Books Contents Archive

Hello. Today we went to the Rye Nature Reserve. It's in Rye, hence its name. It's right next to the sea, so we sat and had a packed lunch on the beach, and then went for a long walk. Peace & quiet. No distractions. Just chatting, goofing about and shiz. It was ace.

‘Powell emarked that being a writer didn’t excuse one from being a human being. Whereas (one didn’t say this) being Queen does. I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me.’ https://t.co/gUXNHDIikC

"The face in front of you should be a fair copy of the one on your corpse, still in bed with your husband’s fury." https://t.co/hikPX0g1Zm

Popular Longing points not only to the millennia-old tradition of poems that question whether life is worth living – Swift, Juvenal, Ecclesiastes – but also to a contemporary argument about, and against, rape culture. @accommodatingly on Natalie Shapero: https://t.co/aaVIYoHrv8

‘It is an attack: on institutions, social organisation, systemic injustice and the arrangements of the Catholic Church,’ @susannahclapp writes of Claire Keegan’s Booker-shortlisted ‘Small Things Like These’. ‘At the centre are the Magdalene Laundries.’ https://t.co/TjhdJlybqB https://t.co/HNMoq6vGS8

So many adaptations, so little time! (via @BookRiot) https://t.co/FyM6GHphmk

Self-destructive behaviors, the mystery of ancestors, profoundly troubling video footage, and more of the best book deals of the day: https://t.co/q765Dwlk6n

A peek at what's in store this week: https://t.co/MxAAsUWjS2 https://t.co/dEW418iNfA

Stories about telling stories. https://t.co/aCLJav2Tw1

‘Toy theatres reproduced specific productions, but the early ones required considerable imagination on the part of the purchaser.’ @misspegler on an exhibition of toy theatres at Strawberry Hill: https://t.co/dzsyGkkTFw

Learn how to write stories with many different characters, group dynamics, and multiple points of view in our partner @catapultstory’s online workshop with Devon Capizzi, author of MY SHARE OF THE BODY. Register today! https://t.co/0eNSE5qw2n

Yet ‘it should not – it must not,’ writes Wills, ‘be the case that recognising the harms done by religious institutions, and the state that made use of them, becomes a way of letting the rest of us off the hook.’ https://t.co/jTy9HrUmKW

Some of those women are quoted later in a 2021 piece by Clair Wills on the mother and baby homes (also noted by Enright): I think of my baby as having been kidnapped. I’ve grieved the loss of my family, even though they’re not dead. The whole night I just moaned for him. https://t.co/va4vezAINJ

Anne Enright wrote about ‘the Magdalene story’ for the LRB in 2015, ‘one of people maddened by information, misinformation, lies and ledgers’. Nonetheless, Enright says, ’it is the voices of the women that interest me.’ https://t.co/I7342ZbCD5

‘Satisfying to English amour propre, with the English yeomanry (perhaps Robin Hood was there) showing their superiority, and the dastardly and deeply undemocratic French cavaliers revealing their contempt for mere foot soldiers.’ On the battle of Crécy: https://t.co/7aOuX3q7dr