My-dearest-giulia - GIULIA

Do you have any favourite / suggestions for indipendent bookshops or second-hand books markets/shops in London? :)

YES

1. Daunt Books, Marylebone ⇢ my favorite in the world. Must see. 

2. Foyles ⇢ it’s huge, beautifully organized, and has everything you could need. Also great cafe upstairs. 

3. Persephone Books ⇢ all lady authors, a great way to find new things.

4. Southbank Book Market ⇢ in between waterloo and the eye (east edge of the southbank center under the bridge). Interesting selection (heavy on old orange penguin classics) with a can’t beat view. 

5. Charring Cross Road ⇢ there’s a string of independent, rare, and 2nd hand bookstore here (same road Foyles is on). Start down by Great Newport Street, head up towards Foyles. There’s a whole range of bookstores down there – I particularly like Koenig (emphasis on art and fashion). Don’t be intimidated by the antique booksellers; no, you probably can’t afford anything but as long as you’re quiet and careful they don’t mind you poking around.

Happy Hunting! 

the tips of the wings stuck out so I made them into cat ears (her name is either purra bellum or pawra bellum)

This is the only tiktok you'll ever need, I've made about 13 of these and I'm not stopping anytime soon

Interviewer: What difference in usage would you point out in these three languages [Russian, English, French], these three instruments?

Nabokov: Naunces. If you take framboise in French, for example, it’s a scarlet color, a very red color. In English, the word raspberry is rather dull, with perhaps a little brown or violet. A rather cold color. In Russian it’s a burst of light, malinovoe; the word has associations of brilliance, of gaiety, of ringing bells. How can you translate that?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.

Linguistics, my beloved.

Interviewer: What difference in usage would you point out in these three languages [Russian, English, French], these three instruments?

Nabokov: Naunces. If you take framboise in French, for example, it’s a scarlet color, a very red color. In English, the word raspberry is rather dull, with perhaps a little brown or violet. A rather cold color. In Russian it’s a burst of light, malinovoe; the word has associations of brilliance, of gaiety, of ringing bells. How can you translate that?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.

Moodboard for @torturedsoulsblog! :]

Women

"Women, they have minds, they have souls"

"the wholeness after everything toppled."

"I’m so sick of people saying love

is just all a woman is fit for."

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as understood."

"And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself,

because I could find no language to express them in."

"The poets are always correct,"

"What an effort to keep alive."

"The Revolution will end with the perfection of happiness."

but.

"The stars in their courses"

"fight against us, my friend."

I believe that a morning should never describe a day. Of course, I don’t believe mornings listen to mortal pleas and reasoning, but I try to enact this rule myself. Yet, it is a morning’s nature to bleed into your perception of a day, tint it with sorrow or with beauty. The only times when I forbid myself from enforcing this rule is when my day is unknowingly stricken with a morning of perfect quiescence, an awake before the world has begun to turn. Those rare mornings can feel free to pour through the seams of time and stain the parchment of afternoons and evenings a beautiful shade of rose. I’m quite a hypocrite, I do know.

Details: Seascape, Alfred Thompson Bricher, 1890

Details: Ship on Rough Seas, Max Jensen, 1908

His pillow was wet with salty tears and his eyes were swollen from crying as he woke up. His chapped lips stung with the taste of saltwater. Diana called him.

“What time is it,” he asked, his voice cracking. He hoped she would think he was just tired. She did not.

“It’s just about 8 o’clock. What’s wrong?”

He didn’t say anything but simply hung up. He walked to the South Meadow again, slower than last time. He did not see Theo next to him. After a few minutes sitting at the bench next to the field, he heard a voice behind him.

“You’ll be late to chapel,” it said quietly, worried. Theo popped up in front of him. He tried his best to smile. Theo did not mask the concerned expression on his own face. He noticed a stray tear right under Alexander’s eye, and knelt down to wipe it away. The feeling of his hand on Alexander’s face made his skin tingle. He started to smile honestly. Theo sat down next to him quietly.

It started to rain, and Theo stood up from the bench.

“We’ll be late,” he repeated simply. Alexander walked behind him to chapel.