Ooh, I'm definitely going to read this. And I, too, am obsessed with class. And also Gen X!

How is that possible?! One of my favourite places ever!

I'm about to turn 50 & I'm not feeling 100% jolly about it. Mostly because I am really keen to find a home for my fourth novel. I'm out on sub to a few agents but who knows? In the meantime, does anyone know of any small presses that are open to submissions? It's a dark love story set in the 50s!

The New Yorker's reviews are always *chef's kiss*

Always

Ugh

I must get that!

I don't think I've read that but I love her writing!

Took me far too long. Sehr gut indeed though.

A politics that claims to speak for "the people" against its "enemies" is always dangerous.

"The people" are a glorious array of different ideas & interests, with democracy a dialogue between them.

Populism is founded on a lie,so its fruits are always authoritarianism, simplism & conspiratorialism

You have to wonder about all these spam emails being sent to writers, offering ‘book promotion services’. Like, you really think trying to tap *writers* for money will provide a good source of income?

That made us both LOL this morning as well. Liked the way he kept saying No, to most of the questions!

Oh I loved Moonlighting!

Under the Boardwalk!

Louise Erdich's The Sentence. It's set in a haunted bookshop. HIGHLY recommend!

Also available in the late 70s/ early 80s. Happy days.

Reminder, now the world has been reduced to ‘content’ being fed into make-believe machines run by billionaires, books are gold dust when compared to all other ‘content’. If only book publishing positioned themselves as that and believed in themselves.

Startup launches ‘industry-first’ certification for human-made books UK start-up Books By People has launched a new certification – the Organic Literature Certification – with a group of independent publishing houses to “counter AI-generated books”.

If you care about the future of books and publishing, I highly recommend you get behind this initiative with your whole hearts - (for what it's worth I think the whole of publishing should do this) www.thebookseller.com/news/uk-star...

So, I've been off Bluesky for a while, no particular reason, and now I've been without a working phone for *counts on fingers* three days and I feel cut off from the world! On the plus side, I read the (nearly) entire of Alan Hollinghurst's Our Evenings on the train back from our holiday!

Escalator New Writing Fellowships for unpublished fiction writers celebrates 20th year The National Centre for Writing has launched a call to find writers in the East of England who are seeking to 'develop their craft and find routes into the publishing industry'.

The National Centre for Writing has launched a call to find writers in the East of England who are seeking to 'develop their craft and find routes into the publishing industry' 👇

I'm also finding this story more gripping than the original book, which never appealed anyway!

Really interesting thread on the ramifications of the #SaltPath debacle 👇

What? I did not know thus and now I must find out more...

Is anyone listening to the R4 Postwar series? It's brilliant but also so relevant to today: the beginning of the Welfare State, the United Nations, the Cold War...
@bbcsounds.bsky.social

🙄🙄🙄

a man with a scorpion bite. A woman with cholera. A diabetic who needed insulin. And Omran, the dimpled 3-year-old.

A man with a scorpion bite.
A woman with cholera.
A diabetic who needed insulin.
A 3-year-old boy.

They all died when the U.S. stopped sending medicine to Sudan.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

REALLY ITS TOO MUCH EFFORT TO LIFT THE BLOODY PEN

This is quite bittersweet. And funny. People have been doing it for years. I remember meeting English teachers in their thirties on my travels and times living abroad. I have travel yearning too but being settled is deeply satisfying.

Teachers don't need more tech. They need smaller classes and more (paid) time for prep and instruction. But alas, the tech option means more profit for billionaires, while the latter would cost billionaires more in taxes. And so, in our current kleptocracy, tech is what teachers are going to get...

So right.