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heyther.bsky.social
Mostly reading, walking, and looking at the sky (and no longer thinking about library budgets.) In midst of a slow phase of reinvention that comes with retirement.
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I’m not in the collections budget trenches anymore but this is very problematic news from Clarivate/ProQuest. It aims to eliminate purchase/leasing models that academic libraries use to vastly expand their ebook holdings for a reasonable price.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

These are the days of novel (and possibly odd) meals since the largely unwalkable sidewalks are keeping us indoors. Today's pleasant surprise: last bit of spicy black beans on top of buttery polenta.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

A small good thing for today: my online book group met even though we didn’t have a shared book to talk about. The conversation was still lively and it cheered me up immensely.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

My counter to today’s doom scrolling: Mavis Gallant’s Green Water, Green Sky. So much discrete folly. And Gallant spares no quarter for anyone’s pretensions.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Okay. Everyone's up and alert. Time for bagpipe-forward dance music. Better than a third cup of coffee.

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Hannah Arendt is breaking my brain. My understanding of whether her arguments are sound is shaky and her sentence structure is making me aware of my fragile attention span. Onward anyway: a small bit every day.

submitted 37 days ago • 1 comment

Irmgard Keun’s After Midnight (1937) should be a speedy read at 150 pages but I keep tripping over reminders of how easily politics can veer in this direction. Plus there’s the whiplash shift in tone from Gigli (1931) and Artificial Silk Girl (1932) which fizz with energy and dubious decisions.

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

I’m pleased to announce that I did not cut my thumbs off chopping up that baguette for soup.

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment

One of the great joys of my online book group is its multilingual readers. The German speakers/readers are filling in gaps and pointing to translation quirks in a way that complicates our reading of Irmgard Keun. They’re also ruinous to my TBR.

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

On today’s episode of we-don’t-need-to-go-out, we’re featuring cozy blankets, cups of tea, Margery Kemp who won’t stop crying, and George Smiley who’s been spotted lurking.

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

Three people cannot possibly eat this amount of holiday trifle. So full. And so content with our very tiny, very modest winter celebration.

submitted 61 days ago • 0 comments

I’m not convinced that using a leaf blower at 4 am to move snow when the storm is still, you know, blowing snow everywhere was the best approach to an inevitable construction problem.

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment

A coworker of mine is urgently seeking a 1br apartment (under $1250/mo) for her and her young daughter - must be within 30 min of wolfville. Urgent, like URGENT.

submitted 70 days ago • 1 comment

I’ve turned into an Isabel Colegate fan which is unfortunate given how tricky it will be for me to acquire print copies of her books. There’s something astonishing in the way she can move the story backward and forward in time.

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

Alright. Still hecking windy but outdoors things to do today. First up: voting in the advance poll. Then, if I can get past some wicked doomscrolling, the luxury of reading all afternoon in an effort to get past a reading slump.

submitted 101 days ago • 1 comment

A bit less doomscrolling and I’ve finished Colegate’s Blackmailer which very much suffered from my mood. I might give it another go later.

submitted 105 days ago • 1 comment

Okay. I think I’m past the initial shock of Tuesday. Maybe today I’ll be able to make some headway with Dionne Brand’s Salvage and Isabel Colegate’s Blackmailer instead of ceaseless doomscrolling.

submitted 107 days ago • 0 comments

And A Very Easy Death is just as heartbreaking as when I read in fall 2019.

submitted 118 days ago • 0 comments

Well I certainly didn’t expect Beauvoir’s Memoir of a Dutiful Daughter to remind me of Wordsworth.

submitted 128 days ago • 0 comments