CatBlack

@catblack9.bsky.social

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Reasons to be cheerful 🎶 1. Books 📚 2. Fabric and quilts 🧵 3. Cake 🍰

The book cover of Jenny Diski's Strangers on a train showing a picture through a train window with landscape in the background and a woman holding a cigarette in the foreground.
The notable aspect of this event was the navy's failure to anticipate the problem of mines. There were no mines weeper ships in the Gulf, and very few in the navy's possession worldwide. Minesweeping in the an- ticipated great war with the Soviet Union was supposed to be carried out by lesser NATO allies incapable of deploying big ships but with the re- sources and organizational ability to handle more quotidian tasks with correspondingly modest equipment. Once the navy understood that mines would be Iran's weapon of choice against Kuwaiti tankers, it scrambled to find the tools necessary to do the job, such as minesweeping surface vessels and Sea Stallion helicopters as well as the specialized sensors and mechanical devices to detect under water mines and destroy them. From the book Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East by Steven Simon
The notable aspect of this event was the navy's failure to anticipate the problem of mines. There were no mines weeper ships in the Gulf, and very few in the navy's possession worldwide. Minesweeping in the an- ticipated great war with the Soviet Union was supposed to be carried out by lesser NATO allies incapable of deploying big ships but with the re- sources and organizational ability to handle more quotidian tasks with correspondingly modest equipment. Once the navy understood that mines would be Iran's weapon of choice against Kuwaiti tankers, it scrambled to find the tools necessary to do the job, such as minesweeping surface vessels and Sea Stallion helicopters as well as the specialized sensors and mechanical devices to detect under water mines and destroy them. From the book Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East by Steven Simon
Many miscalculations plagued Operation Iragi Freedom and its affer- math, but at a fundamental level, the Bush administration's disregard for the political, economic, and social realities of Iraq is what made it possible to believe that the United States could transform that country. On the eve of the American operation, decades of war and international sanctions had pummeled he Iragi economy and infrastructure, and dictatorship, state violence, and corruption were the norms. The people recruited to lead the country into a democratic future knew very little about it, having spent so much of their lives in exile. These were realities that US officials chose to ignore, hoping against hope that through the iron of American arms, the United States could forge a democracy in Iraq. The End of Ambition by Steven A Cook.
A photograph of the book Pagans by James Alistair Henry. The cover shows a stylised view of the London skyline made to look like a fort bisected by a cut with a red drop of blood with two figures under the drop. The tag line on the cover is Two cops. One killer. Many gods.
A picture of the cover of the book Pagans by James Alistair Henry. A stylised view of the London skyline made to look like a fort bisected by a cut with a red drop of blood with two figures under it. The tag line at the bottom is 'Two cops. One killer. Hundreds of Gods'.
Picture of the cover of Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin featuring a plans resembling a Venus fly trap with eyes and a yellow and red flower
The photograph shows the cover of Jeanette Winterson's book Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories
The picture shows the cover of the book Last Light by Alex's arrow. The cover shows the London skyline with the Thames in the foreground against a brown, ochre and red toned sky.
The picture shows the cover of the cookbook Ottolenghi by Yottam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The cover is a stylised picture of food on platters in the restaurant in front of a chalk board with one of the waitresses.
The picture shows the cover of Donna Tarte's book The Secret History. It is a plain black cover with just the Title and the author's name on it.
The picture shows the cover of Alan Hollinghurst's book The Line of Beauty. The picture is a section of wraught iron gate on a background showing a long tree lined driveway
The picture is the Penguin edition of Harper Lee's book To Kill a Mockingbird. the cover is black with a line drawing of a bird on the cover
The picture shows the cover of the book March Violets by Philip Kerr. A man in shadow is walking down a street at night, superimposed on the image is the letters M and U in red in the font Old German
The picture shows the cover of John Connolly's Book Every Dead Thing. The cover is red and shows a red skull on the front.
The picture shows the cover of the book Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. The cover picture is of the sea with mountains in the background in a blue colour on a cream background.
The picture shows the Penguin cover of the Truman Capote book 'In Cold Blood'
The picture shows the cover of the book Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. The cover features a photograph (unatributed in the book) of presumably the author at the wheel of Ghost Dancing, his vehicle.
The image shows a picture of the cover of Douglas Adams' book The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
A picture showing the cover of Susan Cooper's book The Dark is Rising
A picture showing the cover of Anne Michael's book Fugitive Pieces
A picture showing the cover of Robert A Heinlein's book Stranger in a Strange Land
The picture shows the cover of the book A Song from Dead Lips by William Shaw. The picture shows a street at night in brown/orange tones with a brick wall on the left taking up 3/4 of the cover.
A picture showing the cover of Keri Hulme's book The Bone People
A picture showing the cover of John Wyndham's book The Day of the Triffids
A picture showing the cover of Enid Blyton's book The Secret of Moon Castle
A picture showing the cover of A S Byatt's book Possession. The cover shows an oil on canvas painting by Edward Byrne-Jones titled The Beguiling of Merlin. The painting depicts a scene from the Arthurian legend about the infatuation of Merlin with the Lady of the Lake, Nimue. Merlin is shown trapped, helpless in a hawthorn bush as Nimue reads from a book of spells
A picture showing the cover of the Penguin Classic edition of Thomas Hardy's book Jude the Obscure. The cover features an oil on canvas painting titled Exodus psinted in 1893. Prevailing color of this fine art print is green and its shape is portrait,it shows a man and a woman who is carrying a child. This art piece is located in Musee de la Ville de Paris, Musee du Petit-Palais, France.
A picture showing the cover of Wilfred Thesinger's book Arabian Sands. The cover shows a photograph of Salim bin Janina in the north eastern sands of the Empty Quarter taken by Wilfred Thesinger in 1950
A picture showing the cover of China Mieville's book The City and The City
A picture showing the cover of the 2012 Penguin Classics edition of John Le Carrie's book Call for the Dead
Screenshot of Spotify list of most listened to podcasts 1. Kermode & Mayo's Takes 2. The Rest is Politics 3. A Muslim and a Jew Go There 4. Electoral Dysfunction 5. The Rest is Politics US
A patchwork quilt with a black background and 3 colour strips in each block from yellow to red in various fabrics