amused me greatly 😂 especially the fox painting 😂 Thank yoooo @cheekybudgie.bsky.social

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Oh my god, they added an apostrophe. 😱

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Hang on, my "noted curmudgeon" spidey sense is tingling.... Must be a reference to Sam Johnson in the Times today!

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

"I grew up thinking everything would be perfect if we just had a little more money. Instead the money just blew everything apart. Humans will money themselves to death the same way some dogs and fish will eat themselves to death." -Mark Vonnegut

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Johnson and Boswell really are the ur detective/sidekick pairing. Portly, older, grouchy, neurodiverse, genius widower and younger, alcoholic, womanizing, sycophantic (but ok, also a genius) bounder. That's like 90% descriptive of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

"Without truth there must be a dissolution of society. As it is, there is so little truth, that we are almost afraid to trust our ears; but how should we be, if falsehood were multiplied ten times? Society is held together by communication and information." - Life of Johnson

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

You tell them, Mrs. Knowles!

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

"Some people just want the apocalypse in their lifetime." -T. Kingfisher

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Happy birthday to the great cham, Sam Johnson. Hope somewhere he's driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman who can hold up her end of the conversation!

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Fun fact: the little leftover threads after an embroidery project are called orts.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Moll Flanders has 48,000 reads on Goodreads, which is more than Dickens's Pickwick Papers or Bronte's Shirley, both under 40,000. Color me surprised, or, alternately, what Defoe???

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

I'll never trust a biography that says Jane Austen loved Fanny Burney - the evidence is so flimsy, & seems the opposite of how a historian should operate, to exaggerate a few mentions straight to love. (But then I don't even trust declarations - people say/write things for all kinda reasons.)

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Learning new things as an adult is fun psychologically. I can't play piano, but I can slowly teach myself simple songs. W/ a new song, at first I'm like "This is so hard, it's going to be impossible!" And then once I've learned it, I'm like "well that's nothing, it's a baby song for piano babies."

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Ok I've been taking a break from reading the Piozzi Letters and I have to tell you A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by @tkingfisher.com is DELIGHTFUL. (Doughlightful?)

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Lol ... How often does Boswell actually forget anything that was said? How convenient. 🤨

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

There's a venn diagram of people who read obscure books about Samuel Johnson's circle and people who track their books on Goodreads, and it's just me in the middle.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Still fixated on how absolute Boswell it is to include what a rollicking good time he and Johnson had after finding out HT's son died. To paraphrase: I was like should we feel guilty? Johnson was like no it's cool as long as they don't know. [BOSWELL, MAKING SURE THEY KNOW.]

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

The competition for anecdotes and letters for publication after Johnson's death is queasy. Reminds me of the scene in Dickens after Scrooge dies and everything in his bedroom is looted.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

I'm reading the letters HT wrote to Queeny and Fanny Burney around her marriage to Piozzi, and they make me so sad - they're gushing with affection but in reality all those relationships were broken and she really wasn't much of a mother. But the pretense of adoration... Also FB remains intolerable

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

I was an intern at OUP, organizing files. Found a letter from Tom Lehrer, addressed to the "Myrmidons of OUP" granting them permission to freely republish whatever of his lyrics they desired, however the saw fit ... Foreshadowing his generous "just leave me alone and use whatever you want" policy.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Boswell doubling down on using the Thrales's sons death as a "gotcha" to insult Hester. Whatta charmer.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

My sight reading is rusty, but this looks like a pretty tune by Mr. Piozzi? I don't think HT cared much for music outside of being an accomplishment to acquire for her daughters, but hey, competence is attractive. Now who's got a harpsichord, a bass, a couple violins, and some spare time ...

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

"She always seemed to be a genius of that eccentric kind, which is mighty apt to be accompanied by 'a plentiful lack' of common sense." (Elizabeth Carter on Hester Thrale Piozzi.) Fair enough?

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Hey footnote, I'd say Sophia Streatfeild was more the woman Hester Thrale was convinced her husband was (quite plausibly) in love with, less her "close friend," but you do you

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

It's a little on the nose how Henry Thrale, a relentless philanderer, proceeded to basically eat himself to death against all medical advice. Like yes, he's a man of appetites, we get it. 🙄🙄

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Today's word of the day: cicisbeoism

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Gosh I wonder why Mrs Thrale didn't like Boswell.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

That's Boswell, always looking out for the ladies.

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Yo how do I get my hands on the list of items auctioned off after Hester Piozzi died? (Don't say go to Harvard or Manchester, that ship sailed.)

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Sometimes I'm like wow, how did I go from a master's in English to being such an excel person, and then I reread an old essay I wrote on Daniel Deronda where I exhaustively catalogued every shade of white/pink/red everyone turns and what people think of said coloring and what it signifies and oh

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Laura B. @hecate527.bsky.social · 18/07/2025