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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 4h

Good Morning Womble!

Amidst a lot of playing Hades 2 I have found time to start Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman. It's as good as everyone says so far, neither approaching its subjects head on or avoiding them but dancing around them delightfully.

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 19h

There's a lot going on so far, all interesting and engaging, in Notes from a Regicide but this scale for rating art is a particular delight.

A picture of a segment of Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman.

"Good": the very best.
"Really good": skillful and original, but not truly top-flght.
"Interesting": neither a forehanded or backhanded compliment. "Interesting" meant that Zaffre had found one thing in the work to learn from, but not more than one.
"Really interesting": beneath contempt.
"Weird": a catchall term encompassing many complex emotions. Zaffre always stood for at least five minutes before a painting she'd declared "weird," and never said anything more about it.

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 1d

when someone says "my dice are cursed" you sort of have to agree with them because if you say "marius you are a grown man and I know you know that's not how probability works" they won't say anything but they'll treat you like you are in league with the cursed dice

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Renay⁷ @renay.bsky.social · 1d

Intergalactic Mixtape is live! This week I and several readers built a rec list of our favorite reads of September. Plus: lots of great reviews, author interviews, and award news.

Intergalactic Mixtape #23

Hey! This week, the most mentioned book by far is a book that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a U.S. release date yet. That’s fine! I don’t suffer from...

buttondown.com

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 1d

Exhibition 1 was Walk the House by Do Ho Suh, which managed to be a brilliant combination of conceptually interesting and just a delight to wander round.

Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · 4d

Been to the Tate Modern today to see the Do Ho Suh exhibition and I think this might be one of the best things I’ve seen in a gallery in years?

Alongside that, I don’t think I ever remember coming to a big exhibition like this and seeing the artist refer to their work as speculative.

Inside a piece of art called Nest/s, made of overlapping multicoloured fabric recreations of homes. Ed is standing in the middle looking at the details.

The outside of Nest/s, multicoloured home exteriors in a gallery room

Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 1d

Exhibition 2 of the can't go to the Orkneys so let's muck about in London and see some art instead week.

Really enjoyed Kiefer/Van Gogh though it is aimed at me, cannot resist a big moody landscape if you offer one. Very much playing with scale and texture in a way I doubt the pictures do justice.

Nevermore by Anselm Kiefer.

The gold of corn on a blue background while black crows hover overhead all portrayed in thick paints in a post impressionist style.

A zoomed in bit of Nevermore by Anselm Kiefer. The paint is layered in thick in a way that rather more resembles a frieze than a traditional painting.

Starry Night by Anselm Kiefer

A wall size canvas inspired by one of the swirls in the sky of Starry Night by Van Gogh. This is created in paint, gold foil and straw across a sky blue background.

A zoom in at an angle of Starry Night by Anselm Kiefer showing the 3D nature of the art, ridges of scorched straw are visible covered in gold.

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 2d

Offal, game, dark chocolate.

The makings of a lovely meal.

Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · 2d

A good meal was had, and ended with an unexpectedly enorme slab of cheese to go with my eccles cake.

Menu of St. John, specific to today. Minimally explained English restaurant food.

An eccles cake on a plate with a large triangle of Lancashire cheese. Large. In the background, a dark chocolate terrine with a generous lump of honeycomb.

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 2d

The glee on her face as she sat down across from me for that discussion and went "So I have thoughts on scansion."

We did not have time for all her thoughts on scansion.

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Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · 3d

I only finished it yesterday but When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift was so good (and so singular), I couldn't help but write about it immediately.

When There Are Wolves Again – E. J. Swift

The new novel from the author of The Coral Bones1, When There Are Wolves Again follows two women in Britain from the present, stretching out across the years into the future of the late 21st centur…

readerofelse.wordpress.com

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E. J. Swift @catamaroon.bsky.social · 3d

When There Are Wolves Again is out in the UK today! I wrote something about the book, and keeping going, and some personal stuff I dithered over but, well, it's been A Year.

I'm so glad the book is out there and thank you so much to everyone who has supported it 🐺🤍

ejswift.co.uk/2025/10/09/w...

Hardback edition of When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift, with cover featuring a wolf and branch/leaf/flower design, photographed in the garden with the author's cat in the background being dramatic

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 3d

And so we reach Rivendell and the end of book 1.

Strider

The Excellent is a great line
Old Bombadil, as with Farmer Maggot he's an enigma who's chatted to plenty of people
Was Strider rather than a Black Rider or Gollum following them
I know their number. I know these Riders
Much of the next chapter is being sketched out, choice of allusion vs infodump
Sam suspicion again
Enter Butterbur, one again Tolkien writing voice
Again, the courage seen in ordinary people
Letter with both useful information and comedy
Aragorn pulls the Gandalf trick from the films, his heritage dropped in much earlier
Despite the Black Riders being fully unnatural now they're still using mortal agents
Not while all the long leagues of Eriador still lie before us. Strider speaks in a different mode

A Knife in the Dark

The rousing of Buckland, we will hear this again
Courage of Fatty Bolger, themes repeated
Good bolsters ruined and all
Pettiness of evil and the practicalities of travel
Yes Tolkien, let us know all the ponies were fine even if they weren't blessed by the light of the Elves
Not all the foreigners/refugees prove evil, it's not one note
Though racially tinged evil then immediately appears on the page
The crowd viewing the departure is really quite a funny image
Contraction/expansion of time, all been quite detailed and then 3 days pass
The countryside as we leave Bree is noticeably colder/less hospitable than that seem before
Again a land populated by ruins and history, hidden road
Sam with surpassing history knowledge, poetry
Foreshadowing
The clockwork of Tolkien's timetable reveals itself
Explanations as builders of atmosphere rather than puzzles
Fire as comfort rather than idiocy, they're competent but that isn't sufficient
The power of names/stories
ABACBABC
Beauty, Sorrow, stories without clear purpose
Fear as the great weapon, no great action scene

Flight to the Ford

The scene again from the outside works well
A world blessed by Westernesse as well as the Elves
Again zoomed out, a land less populated by people, nature or time
Chance, fate, other actors in this part off the page
Strider's competence vs even that of Merry earlier
Just enough detail, just enough atmosphere, the tension builds. There are repeated refrains but they work
Dark wings, again looking forward
And again a world laced with history though this time personal
Frodo while struggling is much less critical than in the films
Song as antidote to the dark, comedy as antidote to gathering epic
Ferry redux, again the use of audio cues for friend or foes
Fun cultural footnotes return
Even the presence of an Elf feels to overcome nature but only so far
Again no great action scene, it is stealth and haste when that fails
As with the barrow Frodo must first resist before deliverance comes

Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 3d

a man wearing a lanyard that says community recovery on it

Alt: a man wearing a lanyard that says community recovery on it giving a wearied look

media.tenor.com

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 3d

Just finished Helm, just about to start Notes from a Regicide, got my copy of When There Are Wolves Again back from Roseanna to read after that and then should probably get to On the Calculation of Volume Vol II before Vol III comes out next month.

October reading cannot be complained about.

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 5d

THE SECRET PROJECT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS IS FINALLY LIVE

CHECK IT OUT

outsidersartsclub.com

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 5d

Fe see Are Audiobooks Reading.

None of it is really about how we process art/information or how the act of performance/adaptation changes or doesn't change the work.

It is that if reading is the act by which we are revealed as one of the elect then its borders must necessarily be contested ground.

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 5d

There's a half formed thought I have around how bookish communities frequently view reading as a moral activity, both the act itself and that it grants moral status on its practitioners, and that both is a source of much of our terminal discourses and how that completely founders on reality.

Paul Haine @paulhaine.bsky.social · 5d

Kemi Badenoch claiming Terry Pratchett as her favourite author is wild

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 7d

As much as the last couple of days of travelling have gone non-ideally we're now home and our local pizza place is doing a collab with Dishoom, cannot complain about that.

Reposted by Ed Morland

Linebreak Rugby @linebreakrugby.bsky.social · 7d

The Philosophy Of Sidesteps

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 8d

The SU&SD Newsletter excited to inform me about new boardgames.

Me in Edinburgh Station trying to get home from our aborted holiday to the Orkneys: "Maybe not this one right now..."

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Jolyon Maugham KC @goodlawproject.org · 8d

Let's be clear: this is the result of deliberate political choices to make accessing trans healthcare substantially impossible. It's what Streeting and his ilk want.

Adam Turner 🏳️‍🌈 @awjt.bsky.social · 8d

In Glasgow, there is a 224-year waiting list for gender clinic appointments.

224 YEARS.

This is institutionalised discrimination. It's unacceptable, it's ruining people's lives and it needs to change.

We have the solution. Time for politicians to act.

Gender Clinic Files: Some people in Scotland will never get a gender clinic appointment on a 224-year waitlist.

This system is failing to support people to transition not because it is broken, but by design. The frustrating thing is that this would not be a difficult problem to solve under a different political paradigm.

Trans+ people do not need to be assessed by gender clinics or diagnosed by psychiatrists to tell us what we already know: we are trans. The healthcare we need, especially when it comes to hormones, is already available to cis people through making an appointment with their GP.

Gender clinics are unnecessary and exist to segregate healthcare for Trans+ people. Abolishing this system and providing Trans+ healthcare in primary care, at the GP through an informed consent model, would solve many of the issues this data reveals. GPs already prescribe hormones to cis adults. Trans+ adults simply need the same access to this healthcare.

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Renay⁷ @renay.bsky.social · 9d

Intergalactic Mixtape is live! This week: my favorite headcanons from other fans about The Murderbot Diaries and a call for your favorite SFF book from September 2025, so we can lovingly build a rec list together. 🥹📚

Intergalactic Mixtape #22

Hey! This week, I learned how to turn on the newsletter archives and make them searchable, after 22 weeks. :D Technology: 1, Renay: 0. Welcome to October!...

buttondown.com

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Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · Aug 20

wait did I really never post this one

“you wouldn’t download a car” meme format but instead it says “you wouldn’t winter’s night a traveler”

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Ed Morland @edmorland.bsky.social · 9d

Woo Helm! Should finish Helm.

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Dan Thurot @danthurot.bsky.social · 11d

For today's article, I'm just griping about why "fun" is a bad word for critics. spacebiff.com/2025/09/30/a...

Anti-Fun

There’s one word I try to never use when writing about board games. The F-word. No, not that one. “Fun.” There it is. My critical curse word. Today I want to talk about why “fun” isn’t an especiall…

spacebiff.com

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Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · 12d

Today was our third session of LOTR close reading, in which I mostly did not inflict scansion chat on Ed, and wherein I had a lot of thoughts about blurred boundaries, tone, theme, specificity of place and the sheer delight of Tolkien's poems.

A Close Reading of LotR – Episode 3 – Blurring Boundaries and Scanning Songs

Our third session of close reading The Fellowship of the Ring takes us through four chapters: VI – The Old Forest, VII – In the House of Tom Bombadil, VIII – Fog on the Barrow-dow…

readerofelse.wordpress.com

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