Gemma Bristow

@konallis

UK. Technical writer with a background in humanities. Posts about the Imagist poets, children's books, history, and green politics. All comments personal, all errors my own.

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Gemma Bristow@konallis· 5d

Illustration of zombies armed with farm implements.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· 8d

Sharpened all the pencils on my desk for literally the first time in years. Had forgotten what a viscerally satisfying small act this is.

Desk tidy in the form of a donkey, holding freshly sharpened pencils along with pens, scissors and a ruler.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· 10d

I just tried to find an old Twitter post of mine that referenced Australian writer Capel Boake, by googling 'konallis Capel Boake'. The result was an AI hallucination. No, Boake did not write a 1917 cycle of prose poems called 'Konallis'.

Google AI summary for the search 'konallis Capel Boake'. It reads, 'Konallis is a 1917 cycle of prose poems written in the Greek style by the Australian author Capel Boake (the pen name of writer Doris Boake Kerr).' The sources for this statement are shown as 'Wikpedia +1'.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· 10d

Peacock score! Peacock number 6, from 1962: Under the Red Robe by Stanley J. Weyman. I love finding the older Peacocks with the drawn cover art and blocky font.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· 10d

I saw one of these book hedgehogs 'in the wild' today. Didn't check for erotic content. (For anyone making them, might I suggest Richard Aldington's translation of The Decameron?)

Hedgehog ornament made from pleated paper, on a shelf next to a teapot.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· 15d

#AmReading My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin. I dug it out of my TBR pile as a sort of tribute to Sam Neill, who appeared in the film adaptation. As a book written by a teenager, it's remarkable. As a novel, it does tend to remind you that it was written by a teenager.

Paperback copy of My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, from Virago Modern Classics. The cover shows a young woman with windblown hair, dressed in a Victorian blouse and pinafore, standing in a wide, sun-parched field.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Jul 3

#FridayReads Angel Mage by Garth Nix. Fantasy adventure set in an alternative Europe, loosely inspired by The Three Musketeers.

Hardback edition of Angel Mage by Garth Nix. The cover shows a cluster of rings and other jewellery bearing images, against a black background.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Jun 26

#FridayReads Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Have not read Pym before; really enjoying this so far. Social comedy set in post-war London, with beautifully precise observation of character and behaviour.

Paperback copy of Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, from Virago Modern Classics. The cover shows the body of a woman - her face out of frame - wearing a 1940s dress and holding a floral china teacup.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Jun 7

They don't make pulp sci-fi novels like they used to. With adverts for cigarettes bound between the pages.

Vintage pperback book, held open. The facing page shows a brightly-coloured advert for 'new' Kent Golden Lights, 'only 8mg tar yet tastes so good you won't believe the numbers'.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Jun 7

Had a lucky score last week and added to my Three Investigators collection (slowly being reconstituted from childhood).

Two vintage paperbacks in the series Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators: The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy and the Secret of the Crooked Cat.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· May 8

#FridayReads The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning. In the 1950s, a young, naive, aspiring artist leaves her home town for the adventures of London, and gets involved in a futile affair with a married man.

Paperback copy of The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning, from Virago Modern Classics. The cover shows a framed painting of a young woman wearing a crown of flowers over her long, loose hair. Beside the book is a decorative holder for paint brushes.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Apr 17

#FridayReads Flame-Coloured Taffeta by Rosemary Sutcliff. Working through my Sutcliff backlog (I read her Boudicca novel Song for a Dark Queen earlier this week). This one is about 18th-century smuggling, not a typical setting for her; a bit 'Rosemary Sutcliff does Leon Garfield'.

Paperback copy of Flame-Coloured Taffeta by Rosemary Sutcliff. The cover shows a young girl in a cloak, holding a lantern, walking ahead of a man who leans heavily on a stick and a boy wearing a tricorn hat.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Apr 16

Quote post with something good that lasted longer than the Confederacy (1861-1865) The Imagist anthologies (1914-1917, 1930).

Hardback book bound in plain cloth, with the title 'Des Imagistes' stamped on the cover in gold.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Apr 10

#FridayReads The Institute by Stephen King. Thematically vintage King: psychic kids, small towns, shadowy government agencies. Not one of his more complex novels but still an absorbing read.

Hardback copy of The Institute by Stephen King. The cover shows a person rowing a dinghy at night, across water that reflects trees and the lights of a large building.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Apr 3

Happy Easter weekend to everyone celebrating or just enjoying a few days off.

Coffee table in front of a fireplace. On the table are a bowl of painted wooden eggs and a cluster of green and yellow candles in glass candlesticks.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Apr 2

#AmReading Painted Clay by Capel Boake. Not the best novel (the main character, Helen, has definite Mary-Sue tendencies), but an interesting portrayal of working women's lives and bohemian bedsit-land in Melbourne in the 1910s.

Paperback copy of Painted Clay by Capel Boake. The cover shows a potted plant and a litter of small objects - cigarettes, gloves, a crumpled note - atop a chest of drawers.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Mar 20

#FridayReads Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton. 1953 novel about a family of five daughters, living in eccentric, bohemian seclusion on a rural estate, and the pressures on them from both within and without to take part in the wider world.

Modern copy of Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton from Persephone Books. The cover is plain grey, with the title and author's name in a white box.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Mar 15

Saw the touring theatre adaptation of Midsomer Murders: The Killings at Badger's Drift. It was entertaining, with plenty of jokes and clever set design, though tonally uncertain; the very dark backstory didn't quite fit with how much of it was played for laughs.

Stage set. In the background, we see a rural village through a round window that is inscribed 'Midsomer County: Badger's Drift'. In the foreground is an old-fashioned road direction sign standing in a patch of grass.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Feb 27

#FridayReads The Big Short by Michael Lewis, about a group of superpower-level-geeky financial analysts who foresaw the 2008 crash and made a fortune betting against the market.

Film tie-in edition of The Big Short by Michael Lewis. The cover shows Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell and Brad Pitt in the film The Big Short.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Feb 21

Afterwards I popped into the Amnesty bookshop close by, and found a clutch of Viragoes. There were more Molly Keanes on the shelf; I had to limit myself and made a snap choice!

Three paperback books from Virago Modern Classics: Treasure Hunt by Molly Keane, The Rising Tide by Molly Keane, and We That Were Young by Irene Rathbone.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Feb 21

I got a reprint of Sutcliff's Boudicca novel Song for a Dark Queen, which I haven't read, and the body swap story Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes, from the British Library Women Writers series.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Feb 13

#FridayReads Jean Rhys: Letters 1931-1966. I've had this on my TBR stack for a while, and dug it out after reading Rhys' autobiography. It certainly illustrates how Rhys largely dropped out of public life before the appearance of her late novel, Wide Sargasso Sea.

Hardback edition of Jean Rhys' letters. The cover shows a portrait photograph of a young woman in fashionable 1920s dress, with her hands crossed under her chin, gazing directly at the camera.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Jan 23

#FridayReads The Twelve by Justin Cronin, the only slightly less massive sequel to his post-apocalyptic novel The Passage.

Paperback copy of The Twelve by Justin Cronin. The cover shows a black and white image of a girl who stares intently towards the viewer. A tag line reads 'Fear the dark'.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Jan 16

#FridayReads Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield. The third of Mansfield's short story collections I've read.

Vintage hardback copy of Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield, in the series Constable's Miscellany. The cover shows the title of the book on a geometric background.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Jan 9

#FridayReads The Harsh Voice by Rebecca West, an enjoyable set of four novellas about relationships and gender in the pre-war business world.

Paperback edition of The Harsh Voice from Virago Modern Classics. The cover shows a young woman wearing a suit and hat, in a confident pose.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Dec 25

Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating (or just enjoying a day off). Hope you're warm, safe, and doing something fun.

A decorated Christmas tree in the corner of a room.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Dec 12

#FridayReads Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change in 50 Questions and Answers by @hannahritchie.bsky.social.

Hardback copy of Clearing the Air by Hannah Ritchie. The cover shows a handheld toy windmill.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Dec 11

The evergreen kaiju forest.

Model fir trees, green glass sugar shakers, some cute forest animals and a couple of scary monsters arranged on top of a bookcase.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Dec 11

Getting my holiday cottagecore on.

View of a living room decorated for Christmas. Stars of different colours and materials are propped on top of the mantelpiece. Beside the hearth is a basket of baubles and a rack of Christmas-themed books. In the foreground, three ice-effect glass candlesticks, a metal bird, and a bottlebrush tree stand on a coffee table beside more books.

Gemma Bristow@konallis· Nov 30

Excellent book haul yesterday. I went to the big Oxfam shop in Cambridge, where I rarely fail to find something. (Although I was supposed to be Christmas shopping, which didn't go so well.)