Two mugs of tea on a cluttered flat desk with laptop and tablets, dictionaries, printer, notebooks, bibelots, and against the walls bookcases of nonfiction organised alphabetially by author or editor surname, and an upright student desk with a still-functioning Yugoslavia-made Olivetti Lettera 31 typewriter from 1989.

View of trees in autumn colours surrounding a swimming pool on a brightly sunny but cool autumn day.

Wispy clouds in the autumn sky, looking northwards across the tree canopy and the lift towers of the art deco block downslope.

The sun flaring in the blue sky over #NorthJozi; true rain clouds not likely to return until September, if not later. Winter will be dry but bright and sunny.

The bane of official electronic correspondence—recall Sisyphus—is the equivalent of HPV to the intellect . . .

Typing away in the #NonFictionRoom of the #NewImperialLibrary in autumnal #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓💻🫖☕️🗝🚪🍂🌍☀️

A white bowl with a broad black rim filled with large cherries.

Midnight festive cherries in the nearly empty and decommissioned #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi: which Eastwick witch is one to be . . .

🌍🍒🎄🛌🏾

Virginia Woolf's "The Common Reader" in 2 volumes; over art by Vanessa Bell. Copy from inside sleeve: This was the first volume of Virginia Woolf's collected essays and was published in 1925. It was, as she herself said, an attempt to view literature with the eyes of the Common Reader who is neither scholar nor critic. It was immediately received with very high praise in very different quarters. Edwin Muir wrote: 'Mrs Woolf is one of the finest critics of our time.' The Observer said: Few books can show a deeper enjoyment, a wider range, or a finer critical intelligence'; the Adelphi: 'Mrs Woolf emerges from partial anonymity as perhaps our most brilliant interpretative critic'; and the Daily News: 'The fame of Mrs Woolf as a novelist of genius is well established, but The Common Reader is the first published revelation of her no less remarkable powers as a critic. Rarely in one mind is found an equal measure of two diverse and usually conflicting qualities, but in these pages northern austerity is shot with Latin gaiety, a marriage of true minds consummated between a wood nymph and a don. Here is imagination, deep and delicate; art which can bind visible beauty in a phrase, or turn a cadence which haunts the ear like music; a feminine insight into character; a feminine subtlety and caprice, and a romantic feminine individuality "unsated and unsubdued", cutting its sharp shape upon the background of the world.' Her second collection of essays, The Second Common Reader, was published seven years after the first, in 1932. She herself described the book as follows: I think one might describe it as an unprofessional book of criticism dealing with such lives and books as have chanced to come my way, rather from the point of view of a writer than of a student or critic. I have often no doubt been interested in a book as a novelist; but as often perhaps have read and written simply for amusement and without any wish to establish a theory.

As one packs up the #NewImperialLibrary, in a mild panic that about 5000 volumes have still to be boxed by Monday 8am, one rediscovers some treasures.

#BookSky 📚💙

Two copies of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" (1843), the one on the left a green vinyl covered copy with the title stamped in red and quotations from the novel stamped in darker green on the cover; on the right a red cloth on board copy with a green Christmas wreath and the book title and author name marked in gold lettering.

To pack or to reread, and if the latter, which copy? The dilemmas of living in relatively quiet times in the #NewImperialLibrary in this little spot on the blue marble (pace Sagan) amid the unquiet horror of the contemporary's unfolding.

Three shelves on three adjacent bookcases mid-pack for removal; fiction alphabetised by author surname from André Brink in the upper left corner to Anton Chekhov in the lower right corner via the Brontës, Anita Brookner, Bulgakov, Burroughs, Aldo Busi, A.S. Byatt, Italo Calvino, Camus, Elias Canetti, Peter Carey, Lewis Carroll, Cervantes, and Michael Chabon, among others.

The demarcations between fact and fiction are subtly fluid. Always, the epistemological status of the two categories has been unstable.
▪️George Steiner, 2008

Packing up the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

Shelves of non-fiction alphabetised ny author or editor surname, from "The Female Gaze" edited by Lorraine Gamman & Margaret Marshment at the top left through Pablo Iglesias at the bottom right.

Shelves of non-fiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from William Boyd at the top left through James Currey at the bottom right.

Shelves of non-fiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Teju Cole at the top left through Mona Eltahawy at the bottom right.

Shelves of non-fiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Robert Miles at the top right through Sol T. Plaatje at the bottom right.

The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf
[…]
The books are whispering.
▫️Charles Simic, 2008 (1990)

📚💙 #NewImperialLibrary #NorthJozi

I hope you are going somewhere which can rehouse the #NewImperialLibrary

Empty bookcases behind stacked book boxes. Some toy brick structures can be seen on the boxes on the left.

Empty bookcases with some book boxes stacked on the left, and more boxes on the shelves of the bookcase on tbe right.

An empty bookcase with 8 stacked boxes of DVD films. Beyond the windows there is the red brick of the building's exterior and the green trees typical of the streets og Johannesburg's original northern suburbs.

An empty bookcase below a window showing green trees on the street.

Fiction for authors P-Z boxed; all DVDs boxed; progress in the #NewImperialLibrary despite the ongoing heatwave and water outages across Johannesburg.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖☕️🧊📦📖🗝🚪🌳🌍☀️

View of empty bookcases with sealed boxes stacked in front of them.

View of stacked boxes and some books.

View of empty boxes with some books in the background.

Weather information: temperature is 23 ⁰C after a daytime high of 33 ⁰C and thunder and light rain.

A change is definitely not as good as a holiday. What possessed one to become so thoroughly possessed by books?

Exhausted packing up the #NewImperialLibrary in hottest #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖☕️📦🗝🚪🌳🌍⛈️

Empty bookcases and some packed and sealed boxes of books in the bottom right corner.

Boxing Days replace Advent in the #NewImperialLibrary: 42 boxes down, 450 or so to go . . . 26 ⁰C after sunset and the moon is waxing gibbous.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📦☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍🌔

View of a desk with a small tablrt, a laptop, a printer, and some dictionaries in front of bookcases with non-fiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from John Cornwell's "Explanation" and John Cottingham's "Rationalism" through Luce Irigaray's "Speculum of the Other Woman" to Kumari Jayawardena's "Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World".

View of a desk witha portable typewrite next to a tablet and a desk lamp in front of shelves of poetry anthologies alphabetised by poet or editor surname from Essop Patel and Marge Piercy through Yeats.

View of a desk in a room with walls of painted grey brick below large windows showing trees in bright morning sunshine outside; on the desk are potted plants, a notebook, a portable typewriter, and some dictionaries and reference works.

A view of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname feom Neil Bartlett through William Boyd on the left, and from Roddy Doyle through Ford Maddox Ford and Richard Ford on the right. In between there is a kitchen and its window in the distance.

Friday morning in the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi, ahead of some radio work as the temperature has already hit 26 ⁰C heading for the mid-30s. A long day of ceremonies ahead.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖💻☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍🌤

Bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname so that in frame there is Graham Swift to Mario Vargas Llosa and some empty shelves from which most of the rest from Vassanji to Zwi have already been boxed.

View of a bookcase with Mary Shelley to Ali Smith arranged alphabetically by author surname, and stacks of notebooks and the 'to be read' pile qlat the foot of the bed next to a basket of spare bedding.

A wall of bookcases, some behind three glass doors, with fiction from Henry Handel Richardson and Samuel Richardson through Philip Roth on to Olive Schreiner and Walter Scott.

A photograph of flattened book boxes leaning against a bedside table, and behind these a fold-up wooden screen and on the shelves, from Dylan Thomas through Miriam Tlali and Phillip Tobias and Colm Tóibín to Leo Tolstoy. Some journals and notebooks can be seen on the bedside table.

One should be boxing the books at about 50 boxes a day given the deadline for the #NewImperialLibrary relocation, but with the temperature in #NorthJozi at 28 ⁰C AFTER sunset, one is supine. 🥵

#BookSky

View of a study with wooden flooring, multiple bookcases, and a handmade kitchen table from 1952 for a desk; the shelves contain non-fiction alphabetised by author surname; on the left of the frqne some Attridge, Atwell, and Atwood can be seen as the shelves run along the wall to terminate with Freud; against the back wall are shelves from Freud (in the Vintage edition of his oeuvre) through Naomi Klein); on the right of the frame are some volumes by Bertrand Russell above Edward W. Said.

Obverse view from the previous photograpg showing the desk; on the left are shelves containing non-fiction from Jonathan Lethem through Alison Lurie; in the centre is a large, white, three door cupboard next to shelves of anthologies of short fiction above poetry anthologies (both alphabetised by author or editor surname; the latter range from Fleur Adcock and Anna Akhmatova through the 4th and 5th editions of "The Norton Anthology of Poetry"); on the right more non-fiction from Alberto Manguel through Plotinus and Plutarch.

View from the position directly opposite the one from which the previous photograph was taken, showing on the left shelves of non-fiction from Tariq Ali through Steve Biko, in the centre shelves perpendicular the previous ones with volumes from Philip Roth through "UNESCO General History of Africa" in its 8 volumes abridged edition, and on the right against the far wall the shelves with Freud to Derrick Jensen and Robert Jensen. The table serving as desk is visible in front of those shelves.

A view into the room from directly opposite the first photograph showing on the left notebooks stacked on a pine shelf next to a white bookcase with volumes frkm René Weis on Shakespeare through Tom Wolfe's "Feom Bauhaus to Our House"; on the left are shelves with volumes from Manguel through Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don’t know that I am their reader.
▫️Alberto Manguel, 2004 🤴🏽📚🤓📖📝☕️🛋️🗝️🚪🌳🌍☀️

#NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi

Sunrise over the jacaranda canopy in Johannesburg, with cirrus couds against a blue sky reflected in a large window on the right of the frame.

Morning view from the balcony of the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

🌳🌍🌤

View of the Calendario Romano open to December, showing a blond man dressed as a priest standing in front of some stonework. The calendar hangs off the side of a bookcase beyond which, against the far wall, are more bookcases containing fiction alphabetised by author surname from Terry Pratchett through Philip Roth.

View of green trees against a blue sky through large sliding windows; various empty green and brown bottles are placed on the windowsill. The walls perpendicular to the windows are lined with bookcases containing fiction alpbabetised by author surname (on the left Richard Russo through Gil Scott-Heron and W.C. Scully; on the right Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn through D.M. Thomas); a bookcase with journals, a small microscope, and three baskets of oddments.

View of various shelves containing non-fiction alphabetised by author or editor surname, the edge of a table, and other shelves with poetry. The shelves in the foreground have non-fiction from Philip Roth through Yanis Varoufakis).

Reverse angle view from the previous photograph showing shelves of non-fiction alphabetised by author or editor surname (in the foreground from Natasha Walter through Oscar Wilde) perpendicular to one another and against the back wall the doors of cupboards reaching to the ceiling, from which a light and fan can be seen dangling in the middle of the top of the frame.

The #NewImperialLibrary at the start of December, high summer in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍🌤

Photograph of bookcases, some against a back wall, one along the right edge of the frame perpendicular to those, with fiction alphabetised by author surname from Muriel Spark to Virginia Woolf at the back, and Mary Shelley to Isaac Bashevis Singer on the right.

Bookcases along three sides of a room with a desk in the middle of the room but in the bottom right corner of the image. The shelves contain nonfiction arranged alphabetically by author or editor surname, from Bloom to Foucault at the back, from Freud to Gordimer on the right, and from Millett to Pinker on the left.

A beige sofa facing two director's chairs on an orange rug in front of bookcases containing fiction alphabetised by author surname from Rumer Goden on the left to Doris Lessing on the right.

Five bookcases along two sides ot a room with fiction alphabetised by author surname from William Boyd to Simone de Beauvoir.

Thinking of my life and what it's given to me
[…]
I'm where I'm supposed to be
Welcome home
▪️Carole King, 1978

Mr Boo Radley Havisham embracing solitude on returning home to the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi after brief travel.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍🌤

A stack of books on a table covered with a white cloth in front of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname (from Octavia Butler through Carlo Collodi); in order from bottom to top in the pile: Claudia Roth Pierpont's "Roth Unbound", Breyten Breytenbach's "Parool/Parole", Alain Touraine's "Beyond Neoliberalism", Adam Small's "The Orange Earth", Yanis Varoufakis's "Another Now", George's Simenon's "My friend Maigret", Sinclair Lewis's "It can't happen here", Allen Ginsberg's "Howl, Kaddish, and Other Poems", Louise Glück's "Averno", Taschen's edition of "Description de l'Egypte", Oliver Sacks's "Gratitude", J.G. Ballard's "Vermillion Sands", Susan Sontag's "Notes on 'camp'", Italy Calvino's "The distance of the moon", Mary Seacole's "Wonderful Adventures", and V.S. Naipaul's "An area of darkness".

Adoptees into the already crowded #NewImperialLibrary (which is on the brink of moving) found in Polokwane.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🚕🛣🌳🌍🌤

Beige sofa with red cushions on an orange carpet in front of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Richard Ford through Aldous Huxley.

A view from one room lined with bookcases into another similarly furnished; the shelves are fiction a d auto/biography alphabetised by author surname from Harold Bascom through James Blisj on the left, and from the "Kama Sutra" through Doris Lessing on the right, and in the centre in the other room, from Norman Mailer through Rohinton Mistry.

A view of two bookcases separating a sitting room from a dining room; on the right fiction and auto/biography alphabetised from Daphne Du Maurier through Jill Alexander Essbaum on a doublesided green bookcase and Edna Fernandes through Richard Ford in a glass-door covered bookcase. Innthe farther room the shelves contain Malcolm Bradbury through George Elliott Clarke behind a dining table covered in a white cloth.

A view of shelves of non-fiction alphabetised by author or editor lining three sides of a room; on the left voljm2s from Nietzsche through Sol Plaatje; in the center against the back wall from Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines (eds) "Takin' it to the streets': a sixties reader" through Robert Fisk; on the right Freud through Gordimer. On the right in the foreground a handmade table from 1952 serving as a desk.

Birdsong and 26 ⁰C as we head for 19h00 in the #NewImperialLibrary and prepare for a trip north into the Limpopo Province in the morning . . .

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌆🌍☀️

Copies of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" in hardback and paperback, first UK editions, Portuguese translation, graphic novel adaptation by Renée Nault, as well as DVDs of the Volker Schlöndorff film adaptation and the hulu television series first season.

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood is such a favourite that one has 24 English copies, the Portuguese translation, the Renée Nault graphic novel, the Volker Schlöndorff film as well as the first season of the hulu television series in the #NewImperialLibrary in Johannesburg.

#BookSky

View into a study showing an early 1950s wooden table with its sides and legs painted white serving as a desk. Bookcases line the shot and the room; pinned to the side of one set of bookcases is a notice board, below which there is a framed print resting on a stack of "London Review of Books" next to a pile of "New York Review of Books". Some tote bags are hanging from a blond wood folding chair facing the desk.

A view of another study with a bookcase containing plays and board games on the left and a student desk with poetry anthologies on its shelves and a portable typewriter on its work surface. On the far right of the frame is a windows in a brick wall painted blue-grey.

A view of a desk with potted plants, a portable typewriter, and some dictionariesand reference works beyond which can be seen large windows showing the jacaranda canopy in and blue sky over Johannesburg in early summer.

View of bookcases in three interconnected rooms and a dining room table covered in white cloth on the right.

Monday morning in the #NewImperialLibrary at the fag-end of a very long year among the least satisfying for the imperious members of the House of Fuller-Hallim . . .

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍☀️

A view of bookcases across a table covered in a white cloth on which can be seen a Batman branded white coffee mug flanked by Philippe Sands's "The Ratline: love, lies and justice on the trail of a Nazi fugitive" and Frederick Lordon's "Willing slaves of capital: Spinoza and Marx on desire". Also on the table is a wooden bowl of red and black soapstone hearts and a toy brick model of a house. The shelves in the background contain fiction alphabetised by author surname from A.S. Byatt through Robertson Davies.

Midmorning coffee in the #NewImperialLibrary, contemplating plots and evading political plops . . .

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍🌤

A tray resting on a sofa arm holds a cup of coffee and vitamin supplement next to Aldo Busi's "Seminario sulla Gioventù", in front of bookcases of fiction alphabetical by author surname from Nadine Gordimer through Saamuel Johnson. A lamp with a red shade can be seen on the left next to the rising back of the sofa.

The leafy green jacaranda tree canopy, at the end of the spring bloom, beyond which can be seen the top floors of orange brick flats and the bluebsky with cirrus clouds.

The morning sun over the top floors and roof of darker red brick flats; on the left, at the bottom of the frame, is a jacaranda tree; the sky is filled with cirrus clouds and the various tiny black specks are pigeons mid-flight.

A view of cirrus clouds against the blue morning sky over the three white lift shaft towers of an art deco block of flats in Johannesburg. At the bottom of the photograph one can see the top of the jacaranda canopy.

Morning tea in the #NewImperialLibrary, #NorthJozi, with liquid fortification and Aldo Busi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🥃🗝🚪🌳🍃🌍🌤

View of walls of bookcases across the length of a table covered with a red cloth. On the table is a toy brick model og a house, a protea in a jar, a vase of dried orchid petals.

A view of a sofa facing two director's chairs with their backs to the viewer; on the sides of the frame are bookcases, the ones on the left and right covering the walls; behind the sofa, rising just a bit higher than a window sill, are three smaller bookcases. The large windows above these bookshelves look out at the fading blossoms in the upper branches of the jacaranda canopy.

A view of the table from the first image, backed by 5 tier medium height bookcases (the three on the left along the short end of the table, the two on the right along its length). Behind the bookcases orange and red cloths filter out the bright sunshine of Johannesburg in late spring.

A view of floor to ceiling bookcases, and on the right of the frame, the shelves of a freestanding white bookcase perpendicular to that wall of books.

The #NewImperialLibrary is migrating. All this and more must be boxed in the next four weeks.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝📦🗝🚪🌳🌍🌤

View of a desk on which can be seen, from left to right, potted plants, Umberto Eco's "Kant and the Platypus", a notebook and pens, a coffee cup and clay coffee pot, a moneybox with the €200 note printed on it, an Olivetti Lettera 33, a row of dictionnaries and "The Chicago Manual of Style", a soapstone box in the shape of the African continent, sheets of paper, and three moneybox tins stacked from largest to smallest all showing reproductions of South African currency with Nelson Mandela's face (from the largest at the bottom showing the orange R200 note, to the middle one displaying the pink R50 note, and the smallest one at the top carrying an image of the blue R100 note). Beyond the desk are large windows through which the jacaranda canopy of Johannesburg at the end of its seasonal bloom and the windows of the room in the next image can be seen.

View of a 1980s pine student desk and bookcase. On the left there are two shelves containing plays by Shakespeare, Sam Shepard, and Wole Soyinka; on the right is the desk with a children's book by South African artist Gerard Sekoto, volumes of poetry alphabetised by author or editor name (from Marge Piercy through William Butler Yeats), a portable manual typewriter, a Paddington Bear figure, a rotary pencil sharpener, a photograph of Chinua Achebe, some pencil holders, and a desk lamp.

View of a packed desk in front of boolcases on which non-fiction volumes are alphabetically arranged by author or editor surname (from J.K. Galbraith through Lucretius); on the desk, from left to right: an iPad, Viktor Shklovsky's "A hunt for optimism", a framed photograph, a jar containing pens and pencils, a laptop, "The Concise Oxford Dictionary", "The Oxfore Dictionary for Writers and Editors", a printer, Frédéric Lordon's "Willing slaves of capitalism: Spinoza and Marx on desire", a biro, a green passport, and a pair of spectacles with round plastic frames in black plastic. Behind the printer there is a noticeboard with reproductions of book covers for works by Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Sindiwe Magona, and Bessie Head, as well as a postcard showing Maputo's skyline.

A view of large windows flanked by bookcases; there are empty green, brown, and clear wine bottles on the window sill, and a two shelf bookcase in the centre below the window. The purple jacaranda canopy of Johannesburg, nearing the end of its seasonal bloom, can be seen through the window underneath a blue sky with a few white clouds.

Friday morning coffee in the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi, the packed four days long week of duty in the rear-view mirror, imperiously completed, one wonders: 'What [fills] a "week end"?'

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🗝🚪🌳🪻🌍🌤

View of desk in front of a noticeboard with pinned book cover reproductions and bookcases packed with non-fiction alphabetised by author surname; on the desk from left to right: a clear box of seaside stones, an iPad, a red coffee mug, a framed photograph, a desk lamp shining onto the bookshelves, a laptop, the "Concise Oxford Dictionary", a brown soapstone box, a printer, "Consequences of capitalism" by Noam Chomsky and Marv Waterstone, and an empty food tin containing pens and pencils.

A desk in a room facing a brick wall painted grey and some windows showing blooming jacaranda trees; on the desk, from left to right, some potted plants, a Yugoslavian made Olivetti Lettera 33 typewriter, a wooden bowl of flower petals, some tins (one caontaining pencils, another a money box with a reproduction of South Africa's one hundred rand note printed on its side showing Nelson Mandela's face), a notebook and pen on a green blotting pad, various dictionaries and a thesaurus, and a red ceramic bowl with dried flower petals.

A bookcase on the left containing plays and a framed photograoh; on the right a student's desk with bookshelves containing poetry alphabetised by author or editor surname; on the desk, from left to right, Gerard Sekoto's children's book, a white glass vase, a portable Antares Capri typewriter, a Paddington Bear money box, a rotary pencil sharpener, a framed postcard of Chinua Achebe, a spiral container of pens and pencils, a black desk lamp with a holder of variously coloured sticky notes, and a tin of paint brushes.

A view of the top shelf of a bookcase containing books and notebooks as well as a tin and a bakelite rotary telephone; above the shelf is a window showing the blue sky over Johannesburg through a scattering of clouds above the purple flowers of the jacaranda canopy; on the right of the frame are three panels of a window reflecting the trees, clouds, and blue sky.

Isolated with coffee amid the unfolding apocalypse in the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🍃🪻🌍🌤

A stack of books on an orange table cloth, from top to bottom: "Why I Write" by George Orwell; "The Prime of Moss Jean Brodie" by Jean Rhys; "Taking Chances" by Molly Keane; "Nothing is Black" by Deirdre Madden; "Old Crow" and "An Advent Calendar" by Shena MacKay; "The Blue Jay's Dance" by Louise Erdrich; "Country Place" by Ann Petry (hardback); "A Pocketful of Rye" by A.J. Cronin (hardback); "Letters from the White South" by Sidney Trentbridge Smith; "The Burning Man" by Sarah Gertrude Millon (hardback); "Dr Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak (hardback, translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky); "Civilizations" by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (hardback); & "Essays and Letters" by Oscar Wilde (Folio Society hardback).

Today's inductees into the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi, from a charity donations sale to restock a municipal library one high-speed rail stop away (all bought for R300 / €15.63 / £13.15 / US$17 / MT1085.52).

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🚆🌳🍃🪻🌍⛅️

Orchids on a table covered with an orange cloth in front of bookcases perpendicular to one another, three on the left housing fiction alphabetised by author surname from Susie Boyt to George Elliott Clarke and two on the right housing volumes from Philippe Claudel to Daniel Defoe. Behind the bookcases are textured red and orange cloths to keep out direct sunlight. Two dark wooden fold-away chairs, the backs to the viewer, are in the foreground pushed under the table.

A beige sofa on a two-tone orange rug faviny two bamboo director's chairs separated by a rectilinear reed basket (hats hanging from the pins atop the backs of the chairs) in front of bookcases of fiction, the three mediun height ones on the left (in front of windows obscured by red cloths separated by a narrower black cloth) housing fiction alphabetised by author surname from Richard Ford to Rumer Godden), the ones on the right covering a long wall housing fiction from Rumer Godden and William Godwin through Hanif Kureishi.

Bookcases in staggered view housing fiction alphabetised by author surname; on the right three of six shelves contain volumes from Neil Bartlett and Harold Bascom to Lauren Beukes; on the left volumes range from Hanif Kureishi and Andrey Kurkov to Doris Lessing; in a room beyond can be seen more bookcases perpendicular to one another with a nook of smaller bookcases in front of them, and this room has volumes alphabetised by author surname from Norman Mailer to Terry Pratchett.

View of a wall of bookcases with volumes alphabetised by author surname from Wallace Stegner through Rose Zwi, and on the right, perpendicular to those is one bookcase with volumes alphabetised by author surname from Mary Shelley Gillian Slovo.

Sometimes I would mention [my] amazement, but […] no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude).
▫️Roland Barthes, 1980

Windy Sunday afternoon in the #NewImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi in spring.

🌳🌱🪻🍃🌬🌍⛅️

Laptop, iPad, and printer on a desk with notebooks, spectacles, a small mug, a desklamp, in front of bookcases and a noticeboard with book cover reproductions pinned to it..

Calendario Romano open to October showing a photograph of a dark haired man in a priest's cassock with dog collar, and beyond this calendar, on the left a bookcase packed with DVDs in alphabetic order by title, and on the right bookcases of fiction.

A wooden desk with a portable typewriter, various dictionaries and thesauruses and style guides, potted plants, and a wooden bowl of dried flower petals.

A student's desk with a portable typewriter, a bakelite telephone, various coins, a Paddington moneybox, an old rotary pencil sharpener, and volumes of poetry as well as some DVD films and notebooks on a bookcase to the left.

Saturday night in the #NewImperialLibrary: time for a film.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝💻🎞☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍

A dark brown mug of coffee on a shelf in front of a window beyond whicb can be seen the purple blossoms of the five storeys high jacaranda canopy set against the bright blue morning sky over Johannesburg. Some window frames can be seen on the right of the image, as well as in the top left hand corner.

Morning coffee in the #NewImperialLibrary; springtime in #NorthJozi.

🤓☕️🗝🚪🌳🌱🐣🪻🌍🌞

View of the jacaranda tree canopy blooming in Johannesburg through windows above some bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Richard Ford through Rumer Godden.

View of a beige sofa facing two chairs separated by a reed basket on a two-toned orange rug in front of a wall of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from William Golding through Elnathan John.

View of the blooming jacaranda tree canopy backed by the blue Johannesburg morning sky with some clouds.

View of the morning sky over Johannesburg, sunlight streaming into the frame from the right, the fifth floor and roof of a neighbouring block of flats in the bottom third of the frame, the whole dominated by blooming jacaranda trees in the foreground.

Tuesday morning with birdsong in the #NewImperialLibrary after overnight rain in #NorthJozi: time for coffee.

🤴🏽📚🤓📖📝☕️🛋️🗝️🚪🌳🪻🐣🌍🌤️