Wednesday, 30 July 2025

Publishers and platforms: How Substack, AI & email newsletters are redefining fiction in 2025

›
In 2025, a quiet transformation is reshaping literary publishing. Authors are increasingly bypassing traditional deals to connect directly w...

The Booker Prize 2025: Subtle power and global resonance

›
This year's Booker Prize longlist pulses with quiet intensity. From the return of Kiran Desai after a 19-year silence to Maria Reva'...
Monday, 28 July 2025

Writing with machines, owning your voice, and where the ethical lines are drawn

›
We’ve crossed a threshold. What used to be the stuff of speculative fiction is now a line item in the writing process: AI is here, and it’s ...
Saturday, 26 July 2025

Burn Bright, Burn Brief —The quiet power of short novels and why less is suddenly more

›
In a world of infinite scrolling and 800-page epics, something strange is happening, books are shrinking.  Not in value or complexity, but i...
Tuesday, 22 July 2025

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

›
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

›
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

›
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

›
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

›
 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

›
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?

›
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

›
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...