'And all they did was look, no question, No answer, neither frown nor smile, no move Of lip or eye or brow or eyelid pale But all one long look which consumed his soul Into desire beyond the reach of hope' ~ A. S. Byatt - The Fairy Melusine, from Possession

'[...] the fact, to put it crudely, that there are sad children and happy children, said Korin, that he was a sad little child, one of those who throughout his life is slowly, steadily consumed by sadness [...]' ~ László Krasznahorkai - War and War, tr. George Szirtes

'Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.' From the long denouement of George Saunders' profound and very moving treatment of the death of Abraham Lincoln's son, Willie, Lincoln in the Bardo

'[...] grandmothers, tolerant and frank, recipients of certain dark secrets, who, by the quality of their unjudging listening, granted tacit forgiveness, and thus let in the sun.' ~ George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo

'When we imagine ourselves to be in a state of mind, no matter what, we are in that state of mind [...], in every state that we imagine ourselves in.' ~ Thomas Bernhard - Walking, tr. Kenneth J. Northcott

'Let me sadly affirm that I did; it did; they were; she did.' In awe of the exquisite arrangement of this paragraph from Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie; a paragraph, like the novel itself, containing multitudes

‘It’s a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel’ We're delighted to announce the winner of the #InternationalBooker2026, supported by Bukhman Philanthropies, is Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King. Discover the book: thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...

'What is the wind, what is it.' ~ Gertrude Stein - Tender Buttons

'[...] - the delicate tracery, the intricate crisscross of colourless lines, the cold waiting veins of the future.' ~ Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children

remember the pleasure Frank O’Hara, ‘Lines to a Depressed Friend’

Wishing @smwwriting.bsky.social a happy publication day for MALC’S BOY! A bold, irreverent, funny, intellectually nimble debut novel exploring fathers and sons, northern working-class culture and masculinity. It’s our launch title & a novel like no other. From all good bookshops as of today 23.4.26

J. H. Prynne wrote a guide to reading works of literature for Cambridge students. This was the postscript:

Born #OTD

'[...] one universe, one cosmos: contained in one America: one towering frantic edifice poised like a card-house over the abyss of the mortgaged generations [...]' ~ William Faulkner - Requiem for a Nun

Very excited to receive my copy of Malc's Boy by Shaun Wilson. Timely themes in a raw, experimental literary form - sign me up. Out now from @conduitbooks.bsky.social

Lines excerpted from Thomas Hardy's The Convergence of the Twain, his poem on the loss of the Titanic

'It is obviously a plot to weaken the holy name of Mother. That is why Mother murmurs a prayer to Jesus; the prayer is heard by no one, including the addressee.' ~ Elfriede Jelinek - The Piano Teacher, tr. Joachim Neugroschel

incommunicable contemplations

'[...] so that instead of being stuck there he could go on and by the grace of God lead his own life, undestroyed by what was not his doing.' The beautiful closing line of So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

'In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.' ~ William Maxwell - So Long, See You Tomorrow

GAUNT: O, but they say the tongues of dying men Inforce attention like deep harmony. Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain, For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. ~ King Richard II - Shakespeare

'You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.' David Foster Wallace on taking your own life.

Excited to receive this morning's bookpost: @niamhmaccabe.bsky.social's new collection Four Night Seas, of which I have read the first story and found it by turns cerebral, poetical, technological, elegiac, and also very funny. Out now from @lilliputpress.bsky.social

'The scenes of our life resemble pictures in rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful.' ~ Arthur Schopenhauer - On the Vanity of Existence, tr. R.J. Hollingdale

Recent acquisitions from a trip to the nothing short of inspirational Hay-on-Wye, the National Book Town of Wales, which well befits its title. (Full list & translators in alt-text) #booksky

As a tiny independent DIY press we have zero funding, we'll likely never be on an awards list, but we are passionate about what we do, and paying writers. We pay our writers 50% of profits. Every sale matters more than you know. Thank you for the continued support 💜 www.salopress.com

J. H. Prynne, on reading

'Grief is selfish: we cry for ourselves without the person we have lost far more than we cry for the person [...] and if the grief is frozen by ambiguity, by the constant possibility of reversal, then so is the ability to cope.' ~ Julia Armfield - Our Wives Under the Sea

The violence of either grief or joy Their own enactures with themselves destroy.

A horrifying vision of the future

'retreat and steps back are not the same' Ross Scott-Buccleuch's Harm Dissuasive, taken from the fragmentary and yet playful collection Fang Coda, via @salopress.bsky.social

GBP SHORT STORY PRIZE: A quick announcement and apologies - we'll be posting the GBP Short Story Prize longlist at 17:00 tonight; it would have been much earlier but alas, an IT meltdown has scuppered that... (Working on it now!) (Please share if you can.)

An Absence of Sea by Christina Tudor-Sideri | *out 16 April* www.erratumpress.com/an-absence-o...

Some of Infinite Jest's almost-proverbs from the first of its great, deeply human Alcoholics Anonymous/Ennet House/recovery sections. A selection of my favourites, very particularly the last two

Three new acquisitions from a recent Cambridge trip: Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield Jean - Madeleine Dunnigan (a @dauntbookspub.bsky.social original) The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

'[...] and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him—that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.' ~ Graham Greene - The Heart of the Matter

For our winter issue, Granta goes to therapy. Read the issue for free online for the next five days. granta.com/products/gra...

My February big read, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest - evoking in my mind, 200pgs in, the chaos, the hilarity of William Gaddis's J.R., the drug-life and -world of Christiane F., and Pale Fire's voluminous footnotes

On loan from a friend, a more recent Ishiguro: The Buried Giant

'The heart without an owner.'

'[...] I was born in the night of January the second and third In the unreliable year Of eighteen-ninety something or other, And the centuries surround me with fire.' ~ Osip Mandelstam - Aortas Fill with Blood, tr. James Greene

‘And then she moved him. Just when doubt, regret and every single unasked question was packed away, long after he believed he had willed himself into being, at the very time and place he wanted to take root—she moved him. From room to room. Like rag doll.’ P. 261 ♾️ 👥🫂♾️

“And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.” —— Virginia Woolf, The Waves #SundaySentence #BOTD #HBD

'[...] and that on hot summer evenings I used to sit and watch the swallows, always in pairs, and wish sentimentally that I too could be a pair with somebody.' ~ Nancy Mitford - The Pursuit of Love

“The eternity which Proust opens to view is convoluted time, not boundless time. His true interest is in the passage of time in its most real—that is, space-bound—form, and this passage nowhere holds sway more openly than in remembrance within and aging without.” — Benjamin, “The Image of Proust”

'Correct understanding of a matter and misunderstanding of the same matter do not exclude each other entirely.' ~ Franz Kafka - The Trial, tr. Idris Parry

'Often - and in my inmost self perhaps all the time - I doubt whether I am a human being.' ~ Franz Kafka in a letter to Felice Bauer (tr. Elias Canetti)

We have the post-Christmas blues* and are going to struggle to pay our bills at the end of the month. If you would like to help, why not buy a surprise book parcel for just £10 inc P&P, 2 wrapped novels in the post [*not personally, I'm v happy! Just poor] www.treehousebookshop.co.uk/shop/details...

World Book Night 2026 – The Mountains Are Calling… You're invited to respond to a poem, text or book about mountains for an exhibition and mail art swap. Deadline 3rd March 2026. Some examples below, one on left by @paulxhearn.bsky.social Download the info at: www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/news/#wbn2026

Now reading through with a friend (an enjoyably thought-provoking way of reading a classic): Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights 'Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves [...]'