Julian Barnes Says Goodbye to the Novel
“His fiction has found meaning in life’s gaps and love’s absence.”
In The Atlantic literary biographer Adam Begley writes that Julian Barnes’s latest novel, Departure(s):
offers only a sketchy storyline, mixed with memoir and thoughts on memory. An extended farewell, an author’s valedictory flourish, the whole package is a culmination of sorts, shimmering with his silky, erudite prose; beneath the suave surface is an earnest investigation into the mysterious ways of the human heart.
Begley discusses how Barnes, now 80, in nearly all of his books examines all the holes and absences in our lives.
How should a book stack be?
“There is something deeply personal about one’s stack of books,” Tyler Watamanuk says in this short article about how books can make a personal statement in interior design.
A great read for anyone looking to purchase (or not) a new bookcase.
The Clarity of Darkness: Margot Douaihy on Why Noir Feels So Relevant Today
Down is up and up is down. Truth Social is neither true nor social. A violent insurrection is a “day of love.” It’s not just me, right? The world seems unmoored.
With this statement novelist Margot Douaihy begins her explanation of why noir is her “preferred read when the world feels broken.” She talks about the history of this elusive term and discusses some examples of different varieties of noir that all focus on its essential meaning of darkness. She ends with a list of resources and suggested reading.
George Saunders Says Ditching These Three Delusions Can Save You
“The celebrated author George Saunders on the challenges of being kind, the benefits of meditation and the reality check of death.”
David Marchese interviews novelist George Saunders, whose work Lincoln in the Bardo won the 2017 Booker Prize. Saunders does identify the three delusions he thinks we should let go of, but what I found most interesting were his comments on his writing process and the relationship between writers, readers, and the text. This:
That’s the beauty of the writing process. It’s almost like something arises out of me that’s a little smarter, a little more fair, a little more curious, and hovers over the desk for a while. Then the theory is the book urges that spirit out of the reader as well, and the two things merge. So you get this brief period of rarefied communication that seems to inspire a suite of really nice things, like a little more empathy, a little more engagement, a little more patience.
And this:
[There] are incremental changes of consciousness on the part of the writer and the reader. I’m not claiming it as some kind of universal solution to anything. But to me, it’s becoming clear that writing and reading is a way of simply underscoring that human connection is important, that you can know my mind and I can know yours, which is a vastly consoling idea, and we need it.
The Last in a Line
Vivian Gornick discusses the work of John Updike in light of the publication of Selected Letters of John Updike, edited by James Schiff. By analyzing the voice Updike cultivated in his letters, she concludes that the character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, featured in the Rabbit novels, Updike “was Harry, possessed of those same primitive feelings of rage and resentment, scorn and deprivation, the same loudmouthed patriotism that drove the Rabbit.”
Best Fantasy Books of the Century So Far
Book Riot presents a list of fantasy books from 2000 to 2025 “that continue to be widely read, that urge readers to find similar books, and that we are certain will forever haunt the halls of our minds as fully realized and breathtaking as some of the mythical, magical creatures in these stories.”
Searching for Seamus Heaney
“What I found when I resolved to read him”
Elisa Gonzalez confesses “A few years ago, I started to feel embarrassed to call myself a poet without truly knowing Heaney’s poetry. I resolved to read him, and to read him comprehensively.”
She found that the Irish poet “was, above all, a humanist, sympathetic to individual suffering and ‘the eternal reciprocity of tears,’ to use a line by Wilfred Owen that Heaney often cited.”
Okay, Okay, Okay!
“Where did this nearly universal term come from?”
Peggy Rosenthal, who has a PhD in English Literature, examines the origins of this universal expression.
© 2026 by Mary Daniels Brown
