Elizabeth Morgan, book botherer

@elzbethmrgn.bsky.social

84 Followers 32 Following

Hi guys I'm actually just mostly on mastodon: aus.social/@elzbethmrgn Former historian, currently stationer (scrivenerstools.com.au) & bookseller. Based in NE Victoria. I buy books and talk about them on YouTube. Secretly a cat. she/her

A display in a bookstore window with titles including and promoting community, diversity & reconciliation
The poop emoji wearing the crown emoji
Three-panel meme. First frame depicting a radioactive skeleton, labelled *Zeus, asking "Who are you?" to a superhero, labelled A Greek Hero. The superhero responds in the second panel, "You banged my mom," and in the third panel the skeleton replies, "Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?"
A meme combining the RUOK? logo with a scene from The Simpsons. Homer Simpson is sitting on the couch, looking annoyed and saying, "I told you last year, no!"
The terrible cover of THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon, featuring the title superimposed in strong yellow over a "Where's Wally?" style illustration
My Kindle displaying the cover of PENRIC AND THE BANDIT by Lois McMaster Bujold. We have a map held down by pewter cup and a dagger, strewn about with gold coins and a pair of dice.
The paperback edition of THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT by Maggie O'Farrell. The green background is covered in a collage of floral and animal imagery, including snakes, tigers, starlings, bearded lizards.
A fifties-era car speeding up towards a bicycle, with sky and city skyline behind. The book is DEATH OF A FOREIGN GENTLEMAN by Steven Carroll
My hand holding a Kindle, which is displaying the cover image for Nicholas Spencer's MAGISTERIA: THE ENTANGLED HISTORIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. The image around the text vaguely suggests to me cellular biology and imagery of flora, but nothing stands out as a concrete image to describe.
My hand holding a paperback edition of Charles Dickens' A TALE OF TWO CITIES. This is the HarperMuse Classics edition. It is in woodcut style, with the the raised and lowered parts of the image actually debossed or flat to touch. The debossed areas are tonally orange-brown. The image is in two halves, the top and bottom each depicting a cityscape, and I assume one is Paris and the other London from the events of the book.
Ann Leckie's ANCILLARY JUSTICE in paperback, with a cover illustration that features some fighter-plane looking ships in front of a cratered moon-like background, with various satellites designed to tell you this is a sci-fi set in space. The faux-sticker tells us this book was a winner of the 2014 Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards.
My hand holding the Oxford World's Classics edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE. The titular Hyde is skulking in the cover illustration, in a shadowy, although lamplit, Victorian street.
The paperback edition of EMILY WILDE'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES by Heather Fawcett. The title and author text are surrounded by a woodland-themed border. At the bottom is an open book, out of which is spewing floating ✨ stars. Around the sides of the border we variously have ivy, mushrooms, wispy leaf situations, berries, a key, and what looks to be diaphanous fairy wings despite none of the fae in the book possessing wings 🤷
My Kindle in it's bright yellow cover sitting on my green bedding. The display on the Kindle is showing the cover for Lois McMaster Bujold's BARRAYAR, from The Vorkosigan Saga. In the foreground of the cover stands two people in silhouette holding a baby; the shadow of the couple combines into the figure of a man (who, from context, is the same person as the baby).
The 25th anniversary paperback edition of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES by Jeffrey Eugenedes. The cover is textured cream with a peach-coloured border. The title text is interspersed with five rose-gold foil rose stem silhouettes, each broken in half (ooh, symbolic).
Me holding the paperback edition of Ellis Peters' SAINT PETER'S FAIR. The type is stylised as medieval script, with an illustrated capital P as you'd find in an illuminated medieval manuscript.
The Libro.fm-generated screenshot for THE MENOPAUSE MANIFESTO by Jen Gunter. The book image displays a megaphone with a speech bubble emanating from the cone, with the subtitle "Own Your Health With Facts and Feminism". The book cover is pink. Below the book image, the text indicates my libro.fm subscription supports my local indie bookstore, Booktique (in Albury and Wangaratta, Australia), and that I listened to the book with libro.fm. (I have a libro.fm referral code, DM me if you'd like it!)
My (tabby) cat sitting next to the paperback edition of HEAVEN ON EARTH: THE LIVES AND LEGACIES OF THE WORLDS GREATEST CATHEDRALS by Emma J. Wells. The cover image is of the Cathedral Church of St Andrew the Apostle, in Somerset, UK. The image is clearly photoshopped out of the beautiful background of the original (included within the book) and to remove people and cars from the original photo. Both cat and book rest on a fluffy rug (a favourite place of my cat's)
Kindle displaying the cover of THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Stuart Turton. The cover image is an empty row boat on the water in the foreground, a lighthouse and mountains in the background.
My Kindle displaying the cover of THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA by Ray Nayler. The long tentacles of an octopus cover the majority of the space, winding over and under the text of the title.
My hand holding the paperback edition of MEDIEVAL HORIZONS: WHY THE MIDDLE AGES MATTER by Ian Mortimer. The cover is blue, and, in the bottom right-hand corner contains (according to the reference on the book): "detail of navigators using an astrolabe in the Indian Ocean from Livre des Merveilles du Monde, c. 1410-12 by Boucicaut Master, MS Fr 2810 f.188, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris." They are sailing a wooden ship with sail and mast, one seaman holding the mast while the other consults the astrolabe. They are surrounded by gold stars.
My hand holding the paperback edition of THE SILVER BONE by Andrey Kurkov. The image is 60s-vintage style depicting a man (we know from the context of the book), wearing a trapper hat with a peak, a long coat, a button-up shirt, and long books. He is holding a pistol in front of him as he moves to the left of the image. Behind him is a stylised city silhouette, clearly Russian-influenced in the Muscovite style.
My hand holding the paperback edition of HOW TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS YOU HAVEN'T READ by Pierre Bayard. The image is of the foredges of a pile of books.
My hand holding the paperback edition of ROGUE PROTOCOL by Martha Wells, the third of The Murderbot Diaries series. The cover image depicts possibly a space station with clear triangular panels making up clear domes, and various other space station or futuristic-looking buildings in the background. In the foreground, an improbable platform juts out over nothing, and standing on the platform are two humanoid figures, potentially in armour (or, potentially, robots or cyborgs).
A paperback of THE EXTINCTION OF IRENA REY by Jennifer Croft. The cover image depicts a ever-deepening forest, filled with trunks, leaves and fungi. The colours are very bright and give an almost cartoonish feel. The book is sitting on a green fabric.
Amazon Kindle in an open yellow cover, resting on a cream fabric. The Kindle is displaying the cover of Becky Chambers' THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL ANGRY PLANET, which contains the title running vertically down the image, with a lone human-shaped figure standing on a small sloping mound at the bottom, which a background of what is probably supposed to be the galaxy.
My hand holding the paperback edition of THE TOWER OF THE SWALLOW by Andrzej Sapkowski, book 4 of The Witcher novels and book 6 in the overall series. The cover has a fake "Now on NETFLIX" sticker. The main artwork is the silhouette of a wolf head. In the silhouette is a tower rising out of the water and surrounded by shards of ice reaching upwards. The wolf head silhouette is surrounded by a circle, the edges of which are frost.
My hand holding the paperback edition of THE BONE CHESTS: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. The cover image is in the style of the broken-then-repaired stained glass of Winchester Cathedral, with a jumble of wood-textured and blue pieces of glass, broken pieces of faces and heraldry, and other pieces of jumbled-up, unevenly-sized pieces of glass.
Black and white image of A LITTLE HISTORY OF LITERATURE by John Sutherland. The title text is interspersed with images that also accompany each of the chapters: one is a horseman in armour jousting at a windmill, followed by a rotund companion riding a donkey (clearly an illustration of Don Quixote), the other image is a female character reading in a garden.
My hand holding the Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition of Shirley Jackson's WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE. Blurbed by Donna Tartt and Neil Gaiman, the cover depicts a multi-storey mansion, lit only in the attic windows, against a twilight (almost dark) sky and large, sprawling-branched trees in front. I think it's supposed to look a little spooky but I still want to go there.
Cover of GOTHIC LITERATURE by Andrew Smith, typical academic text cover stylings with the title in plain white block, a relevant image (in this case, a stone corridor beset with arches which aren't even Gothic), and in a red banner along the right of the cover, "Edinburgh Critical Guides"
Tabby cat fishing a weighted pool toy with neoprene kelp-shapes out of a red bucket full of water (the cat and red bucket are located inside a larger bathtub). There is another similar pool toy if a different colour in the bucket, awaiting a similar fate.
Cat, a domestic shorthair with black stripes over grey fur. She's sitting in a squat round red bucket, her favourite place.
Libro.fm-generated image for WILD: TALES FROM EARLY MEDIEVAL BRITAIN, by Amy Jeffs. The cover image of the book is a wood engraving depicting a tree, with a tiny white figure at the base. The title is in gold. The audiobook is narrated by Amy Jeffs and Lucy Paterson. The text below this image is "WILD by Amy Jeffs." Below this text on the left side is a bookstore logo, and the text "My listening supports Beechworth Books". Opposite this text on the right is the Libro.fm logo.
Kindle (Paperwhite) in a yellow cover, opened to the cover image of Ellis Peters' MONK'S HOOD, the third in the Brother Cadfael series. The cover image has two line drawings of a mortar and pestle. The Kindle is sitting on my wood table.
Paperback edition of THE HUNTER by Julia Leigh resting against a botanical-patterned fabric. Beside author name and title, the black cover contains an image of a thylacine skeleton, and book-hyping blurbs from Hilary Mantel, Don DeLillo, The Observer, Australia's Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, New York Times, and The Guardian.
Libro.fm-generated image showing the audiobook cover of FRANKENSTEIN, with typical "Frankenstein's Monster" imagery in the foreground and a creepy winding land bridge to a creepy fortress bathed in lightning in the background (this isn't in the actual book). Underneath, there is the text "FRANKENSTEIN, OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS by Mary Shelley" Underneath the text on the left is a bookshop logo and text reading: "My listening supports Beechworth Books". On the right is the Libro.fm logo.
My hand holding the Oxford World's Classics paperback edition of Bram Stoker's DRACULA. The cover illustration is a still from the 1922 film NOSFERATU, and depicts the titular Dracula in silhouette.
My Kindle (Paperwhite) in a yellow cover, sitting open on an off-white pillow. The Kindle image displays the cover of DEMON DAUGHTER by Lois McMaster Bujold, "A Penric & Desdemona Novella", which depicts a young girl in water clinging to a board, facing away from us and toward a ship on fire.
A The Expanse (TV edition) meme headed "which expander are you?". Your choices: Queen of Space (photo of Avasarala): -no time for this shit -no time for that shit either -f a s h i o n wrenches (photo of Naomi) -criminally underrated -fixes everything -emotional labour too jon snow (photo of Holden) -does a face -"You know I'm right about this" -ugh fine I guess suit up (photo of Draper in power armour) -she always protecc -she always attacc -she always want your cucumber snacc drums (photo of Drummer) -hard drinkin hard flyin -damn -secretly wants hugs helpful himbo (photo of Amos) -never lies -knows all about drag -definitely not neurotypical
A hand holding a paperback edition of SISTERSONG by Lucy Holland. The tagline reads "Three siblings. Three deadly sins." The art is stylised Celtic woodcut vibes in shades of blue, with one of the siblings' faces looking forward, the other two siblings are in profile looking left and right.
Paperback (Penguin Classics edition) of THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka. The cover features a grayscale and distorted image of (potentially?) a doorway, through which other, more distorted and blocked off doorways can be seen. Superimposed over all this is a clear image of a single eye framed by eyebrow, in a circle (perhaps representing a looking glass?). The book is lying on a red fabric background.
My hand holding a paperback edition of THE LIONS OF AL-RASSAN by Guy Gavriel Kay. it has a red background with a gold medieval Spanish (Al-Andalusian) style lion on the cover.
A Kindle (Paperwhite) in a open yellow cover, displaying the cover of HOUSE OF OPEN WOUNDS by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The Kindle has the charge cable plugged in and is sitting on a blue fabric patterned with squirrels and acorns.
A hand holding a paperback edition of ARTIFICIAL CONDITION by Martha Wells. The cover foreground features our favourite SecUnit.
A paperback edition Becky Chambers: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy sitting on red fabric
A hand holding the book Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Live (2023) by Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm. The cover features a detail of Temperance holding an hourglass, from Ambrogio Lorenzetti's painting Allegory of Good Government
Marketing email from Audible with subject line "Jane Austen has a new audiobook..." Don't worry, I have now unsubscribed from Audible and their marketing emails
Four panels. Top left: Camina Drummer, visibly upset. Top right: "Space Billionaires". "Space" is an adjective and "Billionaires" is a noun. Bottom left: Camina Drummer angry and inciting Belter solidarity. Bottom right: "Space Billionaires". "Space" is a verb and "Billionaires" is a noun.
The Frogurt is also cursed.