The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

I read. And you know 'no offense' means 'I am about to be or have just been fucking offensive.

Books help us anchor our souls, or re-anchor them; particularly for us, the left-handed, given the things we have to do.

And you know ‘no offense’ means ‘I am about to be or have just been fucking offensive.

You know what they say: ‘The cats and the owls and the better type of raven, know more of what is doing than any human maven.

Susan shut her eyes. She could feel the power of the mountain flowing into her, she could sense every small detail within the bounds of her father’s domain, feel every living thing, the men and women and children and wildlife, the birds in the air and in the trees and on the ground, the hares and the foxes and the sheep, squirrels and red deer, natterjack toads and adders, and there were other mythic beings, too, water-fay in the lake and tarns, knocker goblins in the old copper and shale workings, the Fenris over on the western shore of Windermere .

A tree is strong But the wind is stronger A stone is strong But the sea is stronger The sun is strong But sorrow is stronger

Be a writer, if you will Or don’t, no one will care Order your shelves, or not Kill or kiss your darlings Simply write

Most ordinary criminals steer clear of the weird shit. There are the Death Cults, but . . . I trust you’ll never need to know about them.

Fantasy writers, they’re the bane of our existence!

It is never the dogs who break faith.

There was John Masefield’s The Box of Delights; and the C. S. Lewis Narnia books; and Patricia Lynch’s The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey; The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker; Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken; several of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, including Susan’s favorite, The Silver Branch; Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones; The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner; Five Children and It by E. Nesbit; and many others.

I'm clearly deep in an absolute sea of shit and I want to know what direction to swim in to get out of it.

I think Merlin has explained to you that the mythic landscape is layered, and usually quite local. Entities and environments are generally confined to a particular geographic area and often also to particular times of day or night, phases of the moon, that sort of thing. Even weather, as with the things that come out after rain, or only when it snows. And they are bound by custom and lore to behave in certain ways, to do certain things, and of course these days are mostly dormant anyway.

Look, something's a bit rotten in the state of Denmark. We don't know who is involved.

The woman at the next table was perhaps a decade older than the first. She sat in a lightweight wheelchair with chromed rims. She was entirely white-haired and slighter, and was engaged in delicately separating stuck-together leaves of some impossibly thin paper with what looked like a small ivory or bone spatula and long tweezers.

The floor was of warm, old oak planks, many of the individual planks extraordinarily long, as if sawn from the mast of a tall ship. There were two working tables in the middle of the room, and around the walls were located a binder’s press, with its tall screw; a camera stand; an industrial sewing machine; a gluing cabinet with exhaust hood; a guillotine table and cutting board; a TRS-80 computer and dot matrix printer on a narrow mahogany desk that might have come from a boat; a partner’s table topped in green leather and gilt edging on which resided no fewer than six typewriters, ranging from a 1920s Underwood to a very recent all-plastic Brother machine; a mid-eighteenth-century highly polished flame mahogany map cabinet of twelve drawers;

were of a later era than those on the other shelves and did have dust jackets. There was John Masefield’s The Box of Delights; and the C. S. Lewis Narnia books; and Patricia Lynch’s The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey; The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker; Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken; several of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, including Susan’s favorite, The Silver Branch; Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones; The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner; Five Children and It by E. Nesbit; and

but his cauliflower ears and broken nose made him look like a slightly demented pug.

Come sleep, oh sleep, the certain knot of peace.

A shadow creeps along the wall More shadows sweep across the hall Many shadows leap and dance and fall But shadows need both dark and light No shadows crawl in blackest night

Merlin cleared his throat and began to sing in a powerful baritone: I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral— Vivien leaped upon him and put her hands to his throat. The siblings swayed to and fro, sending clothing racks scudding on their casters, until Merlin managed to weakly get out, “Enough! Okay, I won’t sing.

No where," said Merlin quietly, "Somewhere. An in-between place.

Roses can be yellow, violets may be white; Hate might turn to liking, love could change to spite; Nothing is fixed forever, even stars will die; All that we can ever do, is ask the reason why!

Roses can be yellow, violets may be white Hate might turn to liking, love could change to spite Nothing is fixed forever, even stars will die All that we can ever do, is ask the reason why

Poetry in particular. We are all poets, after a fashion