#london is lit

[yamnbananas]

Reflecting

[ardley]

The Approaching Fall

Photographed by Freddie Ardley - instagram

[galina]

Winter mornings at home: soft light, coffee, the faint sound of bells from the church, cyclists ticking by, a few more minutes in bed with a book

[prettyinaccurate]

my little introductory comic for my chemist boy and his companion physician! Graham F. Hurst and Arthur Cailbhin my beloveds

[ereyies]

hi guys it's elaine/lainie i can't be bothered to type so ummm more phantom art!!! can i get a wahoo

[firawren]

[thefrogwild]

I've very inadvisably fallen into the Fallen London rabbit hole after playing Sunless Skies, so of course I made a terrible guy about it

[thoughtkick]

All that we are, all that we need –– they're all different things

London Grammar

[thepersonalwords]

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Jack London

[quotespile]

People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way.

Martin Amis, London Fields

[asleepinawell]

has mr fires seen a cow up close I wonder? it should gaze into the big beautiful brown eyes of a cow and maybe then it'll calm down

[yamnbananas]

The 06:35 Catford to London Cannon Street 01/07/2022

[ardley]

Richmond Park September 23

photographed by Freddie Ardley - instagram

[galina]

Whale Fall, Elizabeth O'Connor – I was sent an advance review copy by picador, it comes out later this month. A powerful short novel with themes of environment, relationships with nature, colonisation, fascism, community, loss, grief, the impact of biased documentation and archiving, and the role of gender in society.

I really liked this, it hones in on a young girl coming of age on an unnamed island off the coast of wales, in the weeks leading up to war being declared in england.

What struck me was how precise and unflinching the language is in this text where images of island life are shrouded in a blanket of dramatic irony. Whales as literary allegory could feel overdone but not here, where the urgent message against fascism, against humans selfishly taking and appropriating for their own gain – whether from nature or other humans – is frank but not overwritten.

[thelastrenaissance]

Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London about a young autodidact struggling to become a writer.

“Every book was a peep-hole into the realm of knowledge. His hunger fed upon what he read, and increased.”

Jack London, Martin Eden

[soracities]

The experience of library life [cannot] be re-created online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three-dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal [...] they are still a significant part of our social reality, the only thing left on the high street that doesn’t want either your soul or your wallet.

Zadie Smith, ‘North-west London Blues’, Feel Free: Essays