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Been aimlessly flitting between lots of stuff that just made me wonder what the actual point of reading is - just pointless vapid, narcissistic publishing - look at me, I made a book, it’s got no plot and the characters are me and my mates and we’re totally solipsistic but we went to university...

You’re not alone in that view. I felt like it was always reaching for some profound statement but couldn’t pull it off. The flights of purple prose amidst that wearing present tense style felt forced. I can already see the film/tv version of it.

stuff I’ve read over the last six weeks, some already discussed on here. Be interested if anyone else has read Lynch - Booker winner, Irish, dystopian- I’m kind of ambivalent about it. Recognise that there’s good stuff in there but also feel manipulated by it at the same time.

Yeah I am happy to read a new book - just that this was posted originally in the Dickens thread and i certainly don't want to run anything - i have enough difficulty sorting out 25 Y11 kids to actually do anything i tell them.

Yep. That grandad is wanker.

Ha! We tried the book club. It wasn’t super successful. I remember really enjoying the Austerlitz read together but then they chose a truly awful book which was utterly unreadable. @IdleRich was always really good at posting in the book club. But I do think reading Dickens is generally a good...

I love this bit which occurs not long before: And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

I'm an English teacher - I teach a linguistics based A level as well as all the usual Literature stuff as well. From a language point of view the word gender really only means type - words which fit this or that pattern, there is nothing inherently masculine/feminine about these words and there...

I teach a lot of this stuff - this article is pretty good on the limits of Sapir Whorf https://linguistmag.com/problem-sapir-whorf-hypothesis/

I’ve read some shorter stuff (and anything is short compared to the Faerie Queen) It’s been on my list for a while - it’s one of the central building blocks of English poetry, forever referenced, quotes across texts, that I feel like I’ve kind of read bits without ever having read it (which is a...

Nearly 40 grand raised via GoFundMe. Kind of heartening

I’ve been there. It was dead empty. Rather unfriendly and fucking expensive. Apart from that it was lovely.

oh no - that is genuinely awful. I know his wife died a few years ago and has a daughter. Really shocked about this. At his best he was great writer - especially about things he hated - and proper funny writer.

This would fit very much into Gallix’s key interests. He mentions Bartlett &Co a few times and obviously Oulipo gets various references. I’ll check Benabou.

Really enjoying Unwords by Andrew Gallix - it's 600 pages of his reviews over the past twenty years. Fortunately he is a very amiable companion and the kind of things he's reviewing are contemporary French lit with a smattering of theory - he's very good at drawing connection across texts and...

I always recommend Great Expectations, I know it’s not super short but it’s about as perfect as any novel I’ve ever read. To be honest he needs that broad canvas. The shorter fiction doesn’t work so well but of them Hard Times and Oliver Twist are decent. Tale of Two Cities is great fun.

Get over to the Dickens thread and give us your thoughts.

I don't really know - there are plenty of examples where a previous novel (or play) has been used as a structural device, Ulysses for example but usually it is hinted at, something to give it a shape but ultimately a new work is being created. Recently Preta Taneja used King Lear and set it in...

Knowing my affection for Dickens a number of people had asked if I had read Demon Copperhead - a novel ‘based’ on Copperfield and based in the Appalachians. I finally got round to it this month. It’s won a load of awards and has spawned a number of broadsheet articles about how it addresses...

No. I didn’t look at the visitor book. Who?