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Beauty and folly are old companions.


Careful now, men at work. A crane as seen from the corner of Liverpool and Argyle Streets, Hobart. January 2010.

I treat the discovery of somebody else’s library due date slip – now helpfully printed out by some kind of bibliophile robot – as a rare insight into the mind of somebody else. Thus, when I found tucked in the back of Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things a slip from the Burnie Library, I eagerly pocketed it for my perusal.

What might it tell me about the puzzling punter who had previously perused the putative plot of a perplexing pederast?

Let’s have a look shall we?

  • The Critique of pure reason


  • The very best of Bert Kaempfert [sound recording]


  • Water music : and, music for the royal fireworks [sound recording]



Immanuel Kant’s bold – and utterly impenetrable – attempt to understand understanding, a collection of the hits of a German ‘easy listening’ orchestra leader, and GF Handel’s most famous piece paired with a suite written to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748.

Is there a neo-Kantian with a penchant for ‘safe’ Teutonic jazz orchestral stylings, still resentful of Maria Theresa’s ineligibility to succeed to the Habsburg thrones wandering the streets of Burnie?

Be afraid…
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