An elaborate mural showing types of marine life in the ocean adorns the side of a commercial building.

An elaborate mural showing types of marine life in the ocean adorns the side of a commercial building - wide angle view

An elaborate mural showing types of marine life in the ocean adorns the side of a commercial building - detail

An elaborate mural showing types of marine life in the ocean adorns the side of a commercial building - detail

Mural - Colombo Street near Kilmore Street, Christchurch.

Pioneer Stadium entrance with book sale sign

Books on a trestle table or two

People looking at books on trestle tables

More people looking at books on trestle tables

#booksky

Christchurch City Libraries’ book sale is still on at Pioneer Stadium..get yourself down there, quick!

The sun shining through the green leaves of trees in a park like setting near the river Avon. A statue of a WW1 soldier looks small in the distance

Central Christchurch on Saturday

Me again, in front of some signage at Arty Bees

Exterior of Arty Bees books on Manners Street

Interior of Arty Bees

Some idiot lurking among the shelves at Arty Bees

#booksky
Flew up to the NZ capital Wellington yesterday and did a whirlwind tour of the bookshops I usually only deal with online..

4)Arty Bees on Manners Street - the motherlode of Wellington bookshops (well to me, I first visited it in 2004). A vast array of new and used titles here. Recommended

Signage for The Ferret Bookshop on Cuba Street

Exterior of The Ferret Bookshop.

Interior of the Ferret Bookshop.

SF section of the Ferret Bookshop

#booksky
Flew up to the NZ capital Wellington yesterday and did a whirlwind tour of the bookshops I usually only deal with online..

3)The Ferret Bookshop. A block or so past the Cuba mall is this well-stocked 2nd-hand bookshop. On the smaller size but a few gems to be found here too.

Exterior of Pegasus Books - Left Bank, Cuba Street, Wellington.

Interior of Pegasus Books

Me inside Pegasus Books

Interior of Pegasus Books

#booksky
Flew up to the NZ capital Wellington yesterday and did a whirlwind tour of the bookshops I usually only deal with online..

2)Pegasus Books, off Cuba Street. An old style crazy bookshop of the type the earthquakes stole from us in Christchurch. Great experience just being in there.

The author waits for Unity Books to open on Saturday morning

Interior of Unity Books

Interior of Unity Books - SF section

Interior of Unity Books

#booksky
Flew up to the NZ capital Wellington yesterday and did a whirlwind tour of the bookshops I usually only deal with online..

1) Unity Books on Willis Street - gave me an impression of being a close equivalent of Scorpio Books in Christchurch..perhaps a little less specialised in some genres

A little bit of recent street art near the Christchurch Bus Interchange on Lichfield Street:

#booksky
Steadfast Books in Addington..check it out Christchurch book lovers!

Chubby-faced middle-aged man holds up a copy of the 40th anniversary edition of “Mid-Century Ads” from Taschen.

#booksky
Tonight I’m going back to the century I was born in…

Happy Waitangi Day!

#booksky
Its here, the final Laundry Files book. I’ve being reading this series from Charles Stross for large chunk of my life, more than 15 years..

Emergency biscuit

Holding up an iPad with an ebook copy of “I Deliver Parcels in Beijing” onscreen

Holding up a copy of “Everything Is Tuberculosis”

Holding up a copy of “Slow Gods”

Holding up a copy of “The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture”

#booksky
Starting 2026 trying to ingest all this.

Chubby-faced middle aged man holds up a copy of “The Martians” by David Baron

#booksky
120 years ago the media had Mars-mania..

Review: Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu YouTube video by Christchurch Review of Books

#booksky
A quick look at this little book

youtu.be/ErN9SMYnNR4?...

Newly shaven-headed, chubby-faced middle aged man holds up a copy of Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu

#booksky
Gotta get cats back into my life somehow 🐈

Chubby-faced middle aged man holds up a copy of “Going South” by Colin Hogg and smiles at the camera with a neutral background

#booksky
Settled on reading this one, “Going South” by Colin Hogg from 2015…really enjoying it and racing through the pages this afternoon. It takes the framework of a road trip around the southern most parts of New Zealand’s South Island and adds plenty of personal and local history.

#booksky
Starting on one or two…or maybe all of these tonight.

Mural painted on the side of a building depicting a contemporary pacifc island girl(?) wearing a hat, denim jacket and skirt. Pasifika style patterns form the background. Her legs are in water up to above her knees. City buildings are waterlogged on either side of her. A message about climate change is in the lower left.

Mural painted on the side of a building depicting a contemporary pacifc island girl(?) wearing a hat, denim jacket and skirt. Pasifika style patterns form the background. Her legs are in water up to above her knees. City buildings are waterlogged on either side of her. A message about climate change is in the lower left.

Mural painted on the side of a building depicting a contemporary pacifc island girl(?) wearing a hat, denim jacket and skirt. Pasifika style patterns form the background. Her legs are in water up to above her knees. City buildings are waterlogged on either side of her. A message about climate change is in the lower left.

Mural painted on the side of a building depicting a contemporary pacifc island girl(?) wearing a hat, denim jacket and skirt. Pasifika style patterns form the background. Her legs are in water up to above her knees. City buildings are waterlogged on either side of her. A message about climate change is in the lower left.

Newly completed mural, Manchester Street, Christchurch.

A black and white photograph from the 1940s showing a young girl (my Mother) trying to hold a large tabby cat.

It was my mother’s funeral today, here she is in the 1940s holding a cat, a life long habit.

Take me to your leader (Detail of mural off Colombo Street, Christchurch)

I don’t remember anything about this

A street art mural on the side of a commercial building depicting a young woman holding up a mobile phone in her right hand as she emerges or submerges from a sea of text below.

A street art mural on the side of a commercial building depicting a young woman holding up a mobile phone in her right hand as she emerges or submerges from a sea of text below.

A street art mural on the side of a commercial building depicting a young woman holding up a mobile phone in her right hand as she emerges or submerges from a sea of text below.

A street art mural on the side of a commercial building depicting a young woman holding up a mobile phone in her right hand as she emerges or submerges from a sea of text below. A chubby-faced middle aged man (the photographer) stands in the foreground.

A mural called ‘Ophelia’ - Colombo Street, Christchurch

Chubby-faced middle-aged man holds up the book “The Mad and the Brave” and an iPad Air tablet with the cover of “Heavy Light” displayed via the Kindle app..

#booksky
Still doing the stupid thing of reading multiple books at once…trying to get through these two (different forms of madness I guess) and get to the ideas-heavy SF that I seem to be craving.

Good kitty

An elaborate street art mural painted on the side wall of a shop - it features cartoon style and semi-realistic images of dogs, a boy and exaggerated lettering

An elaborate street art mural painted on the side wall of a shop - it features cartoon style and semi-realistic images of dogs, a boy and exaggerated lettering

An elaborate street art mural painted on the side wall of a shop - it features cartoon style and semi-realistic images of dogs, a boy and exaggerated lettering

An elaborate street art mural painted on the side wall of a shop - it features cartoon style and semi-realistic images of dogs, a boy and exaggerated lettering

Street art mural on Riccarton Road, Christchurch.

Chubby-faced man holds up an iPad on which can be seen the cover of Cory Doctorow’s book “Enshittification” via the Kindle app…

#booksky
Now on to something totally shitty..

Timaru from 20,000ft

Mural off Colombo Street, Sydenham, Christchurch