Horrified by news of our friend & fellow bookseller Mahmoud being arrested by Israeli forces alongside his nephew.
A tireless campaigner for the power of literature, Mahmoud was in Edinburgh with us just months ago - please join call for their release!
#Booksky
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...
The cover of the David Lynch book ‘Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity’,
A page from the David Lynch book ‘Catching the Big Fish’ from the chapter “Ask the idea”.
A page from the David Lynch book ‘Catching the Big Fish’ from the chapter “Turn on the light”.
A page from the David Lynch book ‘Catching the Big Fish’ from the chapter “In closing”.
Diving back into David Lynch’s ‘Catching the Big Fish’ 🤍💡
“May everyone be happy. May everyone be free of disease.
May auspiciousness be seen everywhere. May suffering belong to no one.
Peace.”
Entry info for the word ‘velvet’ in the Middle English Compendium, showing multiple forms of the word’s spelling and its etymology.
Excerpt from the Online Etymology article ‘She Wore Blue Welwet’, which reads: “At each one of those "velvet" variants, see a sleeve, a hand, a pen hovered over parchment. Pausing. Early morning slant of light as the chatelaine checks a royal wardrobe; candle-light toward dusk in a gloomy chancery office. Are they pronouncing "vel-vet," aloud or mentally, then trying to chop the sound and make it fit a series of characters of definite sound values?”
Excerpt from the Online Etymology article ‘She Wore Blue Welwet’, which reads: “Or are they trying to fit it into a family of known words with one eye hunting etymology and one ear tuned to sound? The medieval English were connecters; any two medieval people who discovered a common occupation seemed to at once start a guild. We never will hear them speak, but we can catch, almost, the sound of their thought as the oak-gall ink slowly hardens on the quill paused above the page, a thousand years ago.”
Feel like there should be a specific word for the little sparklers that go off inside my brain every single time I go down an Online Etymology rabbit hole 🌌
www.etymonline.com/columns/post...
The interior of the Library of Mistakes in Edinburgh. In the foreground, the Robert Maxwell-themed board game ‘Daily Mission’; in the background, leather armchairs, bookshelves and a spiral staircase.
If you’ve ever wondered whether Edinburgh’s @libraryofmistakes.bsky.social has a Robert Maxwell-themed board game, the answer is yes!
“…And yet from the considered effort of reading comes consideration. So it isn’t simply that we no longer read at length or read deeply; we no longer value contemplation.”
“Reading can be slow. It can be quite challenging work – and not simply because our attention has been increasingly conditioned, fragmented with distractions and disruptions...”
A painting of an orange cat playing the bagpipes, in a quasi-medieval style
A @weirdmedieval.bsky.social tribute in the wild??
The poem “Maeshowe: Midwinter” by Orkney poet George Mackay Brown.
“The blackness is solid as a
stone that locks a tomb.
no star shines there.”
George Mackay Brown, “Maeshowe: Midwinter”
#WinterSolstice #Maeshowe
“Scotland is one of the planet’s most nature-depleted countries. Centuries of overexploiting its natural resources have left us with somewhere that looks beautiful, but is dwindling day by day.” Brian Cox backs calls for Scotland to become first #RewildingNation
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
An excerpt from Anne Carson’s novel in verse Autobiography of Red. The poem is titled ‘XIX. FROM THE ARCHAIC TO THE FAST SELF’ and begins: “Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling. He woke fast from a loud wild dream that vanished at once and lay listening to the splendid subtle ravines of Hades where hardworking dawn monkeys were wheedling and baiting one another up and down the mahogany trees. The cries took little nicks out of him. This was when Geryon liked to plan his autobiography, in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul. Like the terrestrial crust of the earth which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures.”
“Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.”
— Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
