Ok, there are some genuine holiday posts in the works, I promise. I’ve gone through the mountain of photos I took and picked out a molehill of good ones, so One Day Real Soon they’ll appear here.

Today though, I’m rhapsodising (is that a word?) about my first Boekenmarkt Spui in three months. Whee!

  • Flann O’Brien‘s The Dalkey Archive, which stars De Selby of The Third Policeman fame. They call O’Brien (a pseudonym of Brian O’Nolan) “Ireland’s funniest genius”, I presume because he’s funnier than Joyce. (Good thing Breanndán doesn’t read this, them’s fightin’ words. He should be stoked: apparently “Ó Nualláin” is how O’Nolan should have spelled his name.) Oh and Good Lord, this edition has a cover illustration by Ralph Steadman. Glorious!
  • William Morris: News From Nowhere and selected writings and designs. The stallholder dude commented on the range encompassed by these two: from ultra-serious societal critique and back-to-the-land utopianism to batshit crazy surrealism in five minutes of browsing. Variety is spicy, isn’t that what they say? For some reason I keep bumping into Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement lately (my calligraphy-and-typography reading most likely) so I’m pleased to be able to read some of what the man actually wrote.

And that’s it, I was very restrained. Although I do still have the Bible, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and Blind Bay Hookers (which, despite the title, is about small shipping in Golden Bay and Nelson) to work through from my New Zealand haul, as well as new New Weird in the post… Several months of accumulated travelling-light pressure makes quite an explosion, it turns out.

(More promises: I read quite a bit on my travels, LT reviews will be forthcoming, including biographies of Turing and T.E. “of Arabia” Lawrence, the history of the OED, and Swamp Fever: a Golden Bay Memoir. Forthcoming… sometime. This year, certainly. This season, maybe.)