Vladimir Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, and George Orwell were all rejected with varying degrees of disdain, confusion, or complete indifference. It reminds us that the taste-making machinery of publishing is imperfect, and that a firm "no" isn’t always the final answer.
This is beige prose, smooth, flavourless, and engineered for mass readability. It’s not bad writing, exactly. In fact, that’s the problem. It’s technically correct, but soulfully inert. A style that’s been edited within an inch of meaning. Every sentence feels like it’s been test-marketed, stripped of friction, and dunked in lukewarm relatability.
When writers talk about the books that shaped them, it’s usually the big names: Bird by Bird, On Writing, maybe a bit of Joan Didion or George Orwell. But some of the most essential books in a writer’s life aren’t the ones offering advice.
Not since the heyday of Martin Amis, David Storey or even Alan Sillitoe has literary fiction made space for this kind of protagonist.
In a year where cultural discourse seems more fragile than ever, Sontag's voice cuts through. Aphoristic, self-possessed, and unafraid to court complexity, she's re-entered the conversation not just as a thinker, but as a kind of literary style icon.
Remember when reading heavy meant dragging yourself through dense tomes? Nowadays, bleakness has become chic. The recent surge in interest around titles such as White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali is showing us something more profound about why readers gravitate toward literary angst.
Remember when book clubs were just about gathering around the latest must-read novel with a glass of wine in hand? That version still exists (and thrives), but something stranger and more specific has quietly been gaining ground: the hyper-niche book club.
But today’s book club looks very different. When Dua Lipa recommends This House of Grief to her 90 million followers, or Florence Welch posts her annotated copy of The Bell Jar, something deeper is at play. Reading has become performance, identity, and, unexpectedly, power.
Holden Caulfield's voice felt like it had kicked the door open. It was messy, alive, and full of feeling. It didn’t sound like a book was supposed to sound, and that was precisely the point.
It wasn't even a casual comment. It was something he had thought about. On the surface, it might sound comforting for those of us bone-tired of the algorithmic hamster wheel we have found ourselves on. But it’s also, frankly, bad advice for most writers trying to carve out a space in today’s publishing world.
Log on to BookTok and you’ll find Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo passed around like holy scripture.
Over on Bookstagram, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow or Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library are often perched artfully next to a flat white and some autumnal leaves. If you’re deep into literary fiction, chances are someone has handed you Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, or the ever-expanding crop of novels compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.
A century after it first opened, Shakespeare and Company remains more than a bookshop; it’s a living testament to the power of words, memory, and belonging.
There are bookshops that sell books, and then there’s Shakespeare and Company. Each time I visit, as I did again recently, I’m