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Julie Bindel was the first feminist I ever read
You don’t get to choose your introduction to feminism. That’s sometimes a bad thing. Reading Julie Bindel articles I grew up in a liberal UK household, and as such, the main newspaper we read was The Guardian. When I started reading newspapers at the beginning of the 2000s, the main things I was interested in — read more
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How I wrote my first novel
Around 2023 I decided it was finally time to write a full-length novel. No-one in my family is a writer, I studied History instead of English Literature at University, I’m not a MFA, and while I read around 50-100 books per year, I’ve never formally studied them. What I have in my favour is an — read more
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On vampires
Vampires are the only horror monster I have personally met. It happened when I was nine or ten. I was staying at a campsite in France for the summer with my parents and my brother. It was a dark, hot night, and me and the other children were playing hide and seek. I was by — read more
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My dumb idea to save the publishing industry
It’s no secret that publishing is struggling at the moment. Can someone with no idea what he’s talking about* save it? People mostly read on screens Picture the scene: you take a train journey in 2025. Almost everyone around you is looking at a screen. Reading on a screen, in most cases. Most people probably read — read more
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Book Review: Original Sin
Original Sin is a mean-spirited but undeniably effective work of journalism, portraying Joe Biden’s fateful decision to run for president a second time. Jake Tapper and co-writer Alex Thompson draw from hundreds of interviews with people close to Biden, including aides and high-up members of the Democratic Party, and make a convincing case that Joe — read more
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Book Review: The Psychopath Next Door
The Psychopath Next Door seems to have drifted to the top of my Kindle recommendations despite its generic title.* The book opens with Fiona, a clinical psychopath straight out of The Mask of Sanity**, being released from prison. Eager for revenge for a past wrong, she moves to a quiet neighbourhood to make her mysterious — read more
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Reviewing my book pile of shame
I have finally achieved the ambition of any literary person: to finish reading every book in my house*. Most prominently, what I call the ‘pile of shame’: a teteering stack of random books purchased from charity shops. Second-hand books are one of the cheapest things you can buy in London, at about £1 each. When — read more
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We Need to Talk About Kevin: I don’t buy it
We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver’s 2003 pitch-dark thriller about a killer child, is a fascinating puzzle because of its unreliable narrator, Kevin’s mother, Eva. In the book, Eva is a successful travel guide writer who was always uncertain about becoming a mother. After a tough pregnancy and birth, she struggles to connect — read more
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Ishmael is the main character
Moby Dick is difficult to summarise in a review because its exuberance seems to overflow the page. The book is the travelogue of an adventurous whaler named Ishmael in the mid-19th century. It describes his search for a ship, encounter with a Polynesian cannibal named Queequeeg, and fateful voyage with Captain Ahab to seek the — read more
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Harry Potter is not for adults
Harry Potter is not and never has been for adults. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I read the first three books in about 1999 when I was eleven. They were fine- superior to most books aimed at children at the time. If you wanted to graduate from Goosebumps and Dick King-Smith, they were — read more
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Chris Barker 