sibyllacumae
Basic Bibliographic Bitch. Antiquarian Bookseller. Now based in Philly.
newsletter: https://twohalfsheets.substack.com
- This is who runs this account
- I’ve been reading Cider with Rosie on the recommendation of a friend, and it makes me wish I lived in a little village next to a forest with almost knowledge of the world. Just eating cabbage and making weird herbal wine.
- I romanticize these things because I grew up in a city apartment. Partner actually grew up on a farm and didn’t love it—but I feel like if he had lived near a little village and people besides his Mormon cousins, maybe he would have?
- Today’s agenda: find out more about Pope Adrian VI’s custom built wheely chair
- An article sort of implies it is mentioned in this book on my desk, however I’m not sure how it would be described in Latin and I don’t want to read the whole thing…
- Lord help me, I’m researching the history of office chairs
- Of course Wuthering Heights isn’t romance. Romance is when you marry someone within 3 years of your age who has the same level of education as you, and you share a Google Calendar and do taxes together.
- I know I can’t start this description by saying “first edition of the collected poetry of a Perugian twunk” but I’m struggling to come up with another effective noun for this guy.
- This is really fucking me up this morning!
- @thomasgermain.bsky.social Are you aware that Google Books has effectively stopped working - the material is still there, but all search functions no longer seem to work, making fresh access impossible. Can't find any reportage on this but it seems a major story with huge implications..
- This position pays just slightly more than the equivalent of what I made when I started as an entry-level junior specialist at Christie’s in New York nearly a decade ago. In London. For a “lead” position.
- earlier today I uttered the statement to my partner “I’m really trying to spend less money… except on books and art”
- I just don’t look at how much I spend on books. And yes i love the library. #booksky
- In the context of congratulating myself for not buying a set of millennial pink dumbbells 😬
- 🥵
- It’s very funny to me that Alessi gets replaced everywhere with a “ninfa” but elaborate “I want to put my key in your hole, Annibal” type poems are left as they were
- One of the omitted poems is long one kind of admitting defeat / insulting Alessio’s girlfriend. I guess the editor couldn’t bowdlerize his way out of that one!
- After sorting out my Alberti book, I’m now spending the rest of the day reading homoerotic Italian poetry. This book has been consistently miscataloged as containing two famous poems on pederasty that do not actually appear. But other poems were included, sometimes with girl names swapped for boy.
- I have to read all the poems and compare them to the critical edition to evaluate their gayness and check for bowdlerizing. I HAVE TO. FOR BUSINESS REASONS.
- It’s looking to me like anything overly explicit was not included (mentions of Ganymede are right out) but the editor tolerated a high level of gender ambiguity.
- A series of poems to his unrequited love have had the name of the loved one changed from Alessi to Chloris, kind of ruining the Eclogue riff he had going on.
