The comfort reread, and what it says about your life right now

I have a small, slightly embarrassing ritual. When I can’t decide what to read next, I reread something I already know. Sometimes it is one chapter. Sometimes it is the whole book, like slipping into a familiar coat that still fits even if I have changed shape in the meantime.

This is the point where the productive part of my brain tries to intervene. You could be reading something new, it hisses. You could be expanding your horizons. You could be… achieving.

The BookTok canon is getting older, and that is not an accident

There is a particular kind of TikTok video that makes me laugh and then immediately makes me suspicious. You know the one. Someone holds up a book that looks like it could do structural work in a small house, says they were “not prepared”, and then cuts to a string of reactions that suggest the novel has personally rearranged their internal organs.

Sometimes it is a brand new release. Increasingly, it is not.

The two Kate Atkinson books we should talk about much more

There are books that arrive with a chorus of approval already attached to them. You can hear the noise before you even turn the first page: prize longlists, ecstatic reviews, the familiar phrases about brilliance and urgency and importance. 

Then there are books that are quietly absorbed into the background of contemporary fiction, admired, recommended now and then, occasionally pressed into a friend’s hands, but rarely given the full, sustained conversation they deserve.

Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and A God in Ruins belong to the second category, which feels faintly absurd when you consider what they actually do, and how good they are. 

Reading in the gaps: Why we return to books that broke us

There are books we finish and put down, and for a while, we are unable to speak. These are books that pull the air from our lungs. That leave us raw, like skin rubbed thin. And yet, somehow, we return to them.

Not immediately, of course. Often, we need time. Months. Years. Distance to recover from the ache they left behind. But they are on our minds, and the pull is there. Like gravity drawing us back to earth.

The death of genre? Why writers are dismantling old labels

It used to be so simple. You wrote a crime novel, or a romance, or a dystopia. Bookshop shelves were helpful about such things: spine out, genre in. Literary fiction sat in its elegant corner, cool, aloof, unbothered by the commercial hustle elsewhere. Genre fiction was the grafter, busy, popular, and a little bit suspect.

But something is shifting. Writers are slipping past those borders, and readers are following them. In fact, they’re relishing the trespass. Literary novels are embracing dragons and time travel. Crime writers are reaching for unreliable narrators and experimental prose. Romance authors are crafting love stories that refuse tidy arcs. In 2025, the lines feel not so much blurred as beside the point.

Why we keep coming back to the same books over and over

There are books I’ve read two or three times, and picked up more times. Not out of duty, but from a pull I can’t quite explain. 

They’re not always my favourites in the traditional sense. But they know something about me, or I know something about them. That's the power of rereading. 

Six novels that demonstrate why “show, don’t tell” is worth getting right

When I wrote about “The art of showing, not telling” recently, I realised how many great examples of this technique exist in literature. Some authors take it to the next level, showing us emotions, relationships, and tension in ways that draw entirely us into the story without a single line of “telling.” 

I thought it might be useful to look at a few of these standout examples and the writers who have mastered the art of showing so well that their stories linger long after you’ve finished reading.