Read Palestine Week is coming up on 29 November-December 5. A great way to support Palestinian writers is to read their work. Also, it's good to read it because of its quality. Why not take part and perhaps discover a talented writer you haven't read before.

Yeah?

Flesh by David Szalay wins the @thebookerprizes.com. Heres @keirangoddard.bsky.social's review - the best piece I read on it: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

From The Conservationist to Milkman... Ahead of tonight's @thebookerprizes.com winner ceremony, I chose my 13 best winners ever for @theipaper.com inews.co.uk/culture/book...

From The Conservationist to Milkman... Ahead of tonight's @thebookerprizes.com winner ceremony, I chose my 13 best winners ever for @theipaper.com inews.co.uk/culture/book...

Reviewed The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It made me wonder if he made a Faustian pact, My Struggle was the reward and everything since the price www.ft.com/content/a728...

The moment in last night's concert, which veered from sublime to ridiculous, when Laurie Anderson called Gertrude Stein "the mother of ai". Hmm

Reviewed The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It made me wonder if he made a Faustian pact, My Struggle was the reward and everything since the price www.ft.com/content/a728...

‘For many stately homes and historically significant buildings, ghosts continue to be marketable commodities, even if this sometimes makes things awkward for historians and curators.’ Jon Day on things that go bump in the night. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

One battle after another with edits this week. Reminds me of my favourite line from John Updike's letters (review coming soon) when he writes an editor from his deathbed: "No I do not want to see another proof."

Congratulations to @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social! You ignited a grassroots campaign, built on the radical idea that everyone deserves to live in dignity. This is a seismic victory — not only for the people of New York, but for all those who believe that humanity & hope can prevail.

Mamdani's speech is SO GOOD: respectful, generous, sparkling.

Thrilled to see Helen Garner’s diaries win 2025 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction. So well deserved. And what a result for creative nonfic... My interview with Garner from last year: www.ft.com/content/2f37...

I reviewed Salman Rushdie's The Eleventh Hour for today's @theipaper.com and found that the five stories encapsulate the best and worst of him: inews.co.uk/culture/book...

I reviewed Zadie Smith's essay collection Dead and Alive and found it scrappy and predictable: inews.co.uk/culture/book...

"If you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?" Billie Eilish speaking directly to Mark Zuckerberg, as she donates $11.5m to food poverty and climate justice organisations.

I reviewed Zadie Smith's essay collection Dead and Alive and found it scrappy and predictable: inews.co.uk/culture/book...

whether it is feeding the hungry or taking bribes openly in the white house, both sides are problematic

The Guardian did something similar - like, 'check out these people who don't use ai', as if that makes them unusual - and yet I've never knowingly used the bloody thing and think it should be shutdown immediately

I doubt reviewing books is anyone's idea of backbreaking work but getting so engrossed in writing a piece that I forget to stand up for four hours is exactly that

Something it took me a long time to learn and I'm reminded of today with deadlines looming: an hour in a library is worth two hours anywhere else

Barghouti, a Palestinian unifier who learned Hebrew to negotiate with the Israelis, has been in prison for 20 years on a v flimsy pretext! www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

If this is how Israel treats its best known prisoners...

Someone sent me a proof of a book about ai so I robotically threw it in the recycling

D'Angelo was remarkable in so many ways. I'm saddest right now, as a fan, that we won't be getting an eccentric late period from him. His contributions remain inestimable but what he would have made in his 50s and onward, I just know it would have been amazing. RIP

What a loss. He had more music to make pitchfork.com/news/dangelo...

If you haven’t seen it, this footage from @apnews.com is incredibly important. The intent here seems unmistakable, in two ways: (1) just read the genocide convention, here it **absolutely** is, and (2) this level of infrastructural destruction is, no question, meant as pre-development demolition.

Always love reading a good Ryan Ruby essay, no matter if I'm actually that interested in the subject: he's a bright dude! And actually he might just have won me over with all things Pynchon too... newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Christopher Tayler on Olga Tokarczuk

yeah uh not sure this Nobel Peace Prize is the anti-Trump dunk so many people seem to believe it is www.thetimes.com/world/latin-...

quick everyone repost your Krasznahorkai essays!!!! newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann is gravely concerned about the detention of writer Naoise Dolan...The flotilla was illegally intercepted last night and seized by armed Israeli forces in international waters. irishpen.com/2025/10/08/t...

Went to a shop, bought a novel on publication day (near enough), came home, started reading. Haven't felt this excitement since err... Bleeding Edge. Or when late Roths were coming out. Cherish greatness while we have it and always be a fan.

I am saying once again that the Conservative attack on the Arts is because they are incredibly envious of artists who they perceive as a group that has “too much” cultural power, a type of influence Conservatives crave but will never have because they’re anti-intellectuals with no imagination.

The new Geese album, Getting Killed, is making me smile this morning

The ratio of arrests in comparison with the Tommy Robinson protests is absolutely wild. People peacefully holding a sign vs people violently attacking the police and the public.

Wincing the night away

Writing fiction in the third person past tense is starting to feel as stubbornly anachronistic as making studio sitcoms with a laughter track.

It feels like autumn so... inews.co.uk/culture/tele...

Good appreciation of Tony Harrison the dramatist and translator www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/s...

This week I was at a reading where re. accessibility a poet said: "I wouldn't want to write a poem my dad couldn't read." I thought of Tony Harrison's more ambivalent: "I'd like to be the poet my father reads" from School of Eloquence. Some of the best poetry on art, class, England. RIP.

‪Tony Harrison's 'V.' was first published in the London Review of Books in 1985. The front page of the Daily Mail reported on the 'FOUR LETTER TV POEM FURY.' www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v0...

A quick reminder that this wee gem goes out this afternoon at 3:45pm. If you miss it you can catch up later on BBC Sounds.

One Battle After Another is the only game in town this weekend, obviously. But in the meantime the title makes me think of the character in the History Boys who says history is "one fucking thing after another..."

thank fucking god

"Even a seventy-million-trick pony is still a trick pony..." Great Kathryn Schulz review to get Pynchon season underway www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...