The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov (1894) Interesting in that Chekhov deals with themes he doesn’t usually address: the nature of artistic genius, of creativity, its closeness to madness, the price we pay for artistic achievement, and ultimately, its value. What is the point of doing something for…

Gusev by Anton Chekhov (1890) This is one of the great early stories, if only because how utterly different it is. And how odd it is. Nealy as odd as Gogol. But it’s not surreal. Nothing magical – like in Gogol’s “The Nose”. Nothing fantastically disturbing, like you get in Gogol's "The Overcoat",…

The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov (1899) This is peak Chekhov – whose stories peter out – as does he – at the beginning of the last century – with only 4 stories completed after ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ – which is rightly considered to be his masterpiece. The great stories…

How to deal with Tommy Robinson courtesy of Arkala

‘On the Road’ by Anton Chekhov (1886) This took Chekhov three weeks to write – apparently the first story he took sufficiently seriously – even suffering ‘creative agony’ and four false starts. Is this, perhaps, the first great story of Chekhov’s? Had claimed that, before this, he never spent more…

I’ve got a new book coming out next year: ‘Couch to 5k Writing - A structured programme of writing mastery from sentences to essays’. I’m also putting together a training package for schools & MATs. If you’d like to hear more, sign up for a FREE webinar on 16th October linkedin.com/posts/katie-ca…

New: We keep trying to teach grit as if it were something students can just learn. Instead, if we make progress visible students will persist. Swap pep talks for clear modelling, sequenced practice & precise feedback. Teach the subject well & resilience will follow open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

Here's my handout from my ResearchEd talk yesterday about the origin of the computational model of knowledge (and how this view contrasts with the normative view of the Sumerians-Aristotle-Wittgenstein) I tried to show different strands of thought: technologial, psychological, neuroscientific etc.

Most students can spot a metaphor. Few can define one. Teach tenor, vehicle and ground. Metaphor is transport: the vehicle carries the tenor across the ground. Stop device-spotting. Start explaining how the image reshapes the idea and why it matters. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

Ionych by Anton Chekhov (1898) A story in which the boredom and pettiness of a small town, the life of a mediocre family, the Turkins, a silly old man, his wife who writes tedious novels ‘about things that never happened in real life’, and their daughter ‘pussycat’ who of course ‘reads a great…

A Visit to Friends by Anton Chekhov (1898) A story which shows the importance of how the story ends: “Ten minutes later he was at his desk working – and he didn’t give Kuzminki another thought.” Far better perhaps to feel sorry for the narrator/protagonist, and his lack of understanding, than to…

The House with the Mezzanine by Anton Chekhov (1896) Is this the first appearance of ‘the green light’ in literature? Is this the same green light that appears in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (1925) – when narrator, Nick Carraway, observes Jay Gatsby stretching his arm out toward…

About Love by Anton Chekhov (1898) One of the better Chekhov stories for being less neat and tidy and having more of the bits that don’t quite fit into the pattern. If writing the ‘perfect short story’ is what motivated Chekhov – making it perfectly balanced, neatly but subtly patterned, having…

The Magician by Colm Tóibín (2021) Another fictionalised biography by Tóibín, this time exploring the life and times of the greatest German writer of the 20th Century – Thomas Mann. In his 2004’s ‘The Master’, Tóibín gave Henry James the same treatment – but with more success. Indeed, Tóibín’s…

The Two Volodyas by Anton Chekhov (1893) This is a great story and one typical of late Chekhov. As in ‘Fear’ / ‘Terror’ which uses the character of Forty Martyrs, in this story Chekhov uses the character of Olya to offset the protagonist’s character – and the comparison between the two – the…

Terror / Fear by Anton Chekhov (1892) The best of Chekhov’s stories are the later ones – as this is a later one – there are fewer than 40 (some incomplete) stories to come – yet if this isn’t one of his best, it is damn peculiar – and so well worth reading, and losing yourself in it for half an…

1/ Michael Gove reshaped English education more than any minister since 1944. His reforms continue to structure the present despite many changes of Government. A thread.

All the Devils Are Here by David Seabrook.  It’s called psychogeography, but WG Sebald did it better – walking about the place (in his case Suffolk) – meandering in and out of reminiscences and reflections on the place itself, as he makes his way – on foot. The urban walking practice known as the…

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (2022) Whilst The Guardian calls this “an object lesson in hollow hipsterism”, it is so much more than that – as though Latronico has in his sights the reader herself, whoever she might be, or think she is. This isn’t a critique of other people, a specific group of…

High Caucasus by Tom Parfitt (2023) In this very engaging and enjoyable book, Parfitt takes us through the politics of a fascinating region, as well as its geography and history, describing his walk through the whole of the Caucasus, from west to east, with great skill. However, it suffers from…

The Impostor by Damon Galgut (2008) Who is the imposter, in Galgut’s ‘The Imposter’? This, and other such questions – such as what is history – paw at the reader as she makes her way through this unlikely tale of unlikely people behaving in unlikely ways. Is this what people are really like, the…

The Masterpiece by Émile Zola (1886) The Masterpiece (L'Œuvre) is the fourteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart – translated literally as "The Work" (as in work of art), but often translated as The Masterpiece or His Masterpiece – and by now Zola is well on his way to completing his great project –…

The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin (1974) Another thought-experiment, another moral quandary, and Le Guin is off, with characteristic rigour and subtlety – and even if the ideas aren’t all subtle, even if the characters are a tad lumbering, even if the prose is a bit “dense, opaque and…

Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola (1867) Zola's third novel, but the first to show what he’s really about, and what he was about to do on a grander scale in his twenty-volume Les Rougon-Macquart cycle. It was a novel that earned him fame as well as notoriety, with a plot focusing on adultery and murder…

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (1969) The novel as a thought experiment This Hugo-winning (as well as multiple other awards) classic Sci-fi Novel from 1969 – radical before it was a classic – deals with gender amongst other themes – using the defamiliarization of sci-fi to come at…

Right. I've entered a half marathon (for the first time in my life!) on 12th October and am raising money for Cancer UK. If you'd like to donate great, if not, please share the link :) fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/davids-...

‘The Book of the New Sun’ by Gene Wolfe (1983) This four-volume science fantasy novel ‘chronicles’ the journey of Severian, a journeyman torturer from the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, after being exiled in disgrace to journey to the distant city of Thrax. It is all set in a…

Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1951) This science fiction beast (it’s one of the Foundation Trilogy) telling the story of the Foundation, an institute founded by psychohistorian Hari Seldon to preserve the best of galactic civilization after the collapse of the Galactic Empire, is one of the most…

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov (1941) A science fiction short story by the American writer Isaac Asimov about the coming of darkness to the people of a planet ordinarily illuminated by sunlight at all times. We’re on the planet Lagash, a planet constantly illuminated by six suns, where night never…

Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last. If this exponential rate of growth can continue, we will soon live in a very different world, @billmckibben.bsky.social writes.

The Brittle Age by Donatella Di Pietrantonio (2024) What’s glibly labelled ‘A powerful mother-and-daughter story, a profound exploration of human fragility, and of the haunting shadows of the past,’ sounds like a million drab and uninspiring books, but this is not drab, and is inspiring. Di…

Walking Along the Border by Colm Tóibin (1987) Tóibin is a terribly clever writer with so much to say: his non-fiction, journalism and commentary is evidence of that. This is such a great book – tackling ‘The Troubles’ at that time, in this way, shows what a master he is of that form: the…

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (1903) A later play, from an author who got better and better with age, and was to die the following year from tuberculosis at the age of 44. Whilst in Chekhov's lifetime, critics were not overly pleased with his work, finding the effect on the reader of…

The Coin by Yasmin Zaher (2024) The winner of the Dylan Thomas prize, this ‘audacious’ novel ‘tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour’, might be a little silly in places, almost losing its rather beautiful plausibility, but this novel about a Palestinian…

Wish I Was Here by M John Harrison (2023) For 50 years M John Harrison has been “staring grimly at things and writing them down” – and what he has produced has been notable: ‘Climbers’ (1989) and ‘The Course of the Heart’ (1992) are beautifully odd, strange, and novel; Harrison does not give you…

‘War & Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy 1869 – Volume 4 It’s odd to think that Tolstoy wrote this rather sprawling mass of a novel ten years before his masterpiece ‘Anna Karenina’. Is the ‘canvas too big’? Did Tolstoy bite off more than he could chew? Perhaps. But, despite bursting at the seams with good…

The privilege of being straight is that you never have to look for these symbols. You don’t have to wait for someone to clock you or your partner, and wait to see how they’ll react. It is easy when you’ve had that privilege to eye-roll about symbolism and how unnecessary it feels…

Absolutely fascinating (and a tad worrying) - especially, I admit, if you, like me, 'did' it for A-Level when you were 16/17.

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (2013) Apparently much acclaimed, and well regarded, or at least the front cover would have you believe; but only a little bit of digging points to a pretty consistently high level of acclaim and regard, though with the usual smattering of ‘what is this…

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (1897) Plumbing depths. As well as really having to read all the prose Chekhov has written since the late 1880s, his four-act plays – ‘The Seagull’ (1896), ‘Uncle Vanya (1897), ‘Three Sisters’ (1901) and ‘The Cherry Orchard’ (1904) should also be read; but why are we…

The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Woolf (1972) And along came this! But what reader of ‘literary’ fiction takes science fiction all that seriously? Yes, it does have a very bad rep, if only because readers often can’t get past the first 30,000 words of complex in-depth world building that can…

Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison (2002) What has been described “tense, moving, and hilarious”, a “dark jewel of a novel”, a “book of piercing intellect and belligerent humour”, said to have has a “profound impact… on the shape of the contemporary novel” is also a shapeless collection of random…

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (2021) What are our obligations? What is called “an exciting, ambitious debut”, this young author is “trying to compose images that portray a rhythm”, yet it always feels like we’re doing this young author a favour by reading his novel, as much as the reviewers on…

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (2018) What the Guardian dismiss as a minor quibble, after quibbling it, I think is more or less a fundamental flaw in any novel: that which is “never really earned” in a novel. There is so much that happens here, in a novel that little or nothing happens,…

“Surely it’s the sign of a remarkable work of art that it cannot be pinned down to any one definition, that you can find something new in it at each encounter.” On 100 years of Mrs. Dalloway.

Lincoln Michel recommends 10 novels with mind-blowing structures by Alejandro Zambra, Renee Gladman, Percival Everett and more!

The Waves by Virginia Woolf (1931) This is one of those big ideas novels that can feel overwhelming to read, pushing the reader to reflect on themselves and the world they are in: isn’t this what fiction is for? A novel in a series if dramatic soliloquies interspersed with passages of…

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (2021) This is the kind of thing that people are reading. What people want. A ‘runaway success’. What books, it seems, should do. Engage you above all else. And once they have you, these books, what do they do with you? Well, nothing else. It’s just engagement, pure…

Oh Tolstoy: Get over yourself!War & Peace – Volumes 2 &3 On reading ‘War and Peace’ a second time, some seven years later, I find myself more bothered by the bits where Tolstoy is labouring his point – how did I forget these stretches? More often than not, Tolstoy is on one of his hobbyhorses to…

Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis (2000) (Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) India, views, population: Victims of the great famine of 1899-1902…