Trevor Berrett

Getting pretty artsy with that photo, Paul!

This week, @mookse.bsky.social and I tackle the fun—and stressful—task of creating starter libraries. We’re joined by @johnwilliams.bsky.social to each pick 10 books that someone can use as a starter library. We compare approaches, confess struggles, and take our best shots! Which would you pick?

So much fun!

The smart hosts and big readers @mookse.bsky.social and @bibliopaul.bsky.social were kind enough to have me on their podcast to discuss my subject of choice: starter libraries. What does that mean? I thought I knew until I started completing the task...

Episode 113: Starter Libraries: A Shelf Full of Promises What does it take to build the perfect first shelf?

What does it take to build the perfect first shelf? This week e’re joined by @johnwilliams.bsky.social, to discuss how to choose ten books that someone can use as a starter library, offering comfort, surprise, and a little stretch along the way. mookse.substack.com/p/episode-11...

Last year I read Hons and Rebels, and so I’m excited to keep broadening my Mitford resources! I will check out the diaries!

My wife has been trying to get me to read Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love for years. It finally happened, and I loved this bittersweet novel. mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2025...

Wonderful! I loved each of those!

My Penguin Classics edition of Daniel Deronda

l finished Daniel Deronda—and with it, my journey through all of George Eliot's novels. Since January 2024, I've been reading them chronologically. Each book has felt like stepping into a world at once brimming with intellect and alive with feeling. An appreciation: www.instagram.com/p/DNjvL8QAH5...

As much as I love these editions for other reasons, none of the covers are any good!

I’m 30 pages into The Captive, as he analyzes “jealousy,” and Emma’s words are helping!

NYRB Classics edition of The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Back of the book: "Barbara Pym... guards against sentimentality. She is the writer who points out 'the desire to do good without much personal inconvenience that lurks in most of us,' the regrettable things said between friends and 'the satisfaction which is to be got from saying precisely things of that kind,' the irritation we feel 'when we have made up our minds to dislike people for no apparent reason and they perform a kind action.' But towards her characters she shows a creator's charity. She understands them so well that the least she can do is to forgive them." -PENELOPE FITZGERALD The Sweet Dove Died is one of Barbara Pym's last novels, in which her work took on a new, keen edge. It is about a woman's attachment to a man much younger than herself. Beautiful and self-absorbed, Leonora Eyre has a passion for collecting Victorian objects and is coolly indifferent toward everything outside of her fastidious, elegant existence. When she is courted by Humphrey, a widowed antiques dealer, she disdains his advances, preferring rather the attentions of his twenty-four-year-old nephew, James. Leonora's possession of James is challenged, how-ever, first by Phoebe, a bookish young woman his own age, and then by the suave and seductive Ned, a visiting American professor with whom James quickly becomes infatuated. Pym's sharp eye for comedy and shrewd observation of English manners are on full display in this finely wrought novel of love, loss, and all the hopes and disappointments that befall the human heart. "Barbara Pym's late novels have... a considerable darkness within them, [which) in fact has its own continuity with what is romantic, what is golden, in the first and happier comedies." -BARBARA EVERETT, LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

🕊️ NYRB Classics is bringing Barbara Pym’s The Sweet Dove Died back into print on September 16, and I couldn’t be happier. Pym finally joins the NYRB Classics list! Here’s hoping this is just the start of more Pym to come. @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social

Thank you 🙏🏻

LAMENT FOR JULIA by Susan Taubes

Taubes described LAMENT FOR JULIA as “about the bafflement of an angel or merely an exalted consciousness, incarnated in a woman.” Its working title was REMEMBERING WRONG & its narrator is a “celestial spark of sorts.” (intro) #NYRBWomen25 I’m excited to return to Taubes’ writing.

My side table, showing two books: The Modern Library edition of The Captive & The Fugitive sits on top of Sodom and Gomorrah. Also on the table, a hot drink with some froth, a table puzzle, and a house plant.

Just finished Sodom and Gomorrah! Onward to The Captive and The Fugitive (Volumes 5 & 6 of In Search of Lost Time). These titles—and our narrator’s outlook on love—have me a little nervous…

My side table, showing two books: The Modern Library edition of The Captive & The Fugitive sits on top of Sodom and Gomorrah. Also on the table, a hot drink with some froth, a table puzzle, and a house plant.

Just finished Sodom and Gomorrah! Onward to The Captive and The Fugitive (Volumes 5 & 6 of In Search of Lost Time). These titles—and our narrator’s outlook on love—have me a little nervous…

Some books are like that! Good luck!

117. William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience — Backlisted Joining John and Andy today is John Williams, the daily books editor and a staff writer at the  New York Times , where he has worked since 2011. Before that, John spent several years on the edit...

A modest starter pack of @backlisted.bsky.social episodes for those unfamiliar and interested. I'll self-deal to start, with me rambling about William James: www.backlisted.fm/episodes/117...

Holding up the new NYRB Classics edition of Mrs. Dalloway

A book stack featuring The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, Mark Hussey’s Mrs. Dalloway: Biography of a Novel, my well-loved old edition, and—coming soon from Columbia University Press—Edward Mendelson’s The Inner Life of Mrs. Dalloway. On top is the new NYRB Classics edition.

Just got the gorgeous NYRB Classics centenary edition of Mrs. Dalloway, edited by Edward Mendelson! First-edition text with Woolf’s own revisions, and a cover that nods to the original Hogarth Press design. Centennial editions of To the Lighthouse and The Waves are on the way…in a few years.

Episode 112: In Her Words: Women in Translation 2025 We’re back for another round of Women in Translation Month!

Our new episode is up! This time @bibliopaul.bsky.social and I discuss Women in Translation month and list the books we plan to read to celebrate! mookse.substack.com/p/episode-11...

@mookse.bsky.social and I are back for a favorite time of year: Women in Translation Month! Each August, readers celebrate books written by women and translated into English, highlighting voices that too often go unheard. We each pick 5 titles we’re planning to read this month. How about you?

Just HD? It’s 2025, Matt.

Yes indeed, I'm so excited to get our podcast out of hiatus and back into live production! Might have to freshen up some of the old episodes to get them back in circulation but eager to resume our conversation about this fantastic series!

An image from The Criterion Collection featuring their upcoming release of Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami: Early Shorts and Features.

It looks like @peutetre.bsky.social and I are back in business! Long the last Eclipse Viewer episode was back in 2017, but I still feel fresh and excited! www.criterion.com/current/post...

TALK by Linda Rosenkrantz and LAMENT FOR JULIA by Susan Taubes

Page guide for TALK by Linda Rosenkrantz

Page guide for LAMENT FOR JULIA by Susan Taubes

Schedule for #NYRBWomen25

#NYRBWomen25 Here are the page guides for our next two books! TALK begins this Friday, August 1, and LAMENT FOR JULIA begins on August 15.

Needless to say, I am INCREDIBLY excited about this! Come celebrate one of the most beautifully devastating books ever with Jhumpa Lahiri – yes, that Jhumpa Lahiri – and me on Sept 4 in New York: www.eventbrite.com/e/in-farthes... @pushkinpress.com

A passage from the novel: 'You realise', he said, 'that you've made me terrified to touch you?' 'Yes. I've been enjoying your terror for some minutes.' 'Are you cruel?' he asked. She seemed to be breathless for a moment. 'My cruelty is very, very delicate, she eventually replied. slowly. 'That's as though you were going to behead me and promised that no single stroke would be fatal: you'd just do it with hundreds of little ones.'

Brigid Brophy, The Snow Ball.

For the first time ever, @mookse and I met in person! Join us as we take the show on the road—through bookstores, libraries, and an unforgettable day of literary wandering. We apologize for the audio, but hope you enjoy this day out with us.
open.substack.com/pub/mookse/p...

Dalkey Archive edition of Brigid Brophy’s Prancing Novelist: In Praise of Ronald Firbank

What an amazing book this is

Episode 111: Two Friends Walk into a Bookstore: A Day Out with Trevor and Paul This week’s episode comes with poor sound quality and excellent vibes.

We have a new episode up! The audio quality might be lacking but the bookish friendship vibes shine through! For the first time @bibliopaul.bsky.social and I met in person, and we recorded an episode along the way. Come join us! mookse.substack.com/p/episode-11...