Zamira Rahim

“Here in this quiet corner of Co. Cork A family ate, slept, and watched the rain Dance clean and cobalt the exhausted grit So that the mind shrank from the glare of it. Where did they go? South Boston? Cricklewood? Somebody somewhere thinks of this as home, Remembering the old pumps where they stood, Antique now, squirting juice into a cream Lagonda or a dung-caked tractor while A cloud swam on a cloud-reflecting tile. Surely a whitewashed sun-trap at the back Gave way to hens, wild thyme, and the first few Shadowy yards of an overgrown cart track, Tyres in the branches such as Noah knew— Beyond, a swoop of mountain where you heard, Disconsolate in the haze, a single blackbird.”

. . . from his ‘A Garage in Co. Cork’:

Out of everything, the mock tabloid story is what's going to stick in my brain forever. It's the most telling detail in the whole mess.

My feed is a mix of Americans up late and reading Lizza and Brits waking up early to watch the cricket. I have realised that my true tribe is somehow in the overlap.

Good morning Chelsea, join me in questioning how my life choices led me here

Mine too!

Six Very Depressing Books That Might Just Cheer You Up I’ve always read my way through depressions. When my world sucks, I shut the drapes, hide under the cover, and read. And I will read everything: novels, classics, epic fantasy, romance, spy novels,…

Rabih Alameddine’s The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) has won the National Book Award for Fiction! Read more here:
buff.ly/bRP0dCT

The dawn of the post-literate society And the end of civilisation

We are late to this piece by @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social. It is brilliant, and sobering. We have a fight on our hands, booksellers…

jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-o...

I was wondering about this! It's such a bubble scandal/story so far, so this makes sense to me

Didion is rarely sentimental (especially when it's not earned) or self-pitying. And she's never overwritten. Anyway, today has reminded me how good she was.

Re that Vanity Fair piece.... a lot of writers think Joan Didion was successful because of the images in her work (the yellow silk hanging from the windows, the smell of jasmine) and the famous photos of the Corvette. But Didion writes with unsparing precision and her work has a brutal streak.

Did not realise that the folks at St. John had taken over the old LRB cake shop but I'm so pleased that they did

Yup it is.

Congratulations to both of you!!

And also this poem always makes me think of Larkin's 'The Trees', for obvious reasons. They're twin poems in my head, one for each end of the year.

It is fun, marching about London as the fallen leaves coat everything, to think of the line 'worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie'

Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

'Spring and Fall' by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I kinda want Chotiner to interview Nuzzi

A crucial step tbf!

Gosh, yes. Publishers would pale at the sheer length of it these days

Me too! I went to a talk where the novelist Geoff Dyer a few months ago where he talked so enthusiastically about it that I was won over. No regrets so far!

That sounds like a great series - will go and look them up, I usually enjoy TNC's writing

I haven't read a classic for a long, long time - they were all I studied at school and I'd forgotten how fun and unwieldy the writing could be

It had a small park, with a fine old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the southwest front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures, which often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun.

I decided to finally read Middlemarch on my month off work - it's filled with sublime, carefully written passages like this, where Dorothea visits her marital home for the first time.

This year’s Booker winner David Szalay: ‘I really appreciate Roddy Doyle’s simple, practical advice’ Booker Prize winner David Szalay, who abandoned Flesh several times in the early stages, stresses the importance of risk when writing a novel

This year’s Booker winner David Szalay: ‘I really appreciate Roddy Doyle’s simple, practical advice’
www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

RIP Rachel Cooke, fellow Puffin Club member and evangelist of All the Devils Are Here, formidable critic and true believer in the power and importance of the good stuff, in whatever form it takes. I’m gutted we won’t get to talk about books again. My condolences to Rachel’s friends and family. x

Oh I loved reading her stuff. What a loss

Remembering Rachel Cooke | The Observer

Beautiful piece by @TimAdamsWrites on the brilliant Observer journalist Rachel Cooke who could write wonderfully about anything, has died tragically young and will be hugely, hugely missed by so many people.
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Good to know, think I'll start with those later ones!