The Book Beat

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Tuesday, 22 July 2025

The Literary Brat Pack and the birth of 1980s Manhattan Cool

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For anyone craving an 80s mood board turned dark, literary statement, you’ve arrived at the right place. Step into 1980s Manhattan, when the...
Sunday, 20 July 2025

Grief, grammar, and the Didion sentence: Rereading The Year of Magical Thinking

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For me, few books confront grief with the unflinching clarity of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. It is one of my favourite o...
Monday, 14 July 2025

Why the Classics still cast a spell: reading backwards in the age of the algorithm

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Browse through the bookish corners of Instagram or TikTok, and you’ll encounter a familiar pattern: glossy covers, rapid emotional claims, a...
Thursday, 10 July 2025

Bookworm summer: Reading as stylish rebellion

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Move over, Brat Summer. The era of ironic chaos and glam messiness is giving way for something quieter, more cerebral, and, dare we say it, ...
Sunday, 6 July 2025

Why Mansfield Park deserves your attention in Austen’s anniversary year

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 In the book world, you cannot have missed it. It’s 2025, and it’s Jane Austen’s year — the 250th anniversary of her birth. So, it's nat...
Saturday, 5 July 2025

Packing lists and California cool: How Joan Didion made the personal iconic

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Before minimalism was a hashtag or lifestyle trend, Joan Didion was living it with elegance and intent. Her now-famous packing list, tucked ...
Tuesday, 1 July 2025

Is "Performative Reading" really so awkward?

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It’s the quietest rebellion of 2025: the reader with a paperback in a coffee shop, a hardcover in hand on the train, a thick novel laid gent...
Friday, 27 June 2025

Why romantasy is the book genre Gen Z can't stop talking about

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Once upon a time, fantasy and romance lived in separate kingdoms. One was filled with dragons and quests; the other, with yearning glances a...
Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Short stories, big hearts: ten collections worth reading

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Sometimes, when you’re reading, you want to dip in and out. To read a story from start to finish, savouring the words and the rhythm of the ...
Sunday, 22 June 2025

From Memoir meltdown to dystopian excess: Jame Frey returns with a roar

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Like a lot of people, I read A Million Little Pieces when it came out. I read it quickly, swept up by its manic rhythm and gut-punching cand...
Friday, 20 June 2025

How Glasgow Boys reinvents the coming-of-age novel in Scots

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When Margaret McDonald, at just twenty-seven, became the youngest-ever winner of the Carnegie Medal for Glasgow Boys , it felt like more tha...
Wednesday, 18 June 2025

Where to start with Martin Amis: The style, satire and the savage beauty of language

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With writers you grew up reading, their departure leaves a space in your life that is as close to an ache as books and literature can get. T...