Chris Power

Anne Carson, newly minted Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, once published the greatest ever author bio

"The book is conversational and inclusive but, crucially, the material isn’t diluted; this is hard stuff, it admits, but let’s have a crack at it together."

Discover your opinion of Mary Ruefle in just 53 words observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Discover your opinion of Mary Ruefle in just 53 words observer.co.uk/culture/book...

My paperback of the week in @theobserveruk.bsky.social is Simon Critchley’s brilliant deep dive into Heidegger’s Being and Time, “the most important philosophical book of the last 100 years”. Excerpts below, whole thing here: observer.co.uk/culture/book...

My latest paperback of the week column for @theobserveruk.bsky.social looks at Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Ahead of the publication of his new novel why not read Donald Antrim’s fantastic story collection, The Emerald Light in the Air - the UK sales figures for which are a stain on our literary culture www.theguardian.com/books/2014/n...

total number of named & unnamed speaking characters in 20 19th-century British novels

Late in life, Martin Heidegger became obsessed with Franz Beckenbauer

I hope Ed Sheeran, and indeed many, many more people, read Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

This incredibly clear-eyed take was published in the New Yorker on 16 September 2001

This incredibly clear-eyed take was published in the New Yorker on 16 September 2001

Why poetry should be difficult In On Difficulty (and Poetry), Lavinia Greenlaw examines her art in pithy and profound ways, drawing on some of its greatest – as well as unsung – practitioners ✍️ @chrispower.bsky.social https://bit.ly/46ifyXE

I reviewed Switzy for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

Elizabeth McCracken’s 10/10 punctuation rankings

Pro reviewing tip: don’t do the thing you’re criticising a writer for doing

John Healy, the writer the literary establishment tried to erase His 1988 memoir of homelessness and alcoholism, The Grass Arena, was lauded one minute and pulped the next. Nearly 40 years on, Healy, now 83, is setting the record straight https://bit.ly/4zJUpTC

Elizabeth McCracken’s 10/10 punctuation rankings

Paperback of the week: The Red Book of Farewells by Pirkko Saisio This dreamlike work of autofiction completes the Finnish author’s trilogy and explores her sexual coming of age in repressive 1970s Helsinki ✍️ @chrispower.bsky.social https://bit.ly/3U9SGGX

A really interesting lost 80s novel observer.co.uk/culture/book...

‘It’s unexpected that the price of Westinghouse, Paramount Pictures and Svenska Handelsbanken stocks should be one of the most interesting parts of a novel that includes angels, invisible bridges and rooftop battles.’ @chrispower.bsky.social reads Francis Spufford. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 is an enjoyable adventure story, but for all its peril and conflict, and the trauma in Iris’s past that is withheld until the end of the book, the stakes are never high.’ @chrispower.bsky.social reads 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 by Francis Spufford. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Reading this taught me 1) about the extraordinary physics prodigy Ettore Majorana, whose story reads like something straight out of When We Cease to Understand the World, and 2) what a nutcase Edward Teller was (a good namer of bombs though: Sundial and Gnomon!) observer.co.uk/culture/book...

‘Put your characters up a tree and throw rocks at them, the old piece of writing advice goes. Spufford reaches immediately for a ladder.’ @chrispower.bsky.social reads Francis Spufford’s 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

holiday reading

Incredible to witness all the love in the room for M John Harrison @foylesforbooks.bsky.social last week. The End of Everything is the work of a master who continues to press against the borders of narrative.

slimmest Knausgaard since Spring?

Mary Ruefle

I wrote about the similarities and differences between Nolan’s Odyssey and Homer’s Odyssey observer.co.uk/culture/film...

For @theguardian.com I compiled a list of 20 books to read in a day (whittled down from 70 - goodbye Readers Block, Turn of the Screw, Less Than Zero, Call Me Ishmael, The Stone Book, Autobiography of Red etc). Not a top 20, but all worth your time I guarantee it. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

Oh yes I see. Anyway it looks as though you have satisfied a previously underserved section of FT readers.

Am I the first writer to mention the Butthole Surfers in the FT? www.ft.com/content/04b5...

For @theguardian.com I compiled a list of 20 books to read in a day (whittled down from 70 - goodbye Readers Block, Turn of the Screw, Less Than Zero, Call Me Ishmael, The Stone Book, Autobiography of Red etc). Not a top 20, but all worth your time I guarantee it. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

Dasein summer

It was a personal joy to interview M John Harrison for the @theguardian.com. I value his writing and him so highly, & it feels like his books - those strange maps of ourselves - are finally spreading beyond the hardcore & people are realising what we have in him. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...