John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Next year David Peace will publish Strangeways, "the much-anticipated second novel of the Munich trilogy", which makes me ask - anticipated by whom? Did anyone know there was going to be a sequel to Munichs? 460
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 07/10/2026I see that incorrect hyphens have now made it to BBC News headlines. This is what happens when you don't crack down on them. 3140
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Maybe it was the same source that this passage, from the Times obit of Archer, used, though it puts it (a bit) more diplomatically. www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie... 4100
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 04/10/2026School photos must be one of the last great rip-offs in the digital age. Eighteen quid for four 4x6 photos that you could print out in Boots or Tesco for less than 20p each! Plus, who has an optical drive these days to pop a CD into? 5141
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Is Andy Burnham the first prime minister in my lifetime who actually likes fiction and poetry? I feel quite moved to hear him talk with genuine enthusiasm about Tony Harrison’s V. 159317
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 26/09/2026“No one has the faintest idea as to why we exist…” From The Pornogapher by John McGahern: 0121
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 25/09/2026U ok hun? You haven’t touched your Jaffaween Cake Bars 160
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Richard Ford will publish a (short: 128pp) memoir, How I Got On, in April next year, with Open Borders Press. 051
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Reminds me of Martin Amis’s line re gym jargon, that "the brain cells traditionally used for words have been contextually reallocated to the building of muscle". 1101
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I asked about this and was told that yes, the journalist mean to say 'morbid' or similar. The erroneous 'mawkish' has now been whisked away. 3100
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Two new titles in the Penguin Modern Classics crime and espionage series, coming next month. The Bodelsen was of course made into a BBC TV series starring Johnny Ball. Also, anyone know what country that keyboard layout on the cover of Rear Window is from? 7103
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Am I missing something or is the nickname referred to here the opposite of mawkish? Surely it's a slightly mean joke about 'bagging' (shooting) his dad? 6470
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I’m normally acknowledgements-sceptic when it comes to fiction, but I can only offer a nod of respect for Louise Kennedy’s in her new novel Stations. Real ‘without whom’ stuff. 0637
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Remember the Penguin Classics edition of Lolita that stripped out the intro by ‘John Ray, Jr.’ (which is part of the novel)? Louise Willder, in her new book The Book Was Better, discloses that the same edition of Pale Fire was almost published without Charles Kinbote’s intro and notes… 6325
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 19/09/2026“The Lucky Ones was her first book that isn’t funny. One day, all Cusk novels would be like this.”* I ranked Rachel Cusk’s books for The Guardian. *this line cut for space, so don’t go looking for it 10342
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Helen Garner on the cons and pros of being a writer. (From ‘On Turning Fifty’, from True Stories: Collected Short Non-Fiction) 5379
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Disappointed when I realised this photo of Louise Kennedy does *not* show her flaunting a cigarette holder. 1141
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 15/09/2026I think you’ll find the technical term is conjunctivitis. 1489
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 14/09/2026I was pleased to see the BT piper has been able to pick up some new work when I passed a window cleaner’s van recently. 120
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 12/09/2026Yes it was scheduled for Oct 2014. See pic. The new one linked above is also on Amazon as published in 2022 and ‘currently unavailable’, so I won’t hold my breath. 121
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 11/09/2026‘What I can’t understand,’ Brookner once said, ‘is the radical inauthenticity of some women’s novels that are written to a formula: from the peatbogs of Killarney to the penthouses of Manhattan, orgasms all the way!’ 3110
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 11/09/2026‘Allow me to put the record straight,’ she wrote to The Times letters page. ‘I am 46, and have been for some years past.’ 1221
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis meet on the afternoon of 9/11. 1143
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Trying to decide whether to pay for express delivery. 3382
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 03/09/2026Blake Morrison on what it cost him (not his publisher) to include lines from pop lyrics in his 2007 novel South of the River. 3213944
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 03/09/2026The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vols 1-5, published by Penguin between 1979 and 1984. Cover photos are by Peter Williams, researched by Rebecca Greenberg. 2111
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 03/09/2026Incredible tribute here from the BBC to Gloria whatshername. 137116
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 02/09/2026I am enjoying this book, and enjoying the author photo even more. “Get up, Colin, the photographer’s here.” 6563
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 02/09/2026I'm going to see Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, dear. Then I think I might go to Canada. Parseword #217 ⏱️ 3m52s ✅ 1 Assist 🧝 Secret Found 130
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Yeah I think that's right. Here's the photo I refer to in the piece. The problem is that all the garish ones blur into one, and simultaneously prevent you from noticing the more muted ones (which are never shelved face-out anyway). 120
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 29/08/2026One of the great (relatively) unsung masterpieces of 20th century European fiction, reissued by Penguin Modern Classics in November. 4263
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Just got an email from me, to me, promoting my article. 4200
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Groove Armada? Hey, I remember them! They had tha— …huh, what an insult! 0230
John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 26/08/2026The Psalms: A Companion by Susan Gillingham - a reproduction of and commentary on all 150 psalms, with the references in the index running from Bono and Buzz Aldrin to Evelyn Waugh and Oscar Wilde. Out next month. 192
![BBC headline: How Gloria Steinham [sic] changed the lives of generations of women](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2cadvbwpkxtuvmv2gpy5laml/bafkreibnptknzksaiup2dufbha3dqwllhfsbqvzfnwrervp5nrpz2p5wsy)
