Friday, 27 June 2025

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

›
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

›
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

›
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

›
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

›
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...
Monday, 16 June 2025

The Road: A devastating vision, brought beautifully to screen

›
TikTok got me thinking about great book-to-screen adaptations. There are plenty of good and bad out there. For me, Cormac McCarthy’s The Roa...
Thursday, 12 June 2025

From Sylvia Plath to The Smiths: The ultimate bookish playlist

›
If you're like me, and you love books and music, you probably get the same unique thrill in hearing a favourite book or author woven int...
Saturday, 7 June 2025

20 Military history books and memoirs worth your time

›
From D-Day to drone warfare: definitive reads on modern conflict If you’ve ever wanted to understand not just what happened in war, but why ...
Friday, 6 June 2025

20 War Novels that stay with you

›
Today is 6th June, marking the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings. D-Day was the largest seaborne invasion in history and a turning poin...
Sunday, 1 June 2025

The BookTok Effect: Why is The Secret History still so popular?

›
One of the most talked-about books on TikTok is Donna Tartt's The Secret History. More than 30 years after its publication, it remains ...
Friday, 30 May 2025

The Great American Novel: 15 books that define a nation

›
Last time I wrote about what the Great American Novel is, where it came from and whether it was still needed or even possible. Everyone, inc...
Wednesday, 28 May 2025

What is the Great American Novel – and does it still matter?

›
One of the questions I’m endlessly fascinated by when it comes to literature is The Great American Novel. It is so evocative, and carries su...
Wednesday, 21 May 2025

The fake summer reading list: AI, outrage, and the decline of trust

›
This story is so wild. It started, as these things often do, with a list. A sunny-season tradition: the trusted newspaper summer reading lis...
Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Why Hemingway still matters

›
This year will be sixty-three years since Ernest Hemingway took his own life. He was 61 and a towering presence in literature. His life was ...
Thursday, 15 May 2025

Whatever happened to Douglas Coupland?

›
Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X didn’t just name a demographic—it captured a mindset. His fiction defined the detached, drifting, hype...
Thursday, 8 May 2025

The ADHD plot twist: making sense of ADHD as a writer

›
This is something of a confession. Something I’ve never shared publicly. I’ve hesitated to say it even privately. Slightly embarrassed, I su...
Thursday, 1 May 2025

Why you should read Joan Didion and the best books to start with

›
Joan Didion didn’t just write essays and novels, she rewired what prose could do. Her work is surgically precise and emotionally raw, offeri...
Friday, 25 April 2025

If you liked The Secret History, you’ll love these five dark, literary campus novels

›
If you’re anything like me, finishing The Secret History leaves a strange kind of void. Donna Tartt’s literary debut is one of those once-i...
Sunday, 20 April 2025

How to write your novel in three drafts: the method that keeps you moving forward

›
Writing a novel can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re trying to perfect every page as you go. But what if you didn’t have to get it ...
Wednesday, 16 April 2025

The writing struggle is real: how to beat procrastination and get the words down

›
Revising this latest book has been tough – and that’s with an outline. The story is there, the chapters mapped out, but the act of sitting d...