The Anxiety of Self-Influence
Last Thursday the Denver alternative weekly Westword published a report from an appearance by Jonathan Franzen. The reporter, Kelsey Whipple, gathered up his “ten best quips.” I scanned the article for the most tweetable of those quips and posted it: … Continue reading →
King Crow by Michael Stewart
Michelleae1978: His obsessive interest in birds is a way of trying to get some normality and structure in his life
Review: What is Madness? by Darian Leader
What the book is about, which this reviewer rightly emphasizes, is real listening
Back to the future of fiction
A thousand-times-diluted text no longer has any potency, all it has is the shallow fleeting attraction of a circus freak
Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings
Audio slideshow: The performance artist Bobby Baker talks about the visual journal charting her journey through mental illnessJim PowellTim Maby
Readers’ tips: literary locations
From Robert Louis Stevenson's home in Samoa to the Brontës' haunts in Haworth and Moomin Valley in Finland, Been there readers share their favourite literary locations around the worldAdd a tip for next week and you could win a digital cameraWINNING T...
A Little Piece of Ground by Elizabeth Laird -review
'This book taught me that even in the worst situations, you can survive'Karim Aboudi has a list of the things he wants to do in his life. One of them is to destroy the Israeli tanks that block the street. Karim can no longer play football or see his fr...
Kristin Cashore to Publish New ‘Graceling’ Companion Novel
Children’s author Kristin Cashore will publish Bitterblue, a new novel set in the universe of her debut YA novel, Graceling.
The new book stars Queen Bitterblue, a character who first appeared as a supporting character in Cashore’s fantasy ...
Letters: Opinion divided on Britain’s concrete ‘treasures’
It was distressing to read Maev Kennedy's article (Unloved brutalist buildings cited as international treasures, 6 October), which recycles the usual cliches about such buildings. Birmingham central library is "grey" because the council won't clean it....
Iain Sproat obituary
Conservative minister with a passion for Pushkin and cricketIain Sproat, who has died aged 72 after suffering from multiple myeloma, must count as one of the unluckiest and most hard-working of parliamentarians. From 1970 he was Conservative MP for Abe...
Open door: The readers’ editor on… the rights and wrongs of putting spoilers in reviews