Sunday, 9 November 2025

The literary comeback of 2025: Why everyone's quoting Sontag again

›
It started, as these things often do, on Instagram. A scan of Susan Sontag's notebook in Helvetica type, posted by an aesthetic account ...
Wednesday, 5 November 2025

Why we’re in love with literary angst

›
From tear-in-the-rain heartbreak to existential quiet, bleaker classics are finding a new, eager audience. Remember when reading heavy meant...
Sunday, 2 November 2025

The rise of the hyper-niche book club

›
From "sad girl autumn" to "cosy fantasy without war," readers are forming ultra-specific clubs that speak to identity, m...
Monday, 27 October 2025

When pop stars read serious books: what book clubs mean now

›
Once upon a time, the book club was a quiet affair. A circle of friends, a bottle of wine, and a novel discussed with enthusiasm or polite d...
Wednesday, 22 October 2025

Why are we still waiting for J.D. Salinger?

›
I was a teenager when I first read The Catcher in the Rye, and I remember thinking, quite seriously, that I wanted to be a writer, not in so...
Thursday, 16 October 2025

Do writers need social media? Richard Osman thinks not. Here’s why that’s a problem

›
Richard Osman recently sat down with Guardian journalist Marina Hyde and offered a tidbit that has rippled across social media (or all place...
Tuesday, 14 October 2025

The literary echo chamber: Are we reading in circles?

›
I love a good book recommendation. Who doesn’t? But lately, I’ve started to wonder: are we all reading the same five novels, over and over a...
Friday, 10 October 2025

Shakespeare and Company: Why Paris’s most famous bookshop still feels like a pilgrimage

›
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...
Thursday, 9 October 2025

The rise of the fanon canon: when fan fiction influences original fiction

›
It was once a guilty secret: some writers honed their skills on fan fiction, sharing stories in the corners of the internet before stepping ...
Sunday, 5 October 2025

Minor works, major joy: Why we should read authors’ lesser-known texts

›
Not every literary treasure announces itself with a full-page review or a Booker Prize shortlist. Some arrive quietly, tucked into the back ...
Sunday, 28 September 2025

Dark Academia, Deconstructed: beyond the aesthetic

›
Tweed blazers. Ancient libraries. A murder among the privileged. Dark academia has become a cultural moodboard, spilling across TikTok, Inst...
Wednesday, 24 September 2025

Where have all the epics gone? A revisit to Lonesome Dove

›
I’ve just finished reading  Lonesome Dove . Again. Though technically a reread, it felt startlingly fresh – like coming back to a place you ...
Saturday, 20 September 2025

When writers go serial: The fiction newsletter Renaissance

›
Somewhere between a Dickens cliffhanger and a Substack subscriber list, a curious thing is happening. Fiction is going serial again. Once th...
Thursday, 18 September 2025

Unfinished business: the allure of the incomplete novel

›
There’s something magnetic about the unfinished novel. These are books that gesture towards a whole, yet never quite arrive. They end mid-th...
Saturday, 13 September 2025

Books that broke the internet: when novels go viral

›
In the past, a book’s success was measured in reviews, literary awards, and maybe, if the stars aligned, a TV adaptation.  Now, a novel migh...
Wednesday, 10 September 2025

What writers can learn from pop stars

›
It might sound a little unexpected to set Dua Lipa and Helen Garner on the same page, yet both demonstrate something fundamental: how to bui...
Saturday, 6 September 2025

The annotated life: Why marginalia is back in style

›
Marginalia, you either love it or hate it. Once considered the mark of a disrespectful reader, someone scribbling on the pristine pages of n...
Friday, 5 September 2025

This ain’t no cowboy song: writing through grief with music

›
This is a bit left-field for this blog. Usually, I’m writing about books and fiction. But creativity doesn’t always stay neatly in its lane....
Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Genre-blending that defies labels: From Romantasy to experimental fiction

›
What do you call a novel that blends gothic romance, dark academia, political allegory, and a magic system based on linguistic theory?  In 2...
Sunday, 31 August 2025

Why men read less than women — And how to change it

›
It remains a sad truth universally acknowledged that women read more books than men. Twenty years ago, Ian McEwan remarked that ‘when women ...