iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rhys Carré’s try against Ireland… oh, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy that. The look on his face was glorious, no matter who you support.

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First time I’ve shopped so enthusiastically that I’ve been mistaken for staff. That’s some sort of achievement, surely.

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I wasn’t sure. Children’s section, perhaps? He looked unimpressed by my lack of knowledge, then it dawned on me. “You think I work here, don’t you?” “Well, yes, sorry, I mean you do look like you do…” he said as he gestured to all the books in my arms.

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The secondhand section of Heffers was particularly fruitful today. I took advantage. French literature mostly. Balzac. Flaubert. Sand. More. As I was tottering up the stairs with an armful of paperbacks, I was stopped by another customer and, somewhat peremptorily, asked where the board games were.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Am I followed by anyone who knows anything about poster restoration? I’ve fished this magnificent thing out of the roof after nearly a decade and it’s (I suppose inevitably) crumpled. How can I flatten Monsieur Hulot? I want him on display again.

A framed poster of Les Vacances de M. Hulot that’s showing its age. There are wrinkles. There are crinkles. There are folds. It doesn’t seem beyond all hope, but it’s clearly past its prime.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

In our thrilling post-truth misinformation age, when ‘fake’ is such a loaded term, it’s worth clarifying that it’s not fake; it’s a joke.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Ha. It’s a hell of an image…

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Scanning through my feed, I briefly thought this said ‘Ethel Merman’.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

“Oh! It’s Bookshop Day!” I remarked to my girlfriend this morning. “What does that even mean?” she said. “EVERY day is bookshop day for you.” It’s a fair point. I bought only one book today. I hope others fared better than I did.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

A very Waugh-heavy haul from the second-hand/charity shops yesterday. The biographies are upgrades and I already have a volume of his letters, but still. Dreadful man, wonderful novelist. (Although his early funny novels are of course infinitely better than late, sentimental ones.)

Spoils of Waugh: five hardback books, bought after a trawl through Cambridge’s many charity shops and G David (I think the only remaining second-hand bookshop). Three are Evelyn Waugh biographies (Stannard and Hastings); two are collections of letters (to/from Nancy Mitford and Lady Diana Cooper).

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Anything to distract from how horrible the outside world appears to be, eh?

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Magpie. Grasshopper. Whatever. I don’t have the attention span to distinguish…

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This advertisement for ‘Pelmanism’ from the back pages of an old Penguin seems pertinent, utter nonsense though it obviously is.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

If the phrase ‘magpie mind’ could be embodied in a single photo, I suspect this one of my bedside table could be a contender for the top ten.

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Congratulations! I’ve preordered it.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

The arrival of a new Nicola Barker book is always, always a cause for celebration. I bloody love her.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Writers rightly wonder whether Bluesky is a reasonable promotional platform. Ten minutes ago, I hadn’t heard of Ben Pester. Then I chanced upon him thanks to @guyware.bsky.social and read this Observer review. Now, I’ve ordered his novel.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Recent acquisition. Absolutely fascinating and I already want more of this sort of thing. Can anyone recommend similar titles about suppressed Russian writers? General ones rather than books about specific writers, I mean. Although specifics probably wouldn’t go amiss.

Shentalinsky’s book The KGB’s Literary Archive – The Discovery of the Ultimate Fate of Russia’s Suppressed Writers.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

No. Penguin Twentieth Century Classics’ eau de nil spines are catnip to me the way Picador’s white spines are to you…

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

One for @nicholasroyle.bsky.social: an insertion in a second-hand copy of Despair by Nabokov.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

What a beautiful thing. (It makes my Sceptre edition look positively lacklustre.) Thank you for sharing.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Aha. That’s it. I’ve just tried on my desktop and it works fine. (The error message was via Apple’s Safari browser on iPhone if that’s of any use to you.) I look forward to reading it – as I do all of your books.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

@cbeditions.bsky.social It might just be because it’s a pre-order, but when I click ‘Add to cart’ on the 176 Interruptions product page (www.cbeditions.com/boyle5.html) I’m taken to a PayPal error page. (Apologies for bearing bad news but it might be something you can/would like to fix.)

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

What an annoying typo.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Passed a load of buttercups earlier. Tried the old “why people leave buttocks lying around, I have no idea” joke (S Fry, 1992) on my children. Barely a titter. Sophisticated lot, the modern-day under-10s.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

I can’t decide whether I’d rather hear Dwayne Johnson deliver the line “Hard cheese, old boy!” or T-T intone “Can you smell what Sir Cuthbert Ware-Armitage is cooking?”

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

An excellent book day: the wonderful Eimear McBride at the Cambridge Literary Featival and a very handsome copy of Hackenfeller’s Ape from Oxfam for only £1.99.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

That looks brilliant. I’d never heard of it but have just taken out a trial subscription for my children on the strength of these two images alone. Thank you for the tip-off!

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Some light reading having finished packing my library and Packing My Library. The first couple of paragraphs of the first chapter made me chuckle.

In the foreground, a copy of So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid. In the background, many, many boxes full of so many books.

The text reads:

An Embarrassment of Books

THOSE WHO ASPIRE to the status of cultured individuals visit bookshops with trepidation, overwhelmed by the immensity of all they have not read. They buy something that they’ve been told is good, make an unsuccessful attempt to read it, and when they have accumulated half a dozen unread books, feel so bad that they are afraid to buy more.

In contrast, the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

And, like a fool returning to his folly, I’ll still buy it in the hope that one of the non-Melrose books will one day prove as good. Some hope, huh?

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Something I do have whose authenticity I don’t doubt (the provenance is sound) is this letter from John Betjeman, which I found tucked in a book I bought a few years ago.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Anyone know Frank Kermode’s handwriting? This copy of Keats’s letters appears to have been his. (I’m also cynical enough to presume it wasn’t his.)

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Further thrilling dispatches from my book-packing adventures (far better than back-packing, I’d say): a stack of Sparks. For years, I thought of her merely as the author of Jean Brodie, so what a delight it was to discover how incredibly funny and bizarre she could be.

A pile of Polygon/Birlinn editions of Muriel Spark’s novels, which were released to celebrate her centenary.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

I’ve found another stack of these. One day, when I realise the lifelong ambition that so many bookish sorts have – a proper library of my own – there will be order rather than chaos as everything will be in the same room. Apart from the loobrary, obviously. That’s where humour belongs.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

I had no idea I had so many of these. Most date from when I was a student in the late ‘90s, when you could pick them up in Oxfam for 39p each. What would it be now? Three or four quid? More for the earlier ones. Seems inflation-busting to me. Perhaps they are a sound investment after all.

P-p-pick up a Penguin: the picture shows a couple of shelves of Penguin paperbacks bearing their 1950s tri-band design.

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Grouping books by size is obviously the most efficient use of packing space. Books that stay apart on the shelves are therefore joined by their fellows in the box. So here’s a claw of Panthers. They look handsome together, don’t they? But why do I have two copies of Perec’s A Void?

A couple of piles of Harvill Panther books.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

A bit premature as I’m not moving for at least another couple of months, but I’ve begun packing my library – always a rather harrowing experience and the only time I’m willing to concede that I might own too many books. Just to warn you, I’m likely to bang on about this task over the coming weeks.

In the foreground, a copy of Alberto Manguel’s book ‘Packing my Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions’; in the background, a wall of shelves containing books that need to be packed.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

(There are a couple of other related titles elsewhere, but these are the ones that count.)

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Oh! @plsoc.bsky.social has followed me back. Let’s have a Larkin shelfie…

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phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

I have that set. Every few months I think I must take it to a charity shop. I still have it.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Ha. I suspect any conclusion I draw will be erroneous.

phaude @phaude.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Thank you. I too meant it to be a lockdown project but, diverted by other reading, failed even to start. Nothing like a lofty aim for a new year, though.