Dana Rail
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danarail.substack.com
Dana Rail
@danarail.substack.com
Scribbling bibliophile over at #BibliollCollege: https://bibliollcollege.substack.com. 💙📚 Writer of speculative fiction with #DarkAcademia / #Arthurian themes. I love books, music & the city of #Oxford, and am blessed with the coolest fam on the plane
The latest from Biblioll College!

bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/biblioll-c...
Biblioll College's Monthly Miscellany No. 9
Notes and Highlights from November 2025
bibliollcollege.substack.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Boze’s latest Biblioll post (Substack) on that wonderful 85-hr Advent music playlist reminded me that one of my favorite YouTubers, Ben Maton, just put out a gorgeous video, filmed in a tiny Devon chapel, on “The Greatest Advent Hymn of All Time.” Highly recommend!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI0j...
The GREATEST ADVENT HYMN of all time
YouTube video by Ben Maton - The Salisbury Organist
www.youtube.com
December 5, 2025 at 5:00 PM
An 85-hour playlist with enough fantastic traditional music for the whole of Advent and the Christmas season as well!

bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/the-only-c...
The Only Christmas Carol Playlist You Will Ever Need
Eighty-Five Hours of Medieval and Tudor Festive Joy
bibliollcollege.substack.com
December 3, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Some who worked for the WPA during the Depression built infrastructure, like my Dad, who told me that the program had saved his life. Others made art in public spaces, like the Cohen Building in D.C.

Help save "the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal" by signing this petition!

c.org/V2MshfZk6S
Have you seen this petition yet?
Save the Wilbur J. Cohen Building — the “Sistine Chapel of the New Deal”
c.org
December 3, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Desperately miss these days when the entire country (planet?) went as one to movies like these, with lines snaking around the block. It brought us closer together.

bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/harry-pott...
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: A Retrospective
Revisiting the Most Underrated Film in the Franchise
bibliollcollege.substack.com
December 2, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Son John, an art historian specializing in New Deal art, co-wrote this piece on a Washington DC building (and its art) worth saving:

www.archpaper.com/2025/11/gsa-...
www.archpaper.com
December 1, 2025 at 5:19 PM
This is a fantastic little bookstore in #Oxford, crammed to the gills with all sorts of wonderful book, not just Catholic ones.

thecatholicherald.com/article/a-ha...
A haven of faith and literacy: St Philip’s Books in the heart of Oxford
Tucked away on St Aldates, this is one of Oxford’s hidden treasures and is more than a bookstore. It serves as a warm hearth of Catholic intellectual life, where the love of books and the love of God ...
thecatholicherald.com
November 30, 2025 at 10:14 PM
So proud of my son, John Murphy, who just published his first book with Thames & Hudson: "New Deal Art".

It's on Amazon, of course (amzn.to/4qNRvsm), but if you happen to live in Upstate NY, The Department of Things on Abeel Street in Kingston has copies--the shop is worth a visit on its own!
November 9, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by Dana Rail
I am so happy to be a member of this tribe...
Read more books. Just start, start small if that's easier, it all counts. We humans need books and trees and stars, always.
"Books are portals linking us with all that has come before and all that has ever been thought. To read a book at the drugstore is to transform the drugstore—and ourselves—into “something rich and strange.”

Latest from Boze on Biblioll College:

bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/how-to-rek...
How to Rekindle Your Love of Reading
I read 186 books in six months. Here's how.
bibliollcollege.substack.com
October 16, 2025 at 11:24 PM
As book lovers know, Portlandia is the home of Powells’ City of Books, the largest used book store in the world and a site of pilgrimage for this family.

This photo by Chiara Profenna was on the front page of the Oregonian today, in regards to the wee matter of—never mind—and I had to share.
September 29, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Ah, for the days of my youth, when rock stars wrote songs inspired by this book:

bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/the-shadow...
The Shadow Canon 07: Folklore, Myths, & Legends of Britain
The Book That Inspired a Jethro Tull Album
bibliollcollege.substack.com
September 22, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Dana Rail
SISKEL & EBERT, which premiered #OTD in 1986, had a master class of an opening sequence.

Thirty-five seconds, 21 shots, and a flawless establishment of the professional rivalry of two Chicago newspapermen who inspired a generation of film buffs. #FilmSky #TVSky
September 14, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Whenever I my head hurts about Left and Right, the scourge of Political Violence and Who's to Blame, I am always reminded of the credo of my favorite fictional Angelino, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch: "Everybody counts or nobody counts."
a man says " everybody counts or nobody counts " in front of a sign that says prime video
ALT: a man says " everybody counts or nobody counts " in front of a sign that says prime video
media.tenor.com
September 12, 2025 at 6:14 PM
"Books are portals linking us with all that has come before and all that has ever been thought. To read a book at the drugstore is to transform the drugstore—and ourselves—into “something rich and strange.”

Latest from Boze on Biblioll College:

bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/how-to-rek...
How to Rekindle Your Love of Reading
I read 186 books in six months. Here's how.
bibliollcollege.substack.com
August 10, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Dana Rail
Just in case it’s not already clear that ICE is a white supremacist thug army, Homeland Security is recruiting with a “defend your culture” slogan.
August 6, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Biblioll College's Monthly Miscellany No. 5
Notes and highlights from July 2025
bibliollcollege.substack.com
August 1, 2025 at 9:52 PM
One of my favorite thrillers, both novel and movie (the one with Edward Fox), is DAY OF THE JACKAL. RIP Mr. Forsyth.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...
Frederick Forsyth, Day of the Jackal author and former MI6 agent, dies aged 86
Writer used his experience reporting on De Gaulle’s France to plot his thriller, and continued to draw on real-world research for subsequent bestsellers
www.theguardian.com
June 10, 2025 at 10:05 AM
💙📚
An amazing literary reflection by Boze on Biblioll College: bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/the-shadow...
The Shadow Canon 03: Moby-Dick & the Book of Job
The Mystery of Suffering and a Hostile Universe
bibliollcollege.substack.com
May 31, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Brooks should get angry more often.
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/o...
Opinion | I’m Normally a Mild Guy. Here’s What’s Pushed Me Over the Edge.
www.nytimes.com
May 30, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Rach's latest from Biblioll College: Encountering the mind of the past: reflections on first reading Aeschylus & his Oresteia #AncientBlueSky #BookSky open.substack.com/pub/biblioll...
Encountering the mind of the past: reflections on first reading Aeschylus & his Oresteia
Post 10 of series, Library-Educated: St. John’s College Great Books Challenge
open.substack.com
May 26, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by Dana Rail
Tree of the Day, New College, Oxford
May 8, 2025 at 8:42 PM