I don't want to hear about your work-in-progress, I want to hear about your work-in-stasis

Pixar film about a family kiddish: Acerbic challah crust (Gilbert Gottfried) passed over for a new slice: "what am I, chopped liver?" Touchy bowl of chopped liver (Richard Kind): "hey"

A must-read 👇 The way the publishing industry prioritizes short term profits over long term sustainability is a train wreck in slow motion. It's baffling to me that industry execs don't get that investing in writers, being pro-labor, and nurturing a healthy literary ecosystem is good for business.

Parenting is very difficult and financially ruinous and exhausting and often maddening but sometimes you get to read The House at Pooh Corner out loud to your eight-year-old and hear them laugh in all the right places (everywhere) and there really isn't a better way to spend a Friday night.

If I'd read this piece 10 years ago I'd have understood my career very differently. If I'd read it 12 years ago I might not have agreed for my first book to be published in the way it was. We still don't talk about this stuff because it can feel embarrassing, but the author always picks up the bill

Farted in a playgroup then sniffed my kid's bum so tbh don't think I need the reminder on airplanes about securing your own oxygen mask first

THE DEFINITIONS is out in the UK in 8 days, meaning there's just a week left to do the ultimate mensch thing and preorder it from your local indie. I'm not super comfortable with sincerity but I'm proud of it and think it's very timely, and I'd love you to read it uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-....

Captcha before you can post an online book review: identity all instances of stream of consciousness but 8/9 are just first person narration

Late, as ever, but Jacqueline Novak might be the funniest person on the planet. It would be backwards to call it stand-up aspiring to the heights of literature; it's a reminder that, just occasionally, literature (Roth, Volckmer, Grossman) aspires to the heights of stand-up.

I missed this (it must've fallen through a crack in my usually watertight self-googling) but delighted that THE DEFINITIONS is one of LitHub's most anticipated books of 2025: lithub.com/lit-hubs-mos.... It's out in two weeks in the UK and is *very much* available to preorder from your local indie

The least realistic part of the depiction of parenting in Bluey is that they don't spend two hours every day watching Bluey.

Obviously a lot of fun to be had here but I'm enjoying the version conjured by the headline's slight ambiguity: that it was the patient who was left to have sex during the operation

Billion dollar business ideas: a burrito place where they price in the cost of the guacamole

Saturday's march was a broad church. You had proud, 1930s-style racists who call themselves racists and 1940s-present-style racists who don't like it if you call them racists. Truly it encompassed a spectrum of beliefs

I had great fun talking Silver Jews, Ishiguro, Seinfeld and Wittgenstein on this, and I got to tell one of my favourite jokes which shares quite a lot with A Village After Dark open.spotify.com/episode/0aGG...

Civility, as defined by the right, is, and always has been a cosh.

This is a small thing and less egregious than the 'right way' part but there's something revealing in the 'he *did* politics.' "Doing" politics is not something most people get to choose. Unless you belong to a very narrow, finely calibrated and historically privileged intersect, politics does you

A very nice write-up for THE DEFINITIONS in Kirkus, and, dare I say, *very* good news for readers who like their entries into the canon of contemporary dystopias elliptical, unsettling and belonging to the lyrical tradition www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

I have four good reasons not to attend this (1. It's Yom Kippur, 2. I don't live in Birmingham, 3. My own book is out that day, 4. Solo-parenting two kids while partner installs a show in Texas) but I bet at least 2 of these don't apply to you. Honestly, this book is so great!

But Your Honour, these are... synonyms?

On the off-chance that you don't think of it once a day, it's always worth remembering Art Spiegelman's response to a critic who asked if he thought a comic book about Auschwitz was in poor taste: "No, I think Auschwitz was in poor taste."

First 20 mins of K-Pop Demon Hunters is surprisingly Substance-coded. (I am forty years old)

So weird being Jewish and left-wing. I think those walking through London on a march against anti-Semitism are unwittingly gifting their sensitivity to a genocidal regime but I also think IBS is cultural appropriation.

How it feels sharing book events on here:

Can’t wait for this also www.waterstones.com/events/ben-p...

I finished The Expansion Project by @benpester.bsky.social ten days ago and have been trying to think of a way of talking about it since. It is truly, authentically dreamlike, and grapples with something I'm fascinated by: the uncoupling of language from meaning. It's terrifying and hilarious...

American friends: Barnes & Noble is having another pre-order sale on forthcoming books including "The Dead Man's Empire", sequel to the award-winning "The Last Blade Priest". But you must act today, because I have been very lazy about sharing this information!

If you're in Liverpool next month and fancy hearing me think out loud then please come along to the launch of THE DEFINITIONS. I'm occasionally cogent and, if you get me on the right topic, borderline interesting, and there'll be wine, good people and great books. deadinkbookshop.com/products/the...

Heartbreaking. Jon is the first person I met in Crystal Palace - we discussed David Gates. I've known him for ten years and never once saw his legs. He was like a creature from Greek myth: half-man, half-counter. Very hard to imagine this community without him.

Historians have a special word for politicians who pitch right not because of deep-held fascist beliefs but for fear of being outflanked. They call them fascists.

Not only is Judaism nothing like Christianity, it often has only a passing resemblance to itself.

Exciting booty from a long-awaited visit to @deadinkbookshop.bsky.social

Very much reached the point of the summer holidays where my love for my children has overflowed and now I'd spend around £607 to spend five hours away from them.

Half Man Half Biscuit Tiny Desk Concert

So undignified being stung by a jellyfish. Like I'm screaming in pain because I touched a poached egg

King Solomon: In that case, if you can't decide, the only fair thing is if I cut the baby in-- 8-year-old: I get the bigger half! King Solomon: Err, but if I-- 8-year-old: Yeah, that's fine, but I get to choose which half.

You really appreciate the landscaping on an adult visit to a theme park. Extremely pleasing, like a good cemetery.

This They Might Be Giants TONIGHT SHOW performance of "Birdhouse In Your Soul" from 1990 remains firmly lodged in my noggin thanks to the Tonight Show Band's full commitment and Doc Severinsen's incredible trumpeting... It took an already great song and made it transcendent.

Have to respect an organ thief. That's a man after my own heart.

If you're US-based, well, firstly commiserations, but you're also eligible to win 1 of 100 free early copies of my new book,The Definitions. If you enter now, I think your odds are quite good www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

Booksky/parents of borderline precocious and extremely stubborn eight-year-olds, what would you recommend for a young reader who loved Holes, enjoyed Hoot, and is in the market for something similarly adventurous? Extra marks if I can incentivise him by claiming it's inappropriate

Sally Rooney on the bullshit proscribing of Palestine Action by a bullshit government. And. By the way. I think this is how to use the platform granted to you by success. Expressing solidarity, criticising injustice, standing up. Instead of, for example, kicking minorities for billionaire kudos.

@gabrielflynn.bsky.social Congrats on the debut book - looks great! Snagged myself on the final part of your bio. Any interest in joining the England Writers football team (which currently exists hypothetically until we get some more fixtures)?

The fundamental flaw of a film like Groundhog Day, exposed by parenting young kids through a school summer holiday, is that if the same day were to repeat again and again, it would take at least a fortnight before anyone noticed

Enjoyed that the dentist's assessment of my lower jaw gun recession was essentially "if anything he's struck it *too* well"

Finally read Small Things Like These and let me tell you if this Chekov lad can write like Claire Keegan I better read some more of him. Heartstoppingly good.

A fun exercise I like to do with students is ask them if a series of receptacles are cups or mugs and then to devise a set of rigid criteria. Without fail they construct elaborate ad hoc intellectual scaffolds to explain their categorisations and cling to them under questioning (1/2)

Apropos nothing, I'm currently two years into a writing project that started as a PhD proposal that started as a Twitter rant that was inspired by the author of a wildly successful and extremely objectionable book announcing publication of its entirety unconscionable sequel.

Rodeo instructor (alarmed, sympathetic): Is this your first rodeo?