Supermarket delivery man: you want me to carry those bags upstairs for you?

Me: no no, I’ll be fine thanks.

Supermarket delivery man: you can never tell how old someone is.

My god the sheer number of once principled and smart people now willing to boost Tucker Carlson.

Always the writer is pressed into the form of the professional, which is the form they have spent their life escaping.

Really feel it might have been life changing.

I think the new penguin Joyces got pushed back too? Clearly something of a queue at penguin.

I would rate John Woods’ translation of Magic Mountain as one of the great reading experiences of my life. Can’t quite decide if this makes me more or less inclined to read two other translations but I’m definitely tempted.

Immense Thomas Mann riches ahead. The (fabulous) John Woods translations getting the Penguin Classics treatment, a full set of new translations from Oxford Classics AND a new translation of Magic Mountain by Susan Bernofsky.

Right now, I think most in the literary world can only see the potential of non-literary forms, can it be adapted, podcasted, function like an influencer. Recent case of Hachette republishing the self-published AI ‘edited’ Shy Girl seemingly without even reading it.

Do they enjoy reading and writing things and thinking about what they have read or written.

Actually, scratch that. Do people in the literary world actually like literature.

Genuine question: do people in the literary world actually want literature to survive.

A response on Reddit.

Jesus wept.

We can refuse the robotic in writing at a much deeper and more rewarding level than simply running everything through an AI detection algorithm.

Of course people are now using AI to produce reviews, trend pieces, opinion columns etc. It’s because our expectation for this kind of writing has already been flattened into the nakedly algorithmic. It’s become low hanging fruit.

Long before AI even arrived, a template approach to everything from article writing to novel writing to screenwriting proliferated across the web. At the same time, ideas about “collapsing attention” led to an injunction that writing be as easily consumed as possible.

I’ve said this before about other forms but AI is sweeping through an already denuded landscape. The bar for a great deal of writing has been lowered to a frankly absurd level of chatty readability that has resulted in a borderline fear of actual quality prose and original argument.

One good way of screening out the use of AI in book reviews would be to massively raise the bar in terms of what’s expected from a book review.

Dropping by to see the big guys.

Has any single phrase in living memory done more damage to people’s thought, or become a more reliable indicator of madness, ill will, or both, than “false flag.”

Mascha Schilinksi’s Sound of Falling is absolutely remarkable. Not a single visual cliche in the whole film. Image after image of stunning originality and power, details circling and repeating until what feels at first impressionistic achieves profound coherence. It’s a total vision.

Important to note what often doesn’t get said, too, but here is highlighted explicitly: not only is the social care system failing the people who use it, and often actively preventing people from seeking support, it depends for its function on the exploitation of its staff.

Arranging social care can be The chair of the independent commission on adult social care also says the care system relies on the exploitation of its workforce.

Everyone at the moment has their own view of what the most pressing national conversation should be. In my view, following years of work in the community care sector, it’s this. Social care is in crisis. The implications are horrific.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Also urge you not to read the guardian review which acknowledges none of the film’s Sufi mystical symbolism and so misses the point catastrophically. Never been happier with my policy of not reading about films before I see them.

Just allowing my nerves to settle after watching Sirat - a totally immersive, multi-sensory, at times brutal and very physical cinematic experience. The less you know in advance the better but I urge you to see it on the big screen, at high volume.

Neil Griffiths: ‘Mainstream presses are not taking risks’ The writer and publisher on the prize he created to champion risk-taking independent imprints, and why we should be paying more for books

Struck by how refreshing it is to read a “publishing industry” type interview that is at once clear about literary values and full of good practical sense.

observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Éliane Radigue, French composer and musique concrète legend, dies aged 94 The Paris-born artist reinvented the synthesizer through meditative and feedback-drenched sonic explorations

A truly great composer and artist - one who redefined composition and left behind a body of work of extraordinary profundity and beauty. She changed how people listen and, I genuinely believe, people’s entire sensory relationship to life.

www.theguardian.com/music/2026/f...

Ganavya: Tiny Desk Concert YouTube video by NPR Music

Completely wonderful.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YI...

When I was starting out as a writer, I listened to hours and hours of archived Bookworm shows. He was the greatest of literary interlocutors, elevating the thirty minute “books show” to new artistic and intellectual levels. Listening to him made me a better writer, and a much better reader. RIP.

Wonderful, fascinating, inquiring and ultimately very moving essay by Sheila Heti in Granta, which of late has been on a bit of a roll.