Talk about books

A fortnightly newsletter by Art Kavanagh about things I’ve read

No. 1; 22 November 2020


Welcome to Talk about books

Introduction

Thanks for checking this out.

I intend to send this newsletter out every 2 weeks, and that it will contain writing about the books I’ve been reading. Not book reviews, but a discussion in slightly more depth, of books that often won’t be new. Ideally, they’ll be books that you’ve read too. I’d like to get some kind of discussion going, like a book club.

Since I want to go into things in more depth than a standard book review, I will not be making any attempt to avoid giving away plot points. In other words, it’s quite likely that there’ll be spoilers (a word I try to avoid because I think it’s misleading). Don’t worry about them. If you haven’t yet read the book, you’ll quite likely have forgotten them by the time you get around to it — and in some cases, the (so called) spoiler may be what brings you to the book in the first place.

To give you an idea of what to expect, here are links to some pieces I’ve already posted: roughly the same kind of thing as I intend to include in the newsletter.

Oh my god, shut up”: Sally Rooney short story writer

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go: “Most of the time, people don’t want to think about it

Liz Nugent, Skin Deep: a woman to blame

Gillian Flynn’s plotting in Dark Places: the deceptive attraction of overkill

Rereading Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike books (this covers only the first three books, as it was written before the publication of Lethal White)

Who really killed The General’s Daughter? (in Nelson DeMille’s 1992 novel)

For now, this newsletter is free to subscribers. I do hope to charge a very modest subscription fee eventually, but not for at least 3 months.

If this is the kind of thing you like to read, please subscribe. There’ll be more in 2 weeks.

Art

Originally posted on Substack (Talk about books), 22-Nov-2020.