After two brilliant years at The Telegraph, I'm very excited to be joining The Times as assistant books editor. Send pitches and glamorous party invites to susannah.goldsbrough
@thetimes
.co.uk.
hello to the publisher who sent me a proof for a book due Jan 19 2023. bottomless respect for that level of organised but I literally haven't read June yet
Writing about the Cazalet Chronicles and found this fierce, passionate apology for Elizabeth Jane Howard by another great family chronicler. "The real reason these books are underestimated, let’s be blunt, is that they are by a woman" I think she's right
I thought Dorothy L Sayers wrote perfectly nice and very dated whodunits but then (thanks to
@francescawade
's book), I read Gaudy Night and realised I know nothing about anything. It's brilliant for a lot of reasons, this sexy, impassioned, despairing love letter is just one
No one got under the skin of the past like Hilary Mantel, no one. She strode back 500 years like it was nothing and took you with her. God this is a loss
'Gripping' 'propulsive' 'urgent' novels arrive in the Times book cupboard in sackfuls. Thank you to the publisher who decided tthat 'absinthe-soaked' was the best way to plug its latest
If you love old fiction by women whose characters don't give a damn about what the world expected from them: who like living alone, suspect marriage sucks, have affairs, eat scrambled eggs in bed, then give this brilliant lost 1921 novel a go
@KateHandheld
This year an excellent sub-category of novel titles has emerged that are basically dumb banalities that become sarcastic once capitalised. I'm Sorry You Feel That Way. New fav is They're Going to Love You. There must be more
So there's this book, it's called At The Table by Claire Powell, and *dons fetching clairvoyant cape* it's going to be the BOOK OF THE SUMMER. At least I really hope so (and only partly cos that might stop
@RobbieTimes
whanging on about it)
SWEDISH novels about hot humanities students caught in love triangles are the new IRISH novels about hot humanities students caught in love triangles, you heard it here
Enjoying the violent tussle at the top of this week's charts between Peter Frankopan's enormous, highly researched history of the world and... the ultimate air fryer cookbook. This is culture
Cooing over a baby: "It was the sound women make, she thought, when they are offering their lives up for slow destruction." Anne Enright at her merciless best
God Charlotte Mendelson's The Exhibitionist is fun. It's also horribly dark but I didn't realise that for a bit because I got distracted by Ray's list of dislikes
“I used to try and get a bit of sedition going in the playground, just trying to gauge, ‘are you as angry as I am?’ Women would smile politely and retreat”
I spoke to Claire Kilroy, who you really should read
Which of the writers, singers, film directors I'm obsessed with today will I still care about in 30 years? Wrote about one of my pointless fixations (no paywall)
The Trio by Johanna Hedman, about a sultry Stockholm student love triangle (say that double speed), is a perfect little summer read. Everyone spends a lot of time gazing moodily out over snowy rooftops there's lots of candlelight and coffeeshops and sexual tension. Delicious ☕️❄️
This is lush: Mary Poppins or Ferris Bueller's Day Off in Fifties' South London. Strange, witty, a bit supernatural -- with the dark and bloody undertone she does so well
"Men are praised for ambition and women are accused of it.” I spoke to Barbara Kingsolver after she became the first person ever to win the Women's Prize twice
Very fun, assumption-busting details from Marion Turner's 'biography' of the Wife of Bath about working medieval women. Lady blacksmiths! Master parchment makers!
Main feeling on Granta: it feels a bit absurd that the criteria wasn't flexed to put Sally Rooney on the list. For anyone not knee-deep in the literary world, she is BY FAR the most famous/best selling youngster and she's had a seismic influence on the British landscape
A short story collection just came into to the Times book cupboard written by someone the same age as me and I think this might be the beginning of the end
The first chapter, holy smoke. Stone cold masterclass of tension, action, foreboding. Like watching a Bond film narrated by God. Hear it’s quite famous, which makes sense
I've been waiting to read something about CoHo that addresses all my questions — WHY do people love them? are they trauma porn? but it never appeared so I read a few and wrote it myself
Very very happy to have interviewed Hannah Sullivan, the contemporary poet you MUST read, about her new collection. We talked about Grenfell, Instagram, home ownership and moody teenage poetry
Boris says this new corona test will be 'as simple as a pregnancy test'. And I do find that reassuring because say what you want about him, this is a man who knows his way around a pregnancy test...
"your wife was probably Lancaster and you were perhaps York and it was all rather like following rival football teams" this is such a fun and pithy critique of the weird, top-down way we're taught history. oh and it's from a crime novel..
Love the way Colin Farrell refers to Brendan Gleeson as his dance partner. I shall be using it describe any meaningful or romantic relationship from now on
Huge respect to 16-year-old Ezra Pound, the original softboy, prescribing his gf a reading list of his own sonnets "composed daily while brushing his teeth" (From Square Haunting)
Eek I’m enjoying The Rachel Papers — it’s really fun and silly? Literally always wandering around with an Intense Consciousness of Being plus pathetic fallacy
"The city folks walked as though they carried real live bodies under their clothes with real live hearts pumping the stiff blood through." Katherine Mansfield on song
Picturehouse man accidentally gave us tickets to the wrong screen last night so we ended up watching the last hour of MI instead of the first. Never suspected. Had a quick break, got a drink, and did the first two. Quite possibly the perfect way to watch it
For anyone who read and loved and regularly references long passages of Everything I Know About Love like the bible it is: the show is everything you want it to be, it's a total treat and it's on iPlayer now
Cillian Murphy will be seen next in the film adaptation of Claire Keegan’s ‘SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE.’
Co-starring Ciarán Hinds and Emily Watson, it follows a father who discovers the startling secrets being kept by the town's convent, forcing him to confront his past.
Full of awkward family lunches and drunken weddings, darting between Camberwell flats and Soho bars and late night ubers, it's smart and readable and sharply contemporary. Just dip your finger in with this little description of a text exchange
Paula Rego's nursery rhyme illustrations should be better known I think. Those terrified, butchered mice. The Grand Old Duke of York's stumbling, sleepless 10,000. Then you go back and read the stories and realise they were always that dark