Nerdy literature newsletter. Helping you make the most of your reading.
Here’s the Barbara Everett quote about “texts” which I could not find when I wrote my recent piece about literary criticism. From her review of Carpenter’s Auden biography in the LRB. My thanks to Sean Keilen for sending it to me. (Sean has a new book about Sh…
I am unashamed to call him a great man, to say that he is my hero. I can never write of him without strong feeling.
Among the people who blame phones for the “reading crisis” and the associated decline in educational outcomes, the PISA results are, in my view, somewhat misunderstood.
what are the implications of misalignment?
The trouble with literary criticism—whether it is done by school children or professors or freewheeling writers—is that it cannot be defined.
The New Dark Ages, by James Marriott
Oh my god I loved this film.
The history of the novel in Britain
Carefree mind, all the time, never blue
A new book from Jeanna Smialek
Ryan Ruby in the NLR
New data from Dan Sinykin
The philistine supremacy is still at large
Perhaps I am the wrong reader of Life of M. Certainly I find Cusk’s books unsympathetic generally. (I hated Outline.) But I was absorbed enough to want to finish this novel, even though I don’t find it impressive.
When my children were little, they wanted me to make up a story for them.
And reading advice from John Stuart Mill
an essay in Meliora
Philip Hensher's new History of the Novel in Britain
And the beauties and ugly offenses of Copenhagen
Aesthetics should make the old new and the new old
universals and particulars
at the demolition derby
There are other ways to raise money for charity.
let's hope so
Pecan pie, Pecan pie, Pecan pie
Tessa Hadley in the Times
I cannot reconcile my heart to this unlikeable approach to literature
Bob Dylan, the reading crisis, children, happiness, and more
Splendid literary criticism, dull politics
with spoilers