Quirky books, curious minds, author-led.
Polished marketing copy slides off the memory like rain off a coat. The overstuffed, over-promising, faintly deranged blurb sticks — and small presses produce the best of them. A defence of the messy back cover, plus an exercise in rewriting a classic in three glorious sentences.
Every novel starts somewhere — and it is rarely where the author claims. We asked six UK writers to nominate the strange object that lit the fuse under their latest book, with results involving a brass thimble, a mislabelled cassette and a weather vane with a grudge. Plus: a short, practical sidebar on how to cultivate curiosity before it curdles into scrolling.
Set texts, unfinished chapters and the quiet guilt of the unread — there is a better way to gather round books. Here is our entirely practical, faintly opinionated guide to a monthly reading night with no deadlines, no assigned titles and absolutely no apologising, complete with themes, icebreakers, venue ideas and a Von Krummp starter list.