Zamira Rahim

Williams’s book is impaired by slapdash prose. His writing abounds with interminable, convoluted sentences that teem with digressions and then awkwardly limp toward disorienting conclusions. Here is one from the prologue: For non-whites, even though the mixed-race population has become the fastest-growing segment of the American demos and, in real terms, a disproportionate but statistically small and decreasing number of unarmed Black civilians were killed by police annually (typically between 15 and 25 per year from a population exceeding 40 million, according to The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” database) — and indeed other quality-of-life markers have been equalizing for significant numbers of Black people since the civil rights movement — the death of [Trayvon] Martin followed by [Michael] Brown (regardless of the specific contingencies of that case), and a high-profile slate of videotaped police and vigilante killings that converged with the proliferation of camera-equipped smartphones and the pervasiveness of social media, thwarted any self-congratulatory sense of the inevitability of social progress still alive in the first half of Obama’s second administration. Huh? In addition to such passages, “Summer of Our Discontent” includes many distended excerpts — some spanning three pages — from not-so-obscure sources, including The Times. Midway through the book, Williams chides another writer on the race beat for propounding “an excruciatingly simplistic tale, fueled by a powerful unwillingness and incapacity to grapple with contemporary American racial and social complexity.” Regrettably, I know the feeling.

jesus christ this is an actual fisking

haha, so true - I do like to mix literary fun in alongside the news

The other thing reading these has taught me is that 'Funeral Blues' reads as the satire it is on the page + John Hannah in Four Weddings somehow imbued it with devastating feeling that basically isn't there

For who is ever quite without his landscape, The straggling village street, the house in trees, All near the church, or else the gloomy town house, The one with the Corinthian pillars, or The tiny workmanlike flat: in any case A home, the centre where the three or four things that happen to a man do happen? Yes, Who cannot draw the map of his life, shade in The little station where he meets his loves And says good-bye continually, and mark the spot Where the body of his happiness was first discovered?

I've been working my way through some Auden poems lately and it's been more of a struggle than, say, Heaney or Larkin, both of whom I love. But then occasionally I get to lines like this and am bowled over

'This effectively means that authors and suppliers who were owed money by Unbound when it went into administration will no longer receive any historic payments'

Unbound successor Boundless 'goes into administration' after months of financial uncertainty Boundless – the publishing company formed after its predecessor Unbound went into administration in March this year – along with its imprint Neem Tree Press have entered administration and ceased trad...

Finally the end of a pretty disgraceful saga www.thebookseller.com/news/unbound...

The tarmac edge of Goole Model Boat Club: a purpose-built sailing pond in the town's historic south dock, with a listed boat hoist in its grounds.

"The Dutch River is with me now, I can't see it, I can't hear it, I can't reach it from here, but I can start to think with it."

A night walk on the Dutch River (lightly revised from the recent Kirk Sandall to Goole thread):
longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/dutch-river

A year on from the summer riots, my latest @newstatesman.com column muses on the nature of political violence and how to keep it from consuming our streets, via Gandhi, MLK, Malcolm X and that most underrated of social theorists, director Spike Lee. newstatesman.com/politics/uk-po…

Lauren Groff Reads Elizabeth Hardwick The author joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Faithful,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1979.

Lauren Groff Reads Elizabeth Hardwick www.newyorker.com/podcast/fict...

Revisit Isabella Blow’s Cotswolds Home—And the Eccentric Objects Within It “Hilles was the perfect theatrical background for her,” reflects the late fashion editor’s husband, Detmar.

The McQueen documentary from a few years ago is one of my favourite docs ever and has some lovely sequences from Blow's family home, Hilles www.vogue.com/article/obje...

Andrea Riseborough Is Donning Archival Couture And Custom Manolos To Play Isabella Blow In A Starry New Biopic And here’s who’s taking the parts of Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy and Daphne Guinness.

Andrea Riseborough as Isabella Blow is a sublime bit of casting www.vogue.co.uk/article/isab...

Hello. After 11 years @theguardian.com & @theobserveruk.bsky.social I am now freelance and available for commissions. I do features, profiles, interviews, reviews, comment pieces, editing and more

Here are 10 pieces I'm proud of:

In a similar vein TV reporters often do not love being told to make TikToks but we are where we are

This is an obvious move. The reason traditional media is grappling with vertical video and competing with influencers is because this is where eyeballs are and every bit of audience data lays that out plainly

I think if you don't know publishing that well this might read facetiously but it's an industry where shiny and new usually gets the larger share of buzz

Most global Booker prize longlist in a decade features Kiran Desai and Tash Aw Chair of judges Roddy Doyle says the 13 ‘gripping’ titles in contention for the £50,000 award all ‘examine identity, individual or national’

Quite like that there are so few debuts longlisted this year. It's nice to see experienced authors get their flowers www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

It is so utterly depressing

Just came here to say this. The one thing that unites all my American colleagues is how horrified they are when they learn about how the UK handles chicken pox

yes, I can see that tic in a lot of the criticism around his work

Can they get Clooney next year with some freelancers from the book pages of the broadsheets? That would be fun

Absolutely cackling at this, you can tell the writers and critics are trying to be very cool and not starstruck. It's like the dinner party scene in Notting Hill

YES, so baffled at everyone ignoring Everett, 'James' ranked on the NYT/Sunday Times bestseller list for weeks if not months?!

Where's the 'you'? The obligatory personal essay

Sidenote: Darkly funny to me that 'writers writing about personal essays' is now it's own sub-genre but I will read every single one naoise.substack.com/p/wheres-the...

yeah, good point and I do reckon that this is why Substack remains golden, it has that chattier tone you don't see much elsewhere now

I think for a lot of journos under 40 it was the main way to break in in the 2010s. Few staff jobs, declining grad schemes, but editors were always keen to commission a personal essay

I was reading the latest "are male novelists disappearing?" article, but it mentioned Nick Hornby and it occurred to me that possibly the issue is that we gave up on Commerical Fiction targeted at men.

He Cheated With Her Best Friend. This Is the Third Book About It.

Forgot the link above - a great piece from the ever excellent Alexandra Jacobs www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/b...

We are on the familiar terrain of writers’ retreats, writing classes, wordplay and self-reflection in a house of mirrors full of writers, writers, writers.

I have missed most of the Pittard/Ewell mess mainly because this kind of fiction sounds a bit dull to me atm

He Cheated With Her Best Friend. This Is the Third Book About It.

The NYT book reviewers are tired.

• We were waiting with anticipation to see how the allegations about The Salt Path would affect its sales. And while it has been dethroned from its No 1 spot after seven consecutive weeks at the top, perhaps the most surprising thing is how little difference the scandal has made. Print sales have dropped by only 9 per cent compared to last week. Perhaps some of the lost sales were made up by people keen to see what all the fuss was about.

Inevitable. (From The Sunday Times Bestseller page) www.thetimes.com/culture/book...