Enter me. I have a compulsive problem with picking up new hobbies, side quests and courses when I am highly susceptible to having too much on my plate and inevitably crashing out. I found The Artist’s Way tantalising; a shimmering mirage that might just be the key to success I’ve been looking for.

I didn’t buy in right away, though. As well as fans, TAW also draws plenty of critics who dismiss the 12-week course as a lot of woo-woo nonsense that distracts artists from simple hard work.

To clarify, I’m not in either camp. Before embarking on the course I could see both sides of the debate and I still can, but in the end it was simple curiosity that got me.

I needed to scratch the itch, and the transition point between two careers felt like the right time — if there is such a thing. I don’t regret completing six weeks, either; the itch was scratched, and there are some learnings I’ll be taking forward.

So why not go the whole hog?

Six out of 12 weeks is a lot of heavy lifting, and sunk cost fallacy has plagued me since throwing in the towel. But 12 weeks is a long time — three whole months — and for various reasons I outline below I decided it was better to cut and run than limp to the end.

Before you begin, Julia (I mentally thought of us as on first name terms, no matter how tense the relationship got) has you sign a contract committing yourself to the promised voyage of discovery.

Mine reads like this:

So Julia makes it clear early on that this is going to be no walk in the park, but the contract also sets the tone for what is a surprisingly rigid and prescriptive course.

As I've touched on, one of the most oft-levelled criticisms against The Artist’s Way is that it’s all very New Age, with appeals to God — or ‘the Great Creator’, if you prefer — in every other paragraph. While I’ll certainly take the Great Creator over God, this didn’t bother me all that much.

Sure, the language often gets a little cultish, but so it does in today’s sports clubs, wellness communities and fan clubs. It’s merely a framing device for motivational guidance, so unless you’re extremely averse to any sort of spiritual thinking (rare in creative life, I’d argue), then I wouldn’t let this deter you.

So what did I take issue with?

The structure of The Artist’s Way

Each week, you begin by reading the assigned chapter focused on a different element of creative recovery. For instance, ‘Week one: Recovering a sense of safety,’ through to, ‘Week six: Recovering a sense of abundance,’ where I called it a day (despite this being one of the most luxurious weeks).

After the reading comes a set of around ten tasks, which you choose your own selection from to complete throughout the week. As well as fitting in these tasks, you’ll need to allocate time for your artist’s date and begin each day with morning pages.

I forget what Julia herself estimates, but I’d say The Artist’s Way took up around eight hours of a given week for me.

The pages are supposed to take 30 minutes per morning, but they took me more like 45. Granted, there was a lot of staring into space involved. I never managed morning pages on all seven days as Julia dictates, though, so working on 30 minutes per day that’s about three and a half hours a week. The dates take between one and two hours per week, and the tasks similar. Add on two hours for the reading and weekly debrief and you’re on the road to eight hours.

Naturally, this feels like a lot if you’re working full-time. One of my biggest frustrations was that this time — particularly the sacred early morning occupied by morning pages — could instead be spent on the progress bit of my work-in-progress.

I’m sure the rebuttal to this is that you are doing vital groundwork that will enable greater leaps with your WIP in the future, but it’s painful nonetheless. On a couple of occasions I felt particularly inspired to spend that pre-work hour on a particular scene in a short story or novel, but I remembered the contract I’d signed and dutifully scribbled my nonsensical thoughts down instead. This lack of flexibility became a recurring theme.

The basic tools

Morning pages

I hate morning pages. THERE, I SAID IT.

Ok, we’d better start with the positives. Three sides of A4 every morning, as soon as you wake up. According to Julia, the goal of this stream-of-consciousness exercise is to commit all the detritus of your overnight brain to the page so it doesn’t interfere with your day.

This is surprisingly tricky. My first few attempts were very weather-and-work-orientated; boring small talk you might make with someone you haven’t seen for a few months.

They did get better though, and I used the assigned reading for that week and the tasks I was completing to inspire some of my reflections. For instance, one week was all about childhood (classic nineties therapist style), so I explored those themes further. I also made good use of affirmations, which were often a saving grace when I hit the two-and-a-half page wall. In fact, using affirmations properly was one of the most valuable things I learned during the first half of the course, and one I’ll be continuing.

However.

I find this style of journalling skews heavily negative, and I’m not entirely sure why. My pages often read like one big whinge catalogue, and I had to counteract it with some gratitude journalling in the evening. Again, I know the rebuttal to this will be ‘better out than in’ — that it’s worth plumbing the murky depths in order to find equilibrium and even happiness in the long term. But, all too often, I was starting my days wallowing, dwelling, navel-gazing. It was the opposite of uplifting, and so much rumination almost left me feeling paralysed.

Maybe I quit right when the graph’s negative trend was about to swoop upwards. Often, the course talks of sticky transitions as we experience the first flushes of ‘going sane’ after long periods of repression, like when you try a new acne product that first results in vicious purges. Maybe I would have experienced a coming to Jesus moment, and suddenly found the route of my true happiness and creative success in those pages.

There’s an equally great risk, of course, that I wouldn’t.

I have another problem with morning pages. It became clear to me over the six weeks (another reason why I don't regret doing it), that I would rather work on a project — a Substack piece, a short story, or my novel — in that earliest waking hour — and journal in the evenings. That's simply the optimum schedule for my brain; chipping away in the morning, gentle reflection in the evening.

I sorely missed my soft leather journal, too. The tactile feel of opening it to write, rather than tearing off another page of my refill pad. I know, Julia — distractions, distractions. In the last few weeks, post-quit, I’ve returned to that journal and am enjoying filling it with everything from pressed flowers and beer bottle stickers to book reviews and weekly plans, as well as, of course, stream-of-consciousness reflection.

Ultimately, morning pages took away the individuality of journalling and I became too meta-cognitive about the process. Unsurprisingly, this ruined all the fun.

The artist’s date

Much like the morning pages, the other basic tool of TAW — the artist’s date — has become so ubiquitous that many people indulge whether or not they’re completing the course. To my mind, this is a better approach than actually completing the course, because the date is !too prescriptive!

Make no mistake, I take absolutely no issue with treating myself. I have always been someone that carves out time for creative pursuits and solo dates, so you might expect heady delight once I was contractually obliged to do so. Unfortunately, no such luck.

There are a few rules surrounding the artist’s date: it shouldn’t look like work, it should take up a substantial chunk of time, and it should be done completely alone.

Some of the tasks you complete are designed to generate ideas for the artist’s date, such as listing all the things you would do if you felt you were ‘allowed.’ Dancing, horse riding and watercolours are among the things I came up with.

On a Sunday evening, after completing my assigned reading and while planning out my week ahead, I then had to shoe horn in a couple of hours that fit all the above criteria.

I went on some enjoyable artist’s dates: a garden gallery on my lunch break, where I fell in love with a piece of folkloric art, a people watching and journalling trip to a wine bar and a charity shop crawl. Nonetheless, I think I would have enjoyed them all more without the background murmurs of, ‘how will I reflect on this?’, ‘am I making the most of the allotted time?’ and ‘does this definitely qualify as an artist’s date?’

Worrying whether or not the date ‘qualifies’ was especially prevalent when it came to the solo aspect. I love spending time on my own, probably too much so, and I found myself vetoing the idea of taking dance lessons with my husband — something we both really want to do — because it would take an extra hour or two out of my week without qualifying as an artist’s date. This is a prime example of where the rigidity of the course, combined with my perfectionist tendencies, are a terrible combination.

Sweet, sweet release

The day I decided to quit The Artist’s Way, we had spent a long hot summer Sunday travelling back from some corner of England or other.

I spent the drive worrying about getting my reading and planning done for the week ahead once we got home. That extended to worrying about when I’d do my artist’s date, and how I could progress my creative projects while still getting my morning pages done alongside all of life’s other more mundane commitments.

I looked at my husband and said, ‘I’m not going to do it anymore.’

I was testing the words on my tongue, but as soon as I heard them I knew it was the right thing. Quite simply, this was the wrong prescription for me at this stage in my creative life. Too prescriptive, too likely to drive a perfectionist who obsesses over structure, routine and completionism to total insanity.

That doesn’t mean I’d ward off anyone looking to do The Artist’s Way themselves. If your issue is that you’re creatively blocked, never make time for creative pursuits and wouldn’t even know where to begin if you did, then TAW offers a valuable roadmap.

But if, like me, your issue is taking on too much and overthinking your creative outputs, and you’re looking to tap into a deeper, more spontaneous channel of expression, then beware that this course may end up having the opposite effect.

What I’ll be taking forward

Because it’s not all bad…

Mindset shifts:

• Not seeking permission — becoming a proper adult who sets their own measures of success and happiness, shaking off the last dregs of an anxious childhood measured in achievements

• A broader interpretation of creativity — looking for the little opportunities and understanding the value of creative endeavours that I’m not good at

• Warding off toxic energies — putting the people and influences on my life under the microscope more regularly to ensure I’m not remodelling myself for the wrong reasons or suffering under the curse of comparison.

Tools:

• Affirmations — incorporating these into my journalling practice to fuel self-esteem and move me closer to my goals

• Creative dates — not weekly, not for any set period of time. Just when I feel I need it, to work or to play, alone or in company.

So there we have it. I guess I’ll never know what it feels like to recover a sense of connection, strength, compassion, self protection, autonomy or faith — and I’ve made my peace with that.

Have you tried The Artist’s Way? Are you a champion, sceptic or indifferent?

Where next?

When I shared that I’m reading one of the Neapolitan novels each summer, lots of avid fans of Elena Ferrante’s quartet about two young women growing up in Naples asked how I can bear the wait. Each bookworm to their own, but I love to drag out an excellent reading experience.

Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy took me at least five years to consume, and as a result I grew up with it — slowly coming to appreciate different aspects of the reading experience, from the prose to the plot to the historical context. They’re heavy tomes that you need to be willing to give a lot of head and heart to, so timing matters.

With Ferrante’s quartet my choice has more to do with the nature of the stories themselves. In My Brilliant Friend, which I read and wrote about last summer, we meet the girls as pre-adolescents and leave them in teenage turbulence. In The Story of a New Name, we begin with that wedding and continue on through extra-marital affairs, failed pregnancies, successful pregnancies and diverging careers.

There’s a soap opera quality to the scope of these novels, with their broad cast of warring families, violence and domestic drama at every turn. You might also imagine them being chopped up even further and released in instalments like the serial novels of centuries past. Upon finishing My Brilliant Friend I vowed to make the journey alongside Lina and Elena, letting the rich complexity of their lives evolve alongside mine.

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I must say at this juncture that I greatly prefer the second novel to the first. The opening set offers plenty to love, of course, as we are introduced to a world that’s so brilliantly drawn by our anonymous author. But it was the depiction of Naples itself, the tribes that rule the neighbourhood the novel is set in, and the fizzing prose that appealed most in My Brilliant Friend. For that reason, my first essay in The Ferrante Factor series focused on symbols: the Fiat 1100, the broken copper pot, the leather shoes. These are the vessels of our communion with Naples, our portals into the world of Lina and Elena. But, as we’re introduced to the girls in primary school, their characters are subtler and slower to develop.

Opening The Story of a New Name, however, I was immediately sucked into a pacy narrative that balances a literary telling with a roiling plot. Due to the utterly unmatched depiction of Lina and Elena’s strained connection as their individual characters develop, this essay had to be about friendship. Perhaps it’s because I’m now only a few years older than the girls, so the subject matter feels more instantly relatable, or perhaps it’s because I already know my way around this town, these characters, so I can relax and focus on what really matters.

Hot, dusty Naples provides a great backdrop for summer reading, but the glittering shores of Ischia — a nearby island — is even better. That’s where the majority of action in The Story of a New Name takes place, as Lenu agrees to join Lila as a sort of paid companion while the latter attempts to restore her health and conceive a child. Lenu has another motive, though; her childhood crush Nino Sarratore will also be holidaying on Ischia.

What begins is a classic teenage summer sequence, though Lina, Lenu and Pinuccia (Lina’s sister-in-law) are in their early twenties. Each day they lay out their towels on the beach, and each day they are joined by Nino and his friend Bruno (again, we thank our lucky stars that Ferrante begins each novel with an extensive character list). Within just two weeks, the five feel like they’ve known each other intimately for years and an odd number means someone must always be left out. Because the married Pinu forms an instant bond with Bruno, this leaves Lina and Lenu fighting it out for Nino’s sacred attention. Their days are punctuated by swims, strolling down the beach for a coconut and returning home before sunset.

Ah, the fear of missing out. The inevitable bowing to peer pressure. The cold clasp of dread around your heart when you realise the object of your desires fancies your best friend instead. The feeling of distinct loneliness and even sadness despite being surrounded by friends in a beautiful place. We’ve all been there and this sense of disquiet in the midst of endless summer fun encapsulates the season perfectly.

When Lenu is dragged into helping Lila hide her affair from her volatile husband, the strain on her subservient position in the friendship reaches a crescendo. For the first time, I urgently wanted Lenu to tell her friend ‘no,’ to put herself first, to recover her self-esteem and forge her own path. The tension of The Story of a New Name is that, just as it becomes clear that the quartet exists to tell Lila’s story, the narrative has us rooting for Lenu’s own happy ending. Again and again, she comes out of the shadows just to be blinded by her friend’s magnetism.

What’s more, some of the mystery that surrounds Lila’s inner life in My Brilliant Friend is dispelled in this sequel by a clever narrative device. In fear of her husband, Lila bestows her entire collection of notebooks on Lenu for safekeeping. Lenu, naturally, reads them all. This lays out all of her friend’s scheming and plotting, torment and jubilation clearly on the page, diluting some of the power she gained from her aloofness but softening none of her impact.

This is no straightforward story of Lina’s dominance, though, as Ferrante draws a devastating portrait of her loveless marriage, embroilment in local rivalries and lack of true friends. Indeed, in one reading Lenu seems to be outstripping her in all the senses that mattered to the girls as children; she gets out of the neighbourhood to attend university in Pisa, she lands a worldly boyfriend, she begins to associate with a wide circle of enlightened and intelligent types.

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that neither woman is going to ‘win’ in the traditional sense. The age-old choices of pursuing a family life or a career, of sticking with what you know or venturing further afield, means both will end up losing something, and that loss weighs heavily on Lila and Lenu alike.

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Lila vascillates between spiteful jealousy towards Lenu’s academic success and devoted support, offering her apartment to study from and buying her school books. Lenu increasingly finds herself feeling alienated in her new circles and missing the directness of life in the neighbourhood. Struggling to fully assimilate in either setting, she finds herself untethered. Lila is extreme, but this hot and cold approach to friendship is far from alien to many of Ferrante’s readers, nor is it limited to the fickle teenage years.

Towards the end of this novel, when the chips are down for Lila and she is alone in a strange neighbourhood, Lenu visits her at work at a bleak sausage factory. She later admits she relished the opportunity to show her friend how much better her own situation was — unpleasant, certainly, but understandable given the pain Lina has put her through. What she finds, however, is that the spirit of enterprise, adventure and fierce determination is as alive in her friend as ever before.

At the 2/4 mark in the Neapolitan quartet, the stakes have undoubtedly been raised. As each woman journeys further along her chosen path, everything she is distancing herself from haunts her at each juncture. Lila and Lenu spend long stretches of time without one another, but they are constantly foremost in one another’s minds.

Their friendship serves as a continuous source of pain, but it’s also the barometer by which they measure their successes and failures, the compass which shows them the next step and the safety net when other sources of support fail. It remains one of the most anguished and beautiful portrayals of friendship I’ve ever seen on the page.

Where will Ferrante take us next? See you next year for Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.

Catch up

In my own experience, this limiting factor feels especially acute when trying to take creative endeavours as seriously as the sort of work that pays the bills. Naturally the professional violinist or film director doesn’t have this problem, they’re firmly in the artist camp, but for most of us creativity runs on a spectrum. It’s either central to your life, entirely dormant or crops up now and again at a pottery painting class or when you pick up an instrument you haven’t played for years. Like many people, I occupy a liminal space between those camps; a no-man’s land for those who are creatively inclined but hold full-time jobs and other responsibilities that usually have little in common with those interests.

“Most of us harbour a secret belief that work has to be work and not play, and that anything we really want to do — like write, act, dance — must be considered frivolous and be placed a distant second.”

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

This might be ok, except I've noticed that such a life means creativity is permanently at the bottom of the pecking order, and therefore the first to go in a pinch. Whenever I picture the brain’s ‘compartments,’ they take the form of the many different sized drawers in an apothecary table. When faced with competing priorities, we start to file.

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The money-maker needs to go into the biggest drawer, otherwise we’ll be up Shits Creek without a paddle and can wave goodbye to our whimsical aspirations. Next comes all the things that are less serious but have urgent deadlines attached: sorting out travel arrangements, getting that eye test before the offer expires, grabbing a gift for a friend’s birthday this Saturday. These are hastily acknowledged, dealt with to varying degrees of success and filed away into an assortment of medium-sized drawers.

Now it’s time for the ‘shoulds’ — those areas of maintenance that appease societal expectations. 30 minutes of exercise each day, getting properly dressed before leaving the house, calling that elderly relative to thank them for something. None of these things take long, but we do need to do them all because otherwise we’ll be lumbered with the guilt. So off they go, squashed into little drawers around the edges. So we’re done, right?

Well, no. Because we promised ourselves this would be the year we would spend more time creating. We had visions of junk journalling, scrapbooking, maybe even trying something new like watercolours or poetry. We turn back to our apothecary table, which is already nearly full and beginning to resemble a flashing wall calendar. It looks like there might be time before 9.00am on Tuesday or perhaps after 6.00pm on Thursday. We squeeze ‘creativity’ into these two puniest of drawers and pray an unforeseen ‘urgent’ doesn’t come along and wipe them out.

Clearly, there is something not quite right about this arrangement.

For the last couple of years, in a desperate bid to recover some of my creativity, I’ve been working on Substack essays, short stories and novels in the cracks of time afforded by a corporate career and an ordinary, full life. This experience has made me realise how unusual a choice this is — to forcibly make time to be creative, to create. The vast majority of people don’t even know this about me; there is no more dreaded question than ‘what are you up to this lunch break’ for the secret corporate creative. In some ways it’s fun to live this double life of sorts, in other ways it’s draining and lonely and leads to misalignment burnout.

Recently, instead of simply continuing in a cycle of a 9-5 and doggedly pursuing other projects with what’s left of my brain space, I’ve decided to sacrifice even more time to putting creativity itself under the lens. Quelle surprise, this has led me to The Artist’s Way; Julia Cameron’s 12-week romp through creative recovery. It’s a bit New Age and verges on the unrealistic in some places, but I’ve also learnt a lot from the required reading and tasks.

The first real lesson is that creativity is not merely an elective choice or a matter of personal talent — it’s an innate part of being a human being. The issue is that the vast majority of people are not using it. If human beings are innately creative, what will this belittlement of creative pursuits do to our brain health over time? If the arts bring much needed depth, richness and connection to our communities, what will this continuous shirking mean for society?

Most interestingly, she speaks of those who came along to her classes when the in-person course first launched in Greenwich Village, New York. Her students are not the edgy alternative sorts you might expect, but often people who have considered themselves — dare I say it — ‘left-brained’: analytical, forensic, interested in facts not fiction. Brilliantly, they signed themselves up for the course because they sensed something lacking in their inner and outer lives.

And this gasp for creativity isn’t just reserved for the enlightened execs of Greenwich Village. I have a lawyer friend who put herself through a six-week pottery class a couple of years ago, finishing work late to then go and restore something — that ambiguous something — that’s so vital and comes from using a different part of your brain, using your hands, expanding your field of vision.

Two of my uncles have worked doggedly in corporate careers since leaving the working class town they were born in. Last year, they began collaborating on a series of articles for Trout & Salmon (stay with me), whereby one supplies the words and the other the photography. Fishing is a passion they’ve had since childhood, but the ability to write and take photographs to that standard are skills that have lain largely dormant until their sixties.

So there are signs all around us of the pull towards creativity, the need for it like we need sleep, water, food. Once the dreaded scrambled for identity in one’s teenage years comes to an end, lots of people find their way back to the enthusiasms they held in childhood — even if it takes several decades.

“I think of the tap root of desert oaks reaching for water, and what happens if they don’t find it. When the radiance inside each of us is neglected, our inner country goes unnourished. When we don’t use our creativity, that inner place brimming with potential withers. All we see is a desert, all we feel is emptiness, and it haunts us.”

The House That Joy Built by Holly Ringland

The problem remains, though, that unless you are making a living as a writer, artist or musician than creativity is seen as an indulgent priority — even a pointless one. It’s recommended to hyper-stressed executives or mothers who feel they’ve lost their creativity to their children almost as medication. It is not viewed as the basic human function it is, and many of those who recognise their need or even yearning for it do not allow themselves creativity because they can’t justify the investment.

It’s startlingly obvious to me, when you look at the current state of the world, that creativity ought to be higher up the pecking order. If those who teach our children, lead corporate teams of thousands, represent constituents and so on are no longer able to interact with the world through a creative lens, this opens up all sorts of issues.

On the one hand, worrying signs of further decline seem to appear every day: the unstoppable rise of AI of course, but also the horrific cuts to humanities education in UK universities (Exeter being the latest) and the constant struggle to keep council-led arts programmes alive.

“Unused creativity is not benign. It does not dissipate. It metastasizes. And unused creativity turns into rage, grief, shame, judgement.”

The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown

On the other hand, the working world is less dogmatic than it once was and during my twenties I’ve heard of one friend of a friend rejecting grad schemes in favour of starting an accessories brand made from recycled jeans and another who just quit their city job to become a baker. Digital nomadism came to the fore post-pandemic, and people are increasingly breaking free from traditionally defined career paths. That’s a good thing. But, vitally, creativity is not just about talent and side hustles. It’s a basic human need, and it’s become the norm to suppress it.

As I’ve been up to my neck in creative self-help recently, it feels only right to share a few starting points that might just help you to tip the balance without forking out for a year’s worth of samba lessons straight off the bat…

1. Start a rolling vision board

I don’t mean a picture of you behind the CEO desk in 10 years’ time. I mean an image file of styles, activities and scenes that appeal to you. Just the exercise of putting these images together can help you to move closer to creativity.

2. Make a selfish change to your home

Start a gallery wall over your bed or sofa, perhaps leaning into some of that imagery you’ve been collecting. Carve out a small space under the stairs or by the window for a folding desk; ideally a distinct space from where you work from home, if you do. Spend some time there each day with a few materials and see what springs forth. Convert an underused window seat or alcove into your very own reading nook.

3. Set yourself a research project

If you’ve always been strangely drawn to a niche subject like 20th century French cooking or block printing, set aside a few weeks to make it your project. Buy some secondhand books on the subject and go down YouTube rabbit holes. Buy yourself a nice new notebook to compile notes in. You may never practice the art you’re researching, but you might be surprised what this kind of focused study inspired.

4. Get out of your comfort zone

This summer I’m going to attend my first musical theatre dance class. I cannot dance. Just writing it out helps with the accountability element. We’re all increasingly tied by invisible constraints, and doing something that seems absurd can be just the antidote to help loosen those ties.

5. Seek out creative people

Even if you’re pretty sure your family, friends and colleagues are living with very limited creativity, there’s often a few tidbits going on behind the scenes. Show interest in people’s lives outside work and socialising and look for opportunities to get involved somehow; creativity loves company.

I could talk about so many things in this month’s dispatch: leaving my job for a career change (more on that soon), struggling with the heat and decision paralysis, completing five weeks of The Artist's Way (again coming soon), but right now I just want to talk about flower fairies.

It’s impossible not to think of them while a proliferation of hollyhocks and foxgloves begin springing up over garden fences in all their showy splendour. Even as a child bored senseless by any talk of gardens and gardening, I understood these leggy flowers as nothing other than homes for fairies.

Whether that impression came from an obliging godmother or grandmother or fairy literature I’m not sure, but there was certainly lots of fairy literature flying around. Of course I’m talking about Cicely May Baker's illustrated books, which introduced children consciously to individual fairy characters and subconsciously to the botanical details of their associated flower. A quick Google and I’m right there again, poring over every detail and forming arbitrary preferences for some fairies over others.

Every child sticks something on their bedroom windows which will become a huge problem decades later when your parents try to prepare that house for sale, and my own contribution was a full set of flower fairies. The Derbyshire sun set behind them every evening, bringing a warm glow to the plasticky impressions.

In June, I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was reintroduced to Titania and her flower fairy train of Cobweb, Mustardseed, Moth and Peaseblossom. I myself was cast as King Theseus in a primary school production, which feels just as much an injustice now as it did at the time. I was clearly born to prance about in a botanically-inspired tutu.

While much of the publishing world has now moved on to fae rather than fairy worlds — equally fantastical but definitely darker — I’m intrigued by Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies series. The covers, with their whimsical illustrations, bring out the inner child with her window stickers.

Have you indulged in these? What did you think?

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon’s sphere;

And I serve the fairy queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be:

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:

I must go seek some dewdrops here

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Four Fairy Costumes for A Midsummer Night’s Dream produced by Robert Courtneidge at the Princes Theatre, Manchester, 1896-1903

Top five of 2026 (so far)

I know, I know — we’ve all had enough of this by now but I just can’t help it; I’m an unashamed list fiend.

In no particular order, these are the reads currently heading for the 2026 hall of fame:

1. The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

3. The Correspondent by Virginia Parkes (Women’s Prize Winner, woop woop!)

4. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

5. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Recommending

Podcast: The Tip Off

Nothing will send you down a rabbit hole quite like research for your current work-in- progress. The protagonist in the novel idea I’m working on is an investigative journalist, which led me to seek out podcasts, books and web resources all about the profession (I actually trained as a broadcast journalist, but making coffees for radio hosts didn’t quite give me the grounding I need). The Tip Off ran from 2017 to 2023, hosted by UK-based journalist Maeve McClenaghan, and received lots of acclaim. Maeve takes you behind the scenes of some of the most powerful investigative cases of recent history, ranging from state secrets and British soldiers to local crime networks. It’s pretty thrilling even if you’re not trying to flesh out a plot that deeply confuses you, who conceived it.

Series: The Other Bennett Sister

Quite the step change. Yes I know everyone’s watched this already but it took me a second heatwave and a week of reading deprivation during The Artist’s Way to binge the whole thing across a few days. Chef’s kiss. Ella Bruccoleri does such a convincing job of the depressingly downtrodden that I just know I’ll start if I ever see her in a more jovial and fancy-free role. I especially loved the scenes in the Lake District and the character arc of Caroline Bingley, which we don’t get to enjoy in Pride and Prejudice. What a fabulous premise, beautifully executed.

Reading diaries

In the spotlight: The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

Goodness me. I wrote a full-length piece on My Brilliant Friend when I first began the Neapolitan quartet last summer, unpacking my first impressions of Ferrante and the world of Lenu and Lina through the novel’s most prolific symbols. One will follow for The Story of a New Name, but here’s a quick preview.

Stepping into this second instalment felt like an immediate gear change. The girls are older, the drama is more immediate, I was hooked. The quartet definitely has a soap opera quality, and you could easily imagine it being serialised.

This second novel reinforced my view that Ferrante’s epic feat is her brutally honest portrayal of the ups and downs of female friendship, without gloss or sentimentality. Some passages honestly make me gasp out loud. The sad part? Just as it becomes clear that the Neapolitan novels are very much Lina’s story, not our narrator’s, the more you realise what Lenu’s own story has to offer.

Briefly noted:

• Bookish by : this is SO GOOD. You’d think I’d exhausted the books about books genre, but alas it just keeps delivering. I love how Mangan talks about reading for pleasure, reading not for pleasure but finding pleasure in it, and reading that simply isn’t enjoyable at all. Realistic, relatable, heart-warming.

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: very, very good heatwave fodder, requiring just the right level of brain activity. My first ever Christie, and I sense I either wont read another one for 10 years or will have opened the floodgates.

Currently reading:

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Gasp-a-second already.

Excited for:

I’m taking on The Bell Jar at last! Not sure excited is the right word…

Murmurations will be making like the continent and taking a short pause for August, returning in September, with a few other pieces coming your way in the meantime.

For now, have you checked out the ol’ summer reading guide yet?

However, the last couple of years have been a journey in finding joy in every season, and I think it’s beginning to work. The cherry tree in our garden is laden, the streets around our house are so bedecked in roses it feels like someone’s wedding every day of the week, and we’ve eaten outside more in the past couple of weeks than in the last year put together thanks to a nifty new garden dining set. There are glimmers, of course, and books to go with them.

While autumn, winter and spring tend to be neatly punctuated seasons — with national holidays and festivities ticking each month off the calendar — summer seems like one big old stretch of heat hazes and aimless lethargy. As a result, this guide is split into moods rather than moments, presenting you with titles that hopefully appeal wherever you find yourself between now and September.

I’ve included a few rituals to help you find joy in summer and – as always — there’s a fuller index of recommended titles at the end of the post.

Allow me to introduce you to books…

For the heat-averse claustrophobic

Fortunately for the timing of this guide, and for my own survival during the latest heatwave, I recently read NW by Zadie Smith. I’d formerly read three of her essay collections as well as her novel On Beauty (all excellent, by the way), and this one had been staring miserably out from the shelf since I picked it up in a charity shop.

Un coupe de chance, I opened the Union Jack emblazoned cover to find our redheaded main character suffering relentless heat in the communal garden of her council flat. So far, so perfect: strength in numbers. What follows is a breathtaking exposition of diverging lives in a borough of London mired by poverty and division, but full of love and hope too. NW is far from an easily digestible read, and it’s deeply tragic in parts, but its flawed cast of characters are excellent company for a heatwave.

Read more

Did you revel in the heatwave, or focus on sustaining the will to live? It was a bit of both for me (pale, freckled etc. but loves a cold beer).

I did feel enormously grateful to be in Stockholm over the May bank holiday weekend, where temperatures were a slightly more sane 22 degrees. This felt apt given my overall impression of Sweden: very sane, very content, very comfortable. Highlights included a boat tour of the breathtaking archipelago and the Nobel Prize Museum, which featured a huge Klara and the Sun installation. I’m sharing some further glimmers below, including the Dana horse and some fabulous Swedish words.

I am, as usual, trying to do too much with too little time. The latest manifestation of this is taking on The Artist’s Way, which makes me laugh as I type it because I've spent years telling myself it’s not something I need to do. However, if anything I’ll scratch the itch to fold into Julia Cameron’s loving (comma zany) arms for a bit. I will be keeping a diary of the experience (as well as all those morning pages) and keep you updated.

Word(s) of the month

• Mångata: Literal translation is ‘moon-road.’ It describes the shimmering, road-like reflection the moon makes on the water.

• Gokotta: Waking up early in the morning with the specific purpose of going outside to listen to the first birds sing.

I’m telling you, the Swedes know how to live.

What’s on my desk?

A wee Dala Horse.

These symbols of Sweden are sold in pretty much every shop you come across in Stockholm, and I could only afford this miniature one. Still, it feels like a worthy desk talisman.

Horses were adored in Sweden and became a symbol of strength and resilience, with soldiers and forest workers carving, painting and trading them. They eventually became an important source of income for poorer families — being able to carve and paint one of these helped you earn your keep. I love how such a creative pursuit served a utilitarian end.

Loving: all the roses — especially the rose arches on my street. They make me feel like I’m in The Secret Garden.

Loathing: all the shirtless men.

Before we move on, please humour me for a minute…

Recommending

Here’s what I have enjoyed reading on Substack lately…

• A reluctant eulogy for my Kindle, 2012-2016 from

• What special ed students taught me about the power of believing in someone from

• On not doing stuff to my face from

I’ve spoken about it before, but I’m back to obsessing over the podcast. It’s just SO good. Recent highlights are Ep#195 with on writing from joy rather than fear and Ep#194 with Dr Gloria Mark and Oliver Burkeman on finding writing flow.

Reading diaries

Did you spot my novella reading guide (a prescription for suffering attention spans) last month? If it passed you by, here it is again:

In the spotlight: Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Not only is this my read of the year so far, it also earns a place in my top five novels of all time.

Woolf is divisive, perhaps, but few can argue over her mastery of language. I’d already had a dousing in this magic via To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway (the novel I was reading when I got engaged!), but Orlando is a different kettle of fish.

I was instantly flabbergasted by the scope. Three — or is it four? — centuries. Medieval knight shenanigans, Queen Elizabeth I’s court, the great Thames freeze of the 17th century, all the way through industrialisation and well into the 20th century. For historical fiction fans it feels like all your birthdays just came at once.

It’s audacious to ask your reader to stick with you through all this traversing, yet our attention is never in doubt. Because we’re absolutely invested in Orlando, with his unbelievable legs and sagging poem that’s taken him hundreds of years to write. He turns into a man, he loves a woman, he loves a man, he leaves country for town then shuns town for country, he lives as a courtier, a gypsy and a society woman.

How does it work? How CAN it work? Because the pervasive message of this novel is that more unites us than divides us, that gender identity is more fluid than class or status but even those are fluid. The true thread of what makes us who we are survives all sorts of conditions. It’s almost pointless to say this novel was ahead of it’s time, but cor blimey it was ahead of its time.

I felt like I’d been let in on some sort of secret once I finished this book, though I’m still not sure what that secret is. What I do know is Woolf was an incredibly brave storyteller, and it paid off massively.

“Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen, than to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.”

Briefly noted:

• NW by Zadie Smith: this is not an easy read — it’s challenging both in content and format — but it’s worth it. I don’t use the word luminary lightly, but I believe we’re extraordinarily lucky to be living alongside Zadie Smith. Her curiosity about the human condition and experience shines through her fiction, and her knack for dialogue and dialect is unmatched.

• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe: as good as everyone says it is. Keefe’s approach to investigative journalism is so humane — this never, ever feels sensationalist. I also learnt so much about the murky backdrop of London life that I hadn’t previously known.

• A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux: a new author for me, and I picked up this slim and sexy Fitzcarraldo edition in the Nobel Prize Museum gift shop (Ernaux is a previous winner). It’s a dedication to her mother and coping with her painful demise into dementia. The writing is beautiful.

Looking forward to:

• My reread of Pride and Prejudice! Now I’ve finished the major Austen six, I’m going to pick one to revisit each year.

While there can be little doubt these are top-tier reads, I know I’m not being entirely objective. Chunky books demand more investment from us, and sitting with them for a long time means they naturally carve a notch in our memories.

That’s why this piece is all about the underdog — the novella. Some call them long short stories, others short novels. If, like I did, you Google how long they should be, you will struggle to find a definitive answer. All you need to know is my own entirely arbitrary approach presents novellas between 46 and 134 pages.

A few are novellas in translation, from the wintery depths of Russia to the sun-soaked piazzas of Italy, while others are firmly British in style and subject. This selection of eight demonstrates just how malleable a format the novella can be, with stories set over the course of hours, days and months.

Why novellas, and why now?

Well, reading rates are dropping off a cliff and I’m convinced more people should be reading novellas — even if publishers are notoriously reluctant to take them on. Plus, it’s been 34 degrees in England for the past week, and if you have the willpower for 1,000 page epics then I salute you, but novellas are just right for my current energy levels.

Novellas from me to you

1. The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

Page count: 128

This is the novella I read most recently, and it really drove home all the joy of this format. Imagine sitting down for two sunny afternoons in the garden and being transported to Moscow, where a dog is having its testicles and pituitary gland replaced with those of a man. It’s pure carnage.

Bulgakov is better known for The Master and Margarita, which I’m now desperately excited to read. He wrote The Heart of a Dog first, in 1925, but it wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1968 — 28 years after his death. This novella, though hilarious, draws its subtle backbone from this frosty political atmosphere.

If you feel like you’ve read all the things and are stuck in a bit of a rut, this is the one that’ll deliver an electric shock and make you all excited about the written word again.

2. White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Page count: 80

No, they’re not all Russian — I’m going in alphabetical order.

One of the many things I love about novellas is you often experience a novelist experimenting with a completely different writing framework. After all, Dostoyevsky is known for tomes like The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment which are epic in scope, content and length.

White Nights is something different entirely; a slim, 80-page volume set across four sleepless nights in St. Petersburg. It takes its title from a period of the year where the sun scarcely ever sets, imbuing the story with a magical luminescence that’s perfect for the approaching midsummer.

It’s a story of unrequited love — longing, hope and ultimately disappointment — told from the perspective of the Dreamer. A subtler adventure than Dostoyevsky’s usual fare, but transportive nonetheless.

3. The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico

Page count: 46

In looking this up again, I’m shocked to discover it’s a children’s book. I read it for the first time just a couple of years ago, handed to me by my Dad after he read it. I’ve never had much time for adult / children differentiation, and it shows in moments like this...

It does have a fable-like quality, though, and is short enough to compel budding readers.

Set in the desolate marshes of Essex during World War Two, The Snow Goose focuses on a lonely, disfigured artist who is visited by a young, uneducated girl carrying a wounded snow goose. As they set about healing the goose, a steady friendship develops against the backdrop of a raging war.

Michael Morpurgo is among those who have cited The Snow Goose, with its message of kindness and inclusion, as inspiration for their own works.

4. The Party by Tessa Hadley

Page count: 117

The most recently published on my list, and a first foray into novella territory for Tessa Hadley — whose novels including The Past and After the Funeral are hugely popular. I’ve said many times that I love novels about family relationships — especially sisters, which fascinate me because I do not have one.

The Party actually covers two parties, in which our protagonist trails in her older sister’s wake, seeking a change of scene. It’s subtle, and I’ve seen it criticised for dullness, which I can’t agree with.

Set in post-war Bristol, which is brilliantly drawn, we follow the girls as they break out of the safety of their suburban home in Avonmouth to visit the gritty Docks and a debauched country pile. It’s ultra-authentic and relatable, despite the vintage setting, and features an understated but nonetheless startling climax.

5. Foster by Claire Keegan

Page count: 89

If some novellas squeeze utter madness between their covers, others seem to be about nothing much at all (I’ve written about this gorgeous sub-section of books before).

Foster, like Keegan’s celebrated work Small Things Like These, follows ordinary lives in rural Ireland. But this one has none of the intrigue or dark historical backdrop of Small Things, instead observing a young girl’s summer holiday with distant relatives — away from the rough-and-tumble chaos of her own home.

It’s an emotion-led tale that induces a sort of haze once you finish it; what just happened (if anything?) and why do I feel so moved?

6. The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese

Page count: 112

Sometimes you really just need to sit under the dappled shade of an oak tree with a hunk of bread and cheese reading something like this.

The original Italian name for this novel is La Bella Estate, which I wish they’d kept in translation. Cesare Pavese is prolific in his native country, but this is the only one of his works I’ve read.

Reading The Beautiful Summer feels like peeling back a muslin curtain to peer in at the inner lives and activities of its characters. It’s a coming-of-age story set in Turin, Italy, following Ginia as she navigates duty, friendship and first love on the eve of the Second World War.

We see Ginia’s innocence gradually fall away as she branches out from her brother’s watchful gaze to explore the city’s bohemian art scene. The highlights of this novella are undoubtedly the descriptions of place; I can feel the humidity just thinking back to reading it.

7. Siblings by Brigitte Reimann

Page count: 134

I love this novella, but I rarely come across fellow readers. Siblings is a story about life on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall, which — when it comes to rabbit hole obsessions — is my Roman Empire.

Specifically, it focuses on two brothers and a sister in East Germany. One has already defected to the West, and the remaining two have very different stances on staying or going.

It’s the perfect blend of a plot driven by very real geo-political events (Reimann herself was an artist in the Soviet bloc), and immediate family dynamics in all their chaotic nuance.

The prose is electrifying, too.

8. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey

Page count: 119

I read this shortly before my own wedding in February this year, which was perhaps ill-advised as this girl really doesn’t want to get married.

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is funny and sad in a very British sort of way. It’s an upstairs-downstairs dark comedy, focused on the hours building up to the titular wedding.

The bride is upstairs necking rum straight from the bottle, while her relations lose their minds in that very specific sort of wedding way downstairs. Her internal and external dialogue is an acute rendering of all the madness of being a human being trying to function in society.

Bonus points for the beautiful Persephone edition.

Where to next?

I’m having a memoir / essays moment this year. One conquest was I Feel Bad About My Neck and other essays by Nora Ephron, which was published in 2006. She died just six years later, at the age of 71, and will forever have a seat at my fantastical dinner table. It doesn’t even need to be that glamorous; I’d love to go to the pub with her or just ask her for her thoughts on stuff in a quick WhatsApp.

It’s all the more bittersweet that the primary thread of her collection is a complex relationship with ageing — battling it, pondering it, coming to terms with it. This isn’t something that occupies a great deal of my headspace yet, but maintenance — the title of another essay in the set — most definitely does in this age of weight loss jabs, collagen and matcha over coffee.

Nora is the reason I’m currently typing this with very stubby, brittle fingernails after eight years of religious manicures. She was right: it’s not worth the time nor money to lose the use of your hands for an hour every three weeks in aid of something as small as a fingernail.

But it’s the broader theme of feeling bad about things that I want to respond to. It’s often said to be a uniquely female experience, this constant self-chastising, and I don’t know how true this is but it’s certainly one I live through day in, day out.

Below are some of the things I feel bad about. I’m writing them down, and attempting to let them go. Please feel free to do the same in the comments, so we all feel a bit better.

I feel bad about…

1. Dedicating a lot of time to nebulous pursuits

By nebulous, I mean there is no return on investment or even sometimes proof it happened. It’s genuinely really hard to tell someone you are not free on Saturday because you need to spend three hours revising a short story that may or may not go anywhere. It’s hard in a way that’s not hard if you’re playing a tennis match or going to a pottery class, and that’s annoying.

2. Not living in the same city as my friends

I’m not a city girl, and left London for Gloucestershire — where I’d never set foot in my life — at the tender age of 21. My friends are fabulous, and we still manage to have a lot of fun, but it’s impossible to not feel a bit like you’re the one preventing further frivolity when you’re in the minority geography-wise. You are inconvenient, especially given the state of British train travel right now.

3. Finding a 9-5 really tiring

Honestly, I can hardly keep my eyes open sometimes. Maybe it’s an undiagnosed iron deficiency, but it’s probably just that an office job doesn’t suit me. I feel bad about this because lots of people work incredibly long days and still manage plans after work, but I simply can’t. I need five coffees and probably two diet cokes to remain functional after 3pm. My sole consolation is I’m quite good between 6 and 8am.

4. Watching barely any TV

I’ve missed out on a lot of quality television. Admitting this is doubly bad, because people assume you think you’re above it. I wish, but please see point 3 — it’s more about laziness. There aren’t many hours available outside that dreaded 9-5, so I’m pretty ruthless about my pursuits. Those pursuits include reading, writing, lying down and staring into space. This means I have barely seen anything at all, besides my core comfort shows of Friends, Gilmore Girls and Schitts Creek. I dread nothing more than an office conversation starting: “Have you seen…?” Let me stop you right there: I haven’t.

5. Not voting last week

I think I’ve voted in every election I’ve been eligible to vote in, until last week. I did not vote in my local elections. I am young and able and live in a democratic country and I did not vote. This time I can’t point to lack of time — I’ve just never felt so out of the loop with party politics, nor so disinterested in participating. I feel bad about this and hope it doesn’t last.

6. My hair

Very Nora-coded, this one. She famously had her hair blowdried at a salon twice a week, while I struggle to get it cut every three months. My hair plagues me, and I’m sure my Mum describing it as ‘rats’ tails’ when I was young has done permanent damage (if you’re reading this, you do not have a right to respond). The truth is, it bores me. It looks like a Springer Spaniel’s ears in that typical English girl way that means no one ever remembers you when they meet you a second time. I’ve tried everything — I used to dye it dark purple out of packets in my university dorm room, I’ve had more fringes cut in and grown out again than anyone I know, I’ve gone short and sophisticated and long and bohemian and the sad fact remains that the Springer Spaniel is still my best look.

7. Not being close to my sibling

I get along with my sibling just fine — pretty well in fact, these days. I have an older brother, so I’m hardly expecting hair-braiding sessions, but I want them nonetheless. We live in different countries, with very independent and fulfilled lives, but a childish part of me still longs for the sort of sibling mischief and magic that filled the pages of my books.

8. Elderly people

I cried in a coffee shop this week because the two grandchildren at the table next to me had met up with their grandfather, just to spend the whole time on their phones rather than speaking to him. This is not an unusual occurrence for me. Beyond family obligations, I don’t think British society treats the elderly that well (beyond our obsession with war veterans) and I’m not doing enough to counteract that. It’s easier to assume the very old person next to you occupies an entirely different world, life, headspace than it is to acknowledge that they know an awful lot more than you and might lend you a fresh perspective if you could just be bothered to put your phone down, ask their name or write them a letter.

9. Not picking up the phone

For someone who loves to communicate, I’m remarkably bad with phone calls. Supposedly this is classic Gen Z, but I’m not sure about that because I have never been very classic Gen Z. The truth is sometimes a phone call is called for, and I do not follow through. Friends abroad, friends going through something, my godmother who still operates solely by landline… My suspicion is it has more to do with mental overload, and a false sense that this will be in some way harder than one-way, delayed communication.

10. Wanting a cleaner

I have never seen a speck of dirt in my Indian mother-in-law’s house, and I’m pretty sure she would recoil at the idea of paying a cleaner to do that work for her. But I want that. For some reason, cleanliness and tidiness — or rather a lack of both — are probably the single biggest drivers of skyrocketing anxiety for me. I’m sure there’s a bit of scapegoating going on here; after all, is it really the bomb site of a home office or the defeatist inner voice that’s stopping me from getting it done? Regardless, I do think tidy desk, tidy mind is a cliche for a reason and this extends to every room of the house. I can’t afford one at the moment, but I’m just putting it out there that I want one and I feel bad about that.

***

Woooooosh. I feel better for feeling bad in public. Your turn — what do you feel bad about?

Running has become an enormous machine of an industry, which I sometimes find off-putting given it’s supposed to be the most natural and instinctive of all exercise / sporting pursuits. But once you get past the extortionately-priced trainers, empty gel packets and loudspeakers there’s an undercurrent of pure magic in these events.

The blending of individual missions with mass participation makes you realise — whether you have any interest in running or not — that we’re all connected by the ups and downs of human experience, even if it feels like the world is going to pieces right now.

A similar euphoria was present closer to home this month, at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. It turns out Corinne Bailey-Rae was right to be a ‘one hit wonder,’ because she’s been producing far better stuff since Put Your Records On. She’s one of the best performers I’ve seen and somehow put 2000 people — including plenty of grumpy individuals who were reluctantly dragged along — under her spell. Another win for my new year’s resolution to be part of more live audiences.

The usual push and pull of burning the candle at both ends continues, but these recent experiences are further evidence that ‘busyness’ can be just as restorative for our sense of self and creativity as resting.

In this month’s Murmurations, I’m putting my first non-fiction book in the reading spotlight, recommending Substacks about living in different countries and sharing yet another book podcast obsession.

Word of the month

I thought I’d round up some of the best vocabulary I've come across in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children so far:

• Fissiparous: inclined to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups

• Nictating: blinking

• Goondas (Hindi): rascals, goons

• Grandiloquent: a lofty or pompous style of speech

• Sperectomy: the draining of hope (I think he made this one up)

What’s on my desk?

The wedding scrapbook! I’m definitely not a natural when it comes to the visual arts, but I’m enjoying having a project that’s not reading or writing related to soothe my brain.

If you missed my recent article on lists that will actually improve your life, then here it is again:

Recommending

From page to stage

The highlight of my April was seeing the new production of Romeo and Juliet at the Harold Pinter theatre in London. If you’ve been a subscriber for a while you’ll know I’m just over 1/3 through ‘my year with Shakespeare’; my mission to read as many plays and catch as many screen and stage adaptations as time and money will allow.

This play is utterly magnificent in every sense: it’s contemporary but true, the set is innovative without being distracting, the use of music, costume and props brings new layers to the story and Sadie Sink and Noah Jupe (of Hamnet fame) are spellbinding in the titular roles. I read the play just before and found it the most accessible of the five I’ve read so far, blending lyrical speeches with easy-to-follow and often humorous dialogue. Oh and the Mercutio was brilliant. Highly, highly recommend!

A slow-read community

I am terrible at slow reads. I either can’t get into the story because I haven’t spent enough time with it early on, or I can’t curb my enthusiasm and race ahead. I’ve done it once before with Middlemarch and I decided to try again this month with Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Luckily, we are blessed with ’s Footnotes and Tangents, which offers a 13-week slow read of the book replete with deep dive articles that double as podcasts. I’m still ahead of schedule due to some late night reading sessions, but this is a ‘come as you are’ community; you can dip in and out as it suits you. If you want to read with Footnotes and Tangents, I have several subscriptions to gift — first come first served in the comments!

Another book podcast

Yep, it’s an obsession. My latest love is One Nightstand with Charlotte Owen, which interviews celebrities about their four favourite books. It sways quite heavily American guest-wise, but there are brilliant recent interviews with Jessie Buckley (my ultimate girl crush) and Daniel Radcliffe.

Globetrotting bloggers

As much as I love travelling, I’ve also come to terms with the fact I probably never want to live anywhere other than England with its grimy pubs and drizzly walks. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m not fascinated by those who have set up shop all over the world. Allow me to introduce you to…

• who moved from the US to Ireland in the name of love and writes hilarious column-style pieces about the various grievances this has caused her.

• is, in fact, one of my best friends. So I wasn’t best pleased when she swapped living in relatively accessible Berlin for Kenya, but she’s doing very cool things with grassroots running organisations over there and writing about community.

• moved to Japan in her early twenties and has now been there for 10 years. I loved following her ‘Reading in Kyoto’ Instagram so I’m thrilled she’s here, too — her latest piece about her hair falling out when she emigrated is funny and tender.

Reading diaries

Spotlight: Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

If you need convincing that non-fiction can be just as colourful as fiction, then look no further than the Mitford family. I selected this on audio quite randomly, and my sum knowledge of the Mitford sisters up until now was ‘the one who writes the books I love,’ ‘the one who married a Nazi,’ ‘the one who was a Nazi,’ ‘the Communist one,’ and ‘the Devon aristocrat.’

These categories remain broadly true having read Hons and Rebels, the memoir of ‘the Communist one,’ but there’s both more nuance more explosive sub plots than I expected. The story of Jessica Mitford and Esmond Romily is the stuff of film — both have a bravery and inner fire that’s astonishing when you realise Esmond never even made it to his 24th birthday, and I grieved and celebrated with them as the tumultuous events unfolded.

Beginning with a vivid portrait of a childhood in sleepy Gloucestershire and ending in 1941, with Jessica in her early twenties, Hons and Rebels also brought both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War to life for me in a way that only ever seems possible in a personal account rather than a dusty history book.

Briefly noted

• Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy: I missed my morning alarm a few times due to staying up reading this one…

• The Party by Tessa Hadley: I’ve seen a few reviewers who felt underwhelmed by this, but in my opinion it’s everything a novella ought to be — subtle, surprising and leaves a taste in your mouth

Currently reading

• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (50 pages to go!)

• A Dill Pickle - short stories by Katherine Mansfield

• Writers and Lovers by Lily King

Up next

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

• The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

• NW by Zadie Smith

Of course, this ecosystem is pure survival of the fittest.

New year's resolutions fall, inevitably, by the wayside. Bucket lists — those absurd endeavours to capture all the things you want to do before you die, before you’re 30, before you’re 60 — fail to recognise the ever-changing nature of our desires. To-do lists are made every week and are condemned, barely ticked, to the graveyard with the others.

I think lists are often associated with ‘Type A’ sorts — those who are meticulously organised and possibly squeeze the fun out of every scenario by planning it to a tee — but I want to argue there’s a little more of an art form to the list. Even the lists that don’t make it serve a purpose.

Some lists are about reducing cognitive load and anxiety and making sense of the chaos. Others — the ones I’m going to share — are about adding: sparkle, pizzazz, enrichment. They show potential, rather than obligation. If I were to pick out a more practical shared theme amongst the below, it would be documenting the past to inform the future. Above all, it’s about making life easier for a future, Type B me.

Let’s begin.

1. Outfits that make me feel great

You know it, I know it. You’re standing in front of an overflowing wardrobe, but you have nothing to wear. Maybe you’re a little overtired, or ate three bowls of pasta last night. You cannot remember ever owning a decent piece of clothing and are teetering dangerously close to self-loathing.

I hate this feeling so much I decided to take a stand. Whenever a happier, healthier version of me wears something that makes me feel great — dopamine dressing, if you will — I write it down in full. That’s everything from hair accessories to shoes.

“Long sleeve leopard print top, black pinafore dress, black boots and a colourful beanie hat.”

The beauty of this log is I’ve now got enough outfits in there to cover every scenario. Packing for a three night city break and can’t remember which of my clothes go with one another? There are outfits for that. Work in an office with zero sense of temperature control? There are outfits for that. Date night? There’s an outfit for that.

Yes, this is definitely about reducing cognitive load (and spending), but it's also a reminder to myself that I’ve got style, and options.

2. Everything I’ve ever read

Call it performative, if you like, but vowing to take my reading seriously a few years ago was the best thing I ever did. Books are a core feature of my quality of life, so of course I’m going to document them.

I no longer rate books; that caused me too many headaches and too much regret. But I log each book I read and then I can look back on a month or a year and remember the favourites, the duds, the unexpected adventures.

There’s a less selfish motivation behind this one, too. If you read a lot, you know this doesn’t make it any easier when a friend asks you for a book recommendation. As soon as I’m asked this question, my brain thinks I’ve never read a book in my life. Keeping this digital journal makes it easy for me to filter by genre and recall the right books for the right people. The same goes for my Substack reading guides, of course.

I’m a StoryGraph girl, if you’re wondering (lblundell_23).

“It’s no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.”

J.R.R Tolkien

3. A culture calendar

Diaries and planners fill up fast at the turn of the new year, and this has always made me feel anxious because of the lack of room for spontaneity. I finally accepted the empty weekends were unlikely to come and, if they did, I was more likely to spend them rotting on the sofa instead of doing something I’ve always wanted to do.

So, I set up a culture calendar; a month-by-month record of all the stuff going on near me, in London or in other parts of the UK that I might be interested in. It includes shows, talks, exhibitions and more.

Again, this is not a ‘to do,’ but rather a menu, empowering future you’s choices. ‘What do you want to do today?’ ‘Oh, you know what I really want to do? Go to the Wallace and Gromit exhibition in Bristol.’ Useful for friend dates, solo artist dates and the like.

“I can make another list because the choice is mine. A list of what to do. So I won’t be listless ever again.”

Johnny Rich, The Human Script

4. Future gifts

Game changer. Until this year I’ve kept ad hoc lists of potential gifts for people around events like Christmas or our wedding, but I now keep a rolling list for special people in my life.

If I see something special in a shop or online that I just know they’ll love, I pop it into Notes on my phone to return to in the run up to their birthday or another time of year. Currently, loved ones have special editions of books, beautifully designed hairbrushes and artisan vases against their names.

This one’s definitely about spreading my admin load across the year, but it’s also just a nice thing to do.

If you can’t tell, gifting is my love language.

5. Upcoming opportunities

Similar, but more work and less play…

Grants. Short story competitions. Calls for submissions. Adapt as you will for your creative outputs, but keeping a list of these gives you options and — if you want them — deadlines.

I’ll often pick something from my list to loosely work towards, absorbing its theme, word count parameters and deadlines, and it becomes sort of irrelevant whether I actually end up submitting there. Instead, the opportunity acts as a supportive framework — scaffolding, if you will — for vague and nebulous creative projects.

If I have a story rejected by my target magazine, I’ll scan the opportunities list and see if anything else coming up would be a good fit for it.

The art of this sort of list is, essentially, about creeping up on yourself. It’s about lending a subtle hand to a future, more stubborn and defeatist you.

—> Tell me, what lists are you keeping?

More from Penny’s Worth

In March I got my first ever short story acceptance from a magazine. I was overjoyed — like, bouncing off the walls. I was finally a writer, finally one of those people who share their personal news on the Substack feed. But when the dust settled, the existential pondering began.

Did this mean I’d finally written something good? Was it as simple as producing similarly good stuff and finding the journey plain sailing from now on? Of course not, on both fronts.

What the experience made me realise is that, when you think you might have written something decent, then you probably have. I’m not an avid submitter — sometimes I just write for fun, other times I abandon ship during or after the writing of a piece for submission. But I have submitted a fair few stories over the years and some of those I knew to be decent and others I realised in hindsight were really quite bad. Of those I describe as decent, one received external validation. That does not mean the others I suspected were decent, were not in fact decent. I will stop saying decent now.

So what? So, unfortunately some external validation is often required before we start taking ourselves seriously. But going forwards I will absolutely be kinder to myself and my writing and learn to be my own judge before seeking approval at the altar of literary magz. Because it’s needle in a haystack stuff; it’s about compatibility, timing and a host of less predictable factors.

This edition is full of meandering murmurations, as per usual, but there’s a writing theme throughout and I hope you find some nuggets to take away into your own creative practices.

But first, a little housekeeping if you’ll allow me. There’s a good chance you’re new here so I want to clarify that I write all sorts of nonsense alongside this newsletter, which I roughly divide into two camps: Lit with Lyds (reading guides and deep dives) and Penny’s Worth (my attempt to make sense of all the rest). Please do toggle your preferred sections on/off in the settings so you don’t end up having to read about adult acne when you came for the seasonal reading lists.

Now, let’s begin.

All the times Anne of Green Gables spoke to me this month:

“There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If it was just one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.”

“We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.”

“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”

Word of the month

Tintinnabulation: the ringing or sound of bells (noun).

What’s on my desk?

A glorious set of 100 collectible Studio Ghibli postcards from one of my favourite stores, Scripted in Oxford, and a little book of 2900 stickers I got for a criminally low price in Sostrene Grene. Reading The Correspondent has done it’s work; I’m sending more analogue messages to my friends.

Loving:

Project Gutenberg. I know this is the worst kept secret in the reading community, but I’ve only really tapped into this goldmine recently. I’ve started tutoring a boy in year eight and needed to reread Animal Farm within 24 hours; PG delivered.

Oh and if you don’t know, it’s an extensive online library of full classic texts where the copyright has expired or gone unclaimed.

Loathing:

Collagen ADs. How can there be so many types? How can you all be rated #1 in the UK? What if I LIKE my fine lines?

Recommending

Arvon masterclasses

The Arvon sometimes feels like hallowed halls to the mere budding writer, with its famous residential courses and uber-successful alumni, but it's actually an extremely friendly and accessible organisation. I registered for their online masterclass in fiction with Jill Dawson, subtitled: Have you got a novel in you? Jill was magnificent. She didn’t use a single slide, she just spoke to us like a proper human about the practicalities of writing and taking ourselves seriously. I settled in at 7pm with a gin and tonic and half an Easter egg and came away at 9pm with reams of notes, a new sense of creative mindfulness and the soothed feeling that comes from being part of a community — even if only for two hours. See this month’s reading spotlight for my thoughts on Jill’s new novel, Pixie.

A comforting culture pod

If you find the podverse a little overwhelming, cosy audio choices that are virtually impossible to turn into 16:9 soundbites might be the tonic you need. Recently I’ve latched onto In Our Time (Culture) from BBC Radio 4, which has episodes on an astonishing range of topics but with a heavy focus on literature. I’ve listened to an episode on Little Women and have ones on other classics and various elements of Shakespeare lined up. Melvyn Cragg is dour and funny and unintentionally soothing.

Gracious debate on the role of fiction

I’m currently reading Dead and Alive, Zadie Smith’s latest essay collection, and am greatly enjoying it; she’s a class act. Several have appealed, but the one that’s lodged itself into my brain and refuses to leave is ‘In Defence of Fiction.’ If you’ve not come across this masterpiece yet, which tackles the question of the relevance of novels today and what we’re entitled to write about with remarkable intelligence and grace, then you can read the original on the New York Review of Books.

“The old - and never especially helpful - adage, write what you know, has morphed into something more like a threat: Stay in your lane. This principle permits the category of fiction, but really only to the extent that we acknowledge and confess that personal experience is inviolate and non-transferable. It concedes that personal experience may be displayed, very carefully, to the enemy, but insists it can never truly be shared by them.”

In Defence of Fiction, Zadie Smith

Substack gems

• How to Create Characters That Emotionally Resonate from

• Should an aspiring novelist do a Creative Writing MA? from

• This is how you write (Part 2) from

Reading diaries

Missed by Spring reading guide? Here it is again.

In the spotlight: Pixie by Jill Dawson

It’s funny how your relationship with a book evolves over the course of the different touch points you have with it.

I chose Pixie purely based on its stunning cover art. I then realised it touches on Obeah — Caribbean witchcraft — and the origins of the Tarot — two areas of personal interest for me.

I learnt it’s based on the life of a real woman living and working in the early 20th century: Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith.

Finally I realised I was attending a masterclass via Arvon with its author, Jill Dawson, just as I was starting to read.

Now, I find it hard to articulate how I felt about the novel, perhaps because of all those touchpoints clouding my judgement.

What did I love? The close first person narrative and wonderfully unique voice Dawson has given to a historical figure. The subject matter itself is rich, of course — “the most famous occult artist you’ve never heard of.” Pixie’s life story is fascinating on many levels and Dawson traces a compelling Bildungsroman as she grapples with her complex and often opaque identity, with traces of Obeah and other spiritualist practices set alongside lesbian love and Bloomsbury style social circles.

The pacing didn’t always agree with me, as some milestones in Pixie’s life were skipped over and others dwelt on in great detail; the challenge, I suppose, with fictionalising a real life.

Briefly noted

• Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare: this was the first of the plays in my year with Shakespeare that made me feel like I desperately needed to see a performance to make sense of it. In lieu of a theatre production, I watched the 1993 screen adaptation featuring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. It didn’t resolve all the plot holes, but they brought Beatrice and Benedikt to life beautifully.

• Reading Lessons by Carol Atherton: Atherton’s book should be required reading for anyone interested in the role of English in the curriculum and the worrying decline in reading in teenagers. Mapping the journey we take at school through the books we read, from An Inspector Calls to Macbeth, Atherton recalls the conversations she’s had with her students about their characters and themes — helping them make sense of their own messy adolescence. I loved it.

• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome: I woke my partner up within the first chapter of starting this. It’s truly laugh-out-loud funny, even if there’s next to no plot and it reads like a meandering diary entry.

• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy M. Montgomery: Perfection on a plate; I don’t know what took me so long. I wish to move to Avonlea.

Currently reading

• Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith

• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Up next

• The Tempest by William Shakespeare

• Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConnaghy

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

However, I finished last spring somewhat reconciled to the season, and this year I’m ready to embrace it from the off. I can admit, now, that it’s a time of year ripe with opportunity and hope.

A manual I used to get me through last year, which delivered in spades, brings me to my first recommendation. Spring by Michael Morpurgo is part memoir, part almanac, tracing the season as it evolves through the lens of life on his Dartmoor farm. It’s so beautifully written and makes for a gorgeous gift.

As always, this deeply seasonal reader has sorted her recommendations according to the different associations this season carries and then left a big old index of 30 books at the end of the post to keep you going until summer.

Please share your own recommendations for spring reads in the comments!

Read more

This time last year I wrote about my complicated relationship with spring, and while the positives and drawbacks I describe in that piece remain true in my mind, I’m pleased to report I'm looking forward to the blustery season with its added daylight hours and teeming wildlife much more this year.

Over the madness of the past couple of months, I’ve noticed something I’ll call the paradox of productivity. By that I mean that we simply can’t plan for productive periods in our creative lives. Such a disrupted routine, revolving around an enormous milestone, ought to have been a completely fallow period creatively. Not so: I spent the days around my wedding and the week of my honeymoon hastily jotting down the ideas that were clamouring for my attention. In fact, the break with routine seemed to be fuelling this influx.

And yet, now I’m back to my schedule of allocating an hour or so before and after my working day for writing, I’m finding it much harder to make breakthroughs.

I’m sure there’s all sorts of psychology behind this, but my main takeaway is we are not fully in charge of our creative lives; we need to be open to receiving and transmitting even when we thought we were in a no-signal zone, and accept with a weary sigh when it’s just not happening — even when all the conditions are right.

Word of the month

Vernalagnia: otherwise known as spring fever, this word describes the romantic fever brought on by the onset of spring.

What’s on my desk?

Tulips! For a short time, anyway, before my cats tried to eat them. I appreciate this is a privileged problem, but many of my favourite flowers are toxic to cats, including the spring stalwarts tulips and daffodils. I’m putting out a plea for good alternatives, please. You might say — pop them somewhere out of the way, and surely they won’t eat them. Reader: my cats will eat them.

Loving:

Handwritten post! Yes, there’s a lot of admin involved in a wedding, but a massive upshot has been the many heartfelt missives exchanged with loved ones. I’ve been slotting carefully selected digital camera shots into thank you cards, while receiving very sweet post myself from all over the country.

The effort! The smiles! The lifeline a postcard or little parcel brings amidst an onslaught of bills! Funnily enough, I’ve just started The Correspondent by Virginia Evans and Sybil Van Antwerp definitely gets it. If you want to level up your personal stationary stack, take a look at my local: Wildflower Illustration.

Loathing:

It’s one of my resolutions this year to be part of more live audiences, but the COST of concert and theatre tickets is utterly insane. I refrained from following that with ‘these days’ as I was born in 1998, after all. But seriously, send me your (legal) tips and tricks for catching a London show at a decent price.

Recommending

A print magazine for female writers

At the beginning of this year, I took out a subscription to Mslexia on a whim. I’m so glad I did! As well as publishing original pieces of short fiction and poetry, Mslexia is packed with writing tips, courses and competitions. It’s a comforting and inspiring read, printed on lovely paper that’s perfect for reading in bed on Sunday mornings.

Yoga for writers

As part of my ongoing rejection of gyms and like establishments, I’ve recently returned to an old faithful in Yoga with Adriene. Adriene is an extremely zen and not-at-all annoying instructor operating out of YouTube and often accompanied by her gorgeous dog Benji. What I realised this time around is she has special classes for writers and creatives. The perfect midday break to get the creative juices flowing and do something about that neck pain.

An old but gold adaptation

On a recent Saturday evening I persuaded my husband (!!!) into watching the 2015 adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd. It didn’t disappoint! The pastoral settings were exquisite and Bathsheba, Oak and Boldwood were all beautifully characterised. I’d always seen Troy as a blonde somehow, but he was terrifically nasty. My husband cheered at the climax of the Christmas party scene, he was that despicable.

Substack gems

• Author and Literature PhD student has joined Substack and is posting the most astonishing deep-dive guides to literary periods and plenty more besides.

• Continuing my theme of thoughtful giving and receiving, I enjoyed this piece by on unique and genuinely helpful gifts for hosts.

• I’ve been dipping back into copy work, the easiest way to hone your writing craft, inspired by ’s recent article on the practice.

• I can finally admit I have no idea what literary fiction really is, but I’m a little closer thanks to ’s recent dissemination of the term.

Reading diaries

In the spotlight: A Family Matter by Claire Lynch

As I continue trying to balance the many thousands of old books I’ve never read with newly-published titles, I picked up this slim volume a few weeks back. Wow. A Family Matter broke my heart slowly and stealthily.

The author’s note at the end discloses the statistic that lesbian mothers lost custody of their children in 90% of UK divorce cases during the 1980s. Lynch takes this chilling fact and brings it to life in a tender and original tale of two adults doing what they think is right within a deeply flawed society — and how those decisions shape the child caught between them.

The prose is deceptively sparse, as this becomes such a page turner I finished it in two sittings and am yet to stop thinking about it. A Family Matter just became the first debut to win the Nero prize in its history, and rightfully so.

Briefly noted

I finally finished The Lord of the Rings! Over the course of just over a year, I’ve read from The Hobbit through to The Return of the King, and what a journey it’s been. The Fellowship remains my favourite of the books and films. I’m still dubious about Frodo, and I still worship the ground Samwise Gamgee walks on.

In other news, a niche theme has emerged in my reading: Irish Rachels. Is this a nineties thing? Were they all called Rachel? The Rachel Incident and Rachel’s Holiday were both enjoyable reads, but reading them so close together meant I kept confusing the one who’d left Ireland for New York with the one who left Ireland for London.

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Goodness me, a 40-page description of purgatory and hell nearly finished me off. Not an enjoyable story, but then again it contains some of the most beautiful prose passages I have ever read.

• The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory: I’ll read anything Gregory writes. This one is a multi-perspective from Mary Queen of Scots, her guard / friend / lover the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick.

• The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donaghue: Really excellent. Full of heart, unexpected twists and wry humour.

• Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes: Not my thing, per se, but a solid dark comedy with an unreliable narrator. Is anyone watching The Walsh Sisters?

• Atonement by Ian McEwan: I’m not sure how I feel. I couldn’t say I enjoyed it, but I did admire it.

• I Feel Bad About my Neck by Nora Ephron: My highlights were the titular essay and On Rapture.

• A Brief History of English Literature: Everything an overview should offer. Clear, concise and compelling. Genuinely improved my understanding of the macro about one thousand fold.

Currently reading

• Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

• Reading Lessons by Carol Atherton

Up next

• Pixie by Jill Dawson

• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

• NW by Zadie Smith

‘I love my friends’ is nothing new, of course, but I want to write about it anyway. If I were to narrow down the premise of this post somewhat, I’d say it’s the idea that our need for meaningful friendships only gets stronger as we grow older and seemingly more independent from them.

Similarly, the purpose religion serves in people’s lives has made increasing sense to me the further into adulthood I venture. I identify as agnostic at best, but am an increasingly spiritual person. When life becomes more confronting, when injustices and tragedies lead us towards despair, it’s our belief in and connection to something greater that pulls us through. So, in the absence of a church, where do I go in my darkest hours?

I worship at the altar of the sisterhood.

Outside of religious teaching, faith is often defined along the lines of: “Great trust or confidence in something or someone.” It’s a given that I feel this way towards my husband, or I’d never have married him. He’s just one man, however, even if it sometimes feels he has the capacity of many more. Regardless, you need more emotional connections in life than the bond you have with your romantic partner. Without the three women who preceded me down the aisle on 12 February 2026, I doubt I’d even have found the love of my marriage in the first place.

And yet, it was not always this way. Growing up, I’d watch portrayals of female friendship in pop culture and think: I will never have what Monica and Rachel or Samantha and Carrie have.

Whenever anyone mentions year nine, I flinch. Year nine is (and I will die on this hill) one of the worst times of a child’s life – especially a girl’s. For my US readers, that’s around age 14. Everything is about appearances. Boys break your heart and girls even more so. Social media is the engine that fuels these repeated heartbreaks and I’m a whole-hearted advocate for the ban until age 16. On the surface, I had lots of friends in year nine, and yet only three of those were invited to my wedding. Most fell by the wayside naturally, while others ended with fireworks or simply tears.

Your friendship group is whittled down over time, making space for the occasional new entrant and generally adapting to a quality over quantity approach. It’s survival of the fittest, in a way you only come to appreciate after the tough break ups.

My bridesmaids date from fairly late in my life — university — and I’m grateful for that. By that age my pre-frontal cortex was getting bashed into shape and I was starting to realise who I wanted to be. That meant less awkward conversations when you realise you have a different set of values or simply don’t enjoy each other’s company any more, but it was also early enough that we shared plenty of formative events together.

Back in October, these three people came together for my hen do in Amsterdam. We bonded over ill-advised cigarettes and espresso martinis, ruminating and over-sharing until we wept and hugged and dissolved in fits of giggles on the drizzly pavements of the city. Over dinner, we encouraged our respective whims to travel forever, to make career changes, to move to another city, to start our own businesses. In each other’s company, everything felt possible in a way that transcends the restraints of ordinary society.

At that time, one of us was due to be married, another was in a long-term relationship and two were firmly single and on the prowl. Just a few days after the trip, though, that long-term relationship unexpectedly dissolved. All of us, after our shared escapades of the previous weekend, felt the shockwaves of her heartbreak like it was our own. That’s the sisterhood in action.

When the macro scene is so grimly littered with violence against women, the sisterhood is — more so than ever — an act of faith. It’s there in our refusal to leave another member alone in the club or in our insistence on Find My Friends for a first date. Unfortunately it’s been made clear on numerous occasions that we cannot rely on the appropriate authorities to keep us safe, so instead we have faith in one another.

But this invisible spider’s web connecting us pervades the everyday, too. It’s there in the compliments paid in girls’ bathrooms every day by complete strangers who don’t have to, but want to.

It’s there in the sad smiles I exchange with my nail technician when she talks about her baby daughter back in Vietnam, while she grinds day in, day out to build a future for her.

We have a tendency to trivialise the sisterhood, with its girl dinners, Aperol spritzes and many, many voice notes. Yet, while we lean into silly trends and stereotypes, the topics that bond us together grow ever heavier; in fact, trivia and trauma go hand in hand. In my closest circles we’ve dealt with serious illnesses in parents, lost parents, eating disorders, heartbreak, redundancies and plenty more besides.

Over the Caesar salad, fries and sauvignon blanc, something sustaining, life-affirming and magical is being built. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The sisterhood: a reading list

Female friendship is often on the sidelines of the novels we read; a sub plot at best, rather than centre stage. Even in iconic teenage reads like Angus Thongs, friends are merely a vehicle for discussing the real deal: boys. Ferrante is perhaps the most obvious listing with her paean to a childhood in Naples, but the below list also spans literal sisters, more tenuous friendships and non-fiction works.

• Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

• Darling by India Knight

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

• Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day

• Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

• Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

That’s very much a starter for ten. What would you add?

By the time you read it, however, I will be winging my way across the Atlantic as a legally married woman. I am deeply looking forward to eight hours on a plane without updates on the Epstein files — and my honeymoon, of course.

It’s safe to say, then, that this newsletter nearly didn’t come to be. I’ve had a few things on my plate. However, in the frozen wasteland that is January I also had a lot of time to sit tight and absorb culture in all its restorative forms, and there were simply too many things I want to share with you that couldn’t wait until March.

So it’s been an unusual start to the year for me, but I’m determined to do January differently going forwards. I’ve decided the whole New Year mindset is quite frankly insane, and we’d do better to extend the festivities until February. I don’t mean I’m going to keep an inflatable Father Christmas outside my house until spring, but I do believe we’ve lost our way by making such a sharp left turn away from joy as soon as the calendar flips over.

We can learn a lot from the hygge concept popularised by Scandinavian communities, who live in almost complete darkness during the winter months, but also by looking back further in the history books. What happened to twelfth night revelries, or the ancient British folk festival, Wassail, traditionally held in January to bless apple orchards, thus ensuring a healthy harvest and warding off evil spirits?

I learnt about that last one in ’s January Notebook and came away with plenty more food for thought besides. Going forward, I’m leaning into year beginnings that involve lots of light, laughter and gentle goal-setting.

Word of the month

Not a word, but rather a lexicon love. I recently heard Caroline O’Donaghue talk about the notion of ‘a real shepherd’s pie of a book.’ She was, at the time, sat in a pub reading a novel while eating a shepherd’s pie. The idea is that the book is so good you can only consume something that’s viable to eat one-handed while you’re reading.

Loving: Using M.A.S.H as a writing prompt. Sorry if you have no recollection of playing this as a teenager, but it was the pinnacle of entertainment and you should immediately Google it. I recently came out of the game with the following to kickstart some flash fiction:

• Object: My favourite coat

• Obligation: To keep smiling

• Secret: Preferring one cat to the other

• Desire: Inertia

Loathing: Umm, all the rain? Usually I’m a fan, but I feel slightly damp all the time.

Recommending

• on the 10 best novels she read in 10 years as a literary editor.

• on how to find the good stuff on Vinted.

• taking down the book snobs.

• By Thursday’s Child: obsessed with this illustrator’s quirky prints and cap collection inspired by Lily Allen’s West End Girl.

Film: Hamnet

There is, of course, an enormous amount of discourse around this film. I sobbed and sobbed, at both the book and the film, but don’t buy into the criticism that it’s mere ‘grief porn.’ It’s hard to watch and I wouldn’t have got through it without a large gin and tonic, but I think that’s because it unflinchingly actualises something we never dare to look directly at if we haven’t experienced it ourselves: the possibility of losing a child or close family member. My main comment on Hamnet is the Casting Director deserves their own Oscar. I came away with a huge crush on Jessie Buckley (sorry Paul), and utter astonishment at the skill of the child actors who were so crucial to the storytelling. Back to Jessie: brave, soul-destroying yet life-affirming, imperfect perfection. No notes.

Podcast: Bookshelfie — The Women’s Prize podcast

This new (to me) podcast has a wonderfully simple premise: female guests share the five books by female authors that have shaped their lives. Its Desert Island Discs but with the emphasis, thankfully, on the books. I’ve only listened to two episodes so far and have already been touched by the refreshing takes aired. Exhibit A: the great :

“Sometimes readers — usually male readers — say ‘so much is happening in the world, I want to follow it, so I read about technology, finance, economics, politics… but I don’t read fiction, my wife reads fiction.’ As if it’s a woman’s domain. And I feel sad when I hear such things, because i think we live in a world where every one of us needs to connect with our emotional intelligence — I don’t know a single person who doesn’t need to do that. But also I think in order to understand the world better we need fiction; fiction gives us the emotional intelligence and empathy we need to make sense of the world.”

Reading diaries

In the spotlight: The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

Ok I know we’re only 1.5 months into 2026, but this is the one to beat this year for me. The Land in Winter is set during the big freeze of 1962-3 — one of the coldest on record in the UK. Miller uses these extreme circumstances to create a dramatic backdrop to what may otherwise seem (at first glance, anyway), fairly ordinary lives.

The novel is concerned with two couples: Farmer Bill and his wife Rita, and Doctor Eric and his wife Irene. There’s drama of the Emmerdale sort unfolding in this rural setting — affairs, medical emergencies, car crashes — but it’s all firmly within the realm of possibility. In fact, what I love most about Miller’s storytelling is the sheer credibility (and that’s coming from a fantasy fan).

The sixties details are wonderful; the space race, the bleak sceptre of war and the growing emancipation of women are all prevalent in a way that doesn’t feel shoe-horned in. I’ve seen this book described as slow paced and reflective, ‘glacial’ according to one punny Guardian critic. But I found myself unable to put it down, so invested was I in the lives of these heartbreakingly ordinary, hopeful and fearful characters.

My year with Shakespeare

2026 is my year with Shakespeare — a deep dive into the written plays, catching as many performances on screen or in the theatre as I can, and exploring retellings and biographies of the Bard.

Following Hamlet, my most recent adventure was The Winter’s Tale and I loved it. It wasn’t so much the story itself I adored, though jealousy has to be one of the most timeless plot drivers, but the characters. Specifically, the female characters. Hermione, Paulina, Perdita! Wonderful, strong-willed, individual women. Some of Paulina’s speeches had me gasping, as well as that love declaration from the amorous Florizel. It’s going in my spring, rather than winter, reading guide because of all the wonderful descriptions of pastoral Bohemia.

So that’s one of the great run of tragedies and one of the later Romantic comedies ticked off… where to next? A straight up comedy for spring, methinks, with Much Ado About Nothing.

Briefly noted

I’ve had such a stonking start to the year on the reading front that none of these really deserve to be briefly noted, but alas such are the constraints of time and space. Go, read them all!

• The Full Moon Coffee Shop by x. My January in Japan book of choice. Talking cats, astrology, gentle course-correction. Comforting perfection. Very little plot, lots of vibes.

• His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. Read them as a child, I think, and could remember little more than the armoured bears. Very scary for children’s books. The Subtle Knife is the best one and you can’t persuade me otherwise. Ruth Wilson’s audiobook narration is what bedtime story dreams are made of, if it weren’t so full of horrors.

• Hamnet by Maddie O’Farrell. Sensual, earthy, breathless. I loved the way O’Farrell creates and bravely holds suspense in the opening chapters. Perhaps a tad too obviously ‘literary’ in places for me.

• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. My first ever Hardy and I definitely want to unpack this more. WHAT A STORY?! Bathsheba is definitely going down as one of my favourite heroines of classic literature.

• The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donaghue. So warm and fizzy, like I knew any novel of Caroline’s would be. A girl and her gay best friend, coming of age the hard way in recession-stricken Cork.

Currently reading

• Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey

Up next

What’s in my honeymoon suitcase? I’ve opted to take two chunky secondhand paperbacks that have been taking up space on my shelves and look like they’re longing to be devoured and covered in suncream: Atonement and Rachel’s Holiday. Wells, on other hand, is a rather smart Penguin Archive I’m hoping to read in one sitting on the plane.

• Atonement by Ian McEwan

• Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keynes

• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

That’s a wrap. See you on the other side!

Little Women is as much the story of Jo March as Friends is the story of Rachel Green. Jo is our tempestuous heroine, forced to abide by social conventions (to a degree), while pursuing dreams of literary stardom. As a young girl reading Little Women for the first time, it was Jo I wanted a poster of on my wall. After all, Substack is full of Jo March’s.

However, on rereading the classic novel for the third or fourth time, I found my attention drawn to a different sister: Amy. Of course, it takes just the one read to see that all works out very well for Amy in the end, but what I hadn’t given credit to in previous readings is the majestic arc of this character in all its subtle beauty.

While I’m familiar with Little Women screen adaptations, I deliberately didn’t watch any while writing this essay in the knowledge that Elizabeth Taylor and Florence Pugh would quickly remould my perception of Amy. I want to focus on the page, and the little Easter eggs — or pickled limes — that Alcott leaves out to chart the rise of who I believe to be her favourite Little Woman.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Linguistic faux pas

Little Amy March is the ultimate youngest sibling. Though she’s doted on by both parents, the airs and graces she adopts beyond her years and above her station make her their greatest source of consternation, too. She gets away with numerous transgressions and is something of a mentee for eldest sister Meg. But, while Jo is more commonly associated with humour, Amy is in fact a key source of light relief in a novel that might otherwise feel quite serious — didactic, even.

While still a child, Amy’s greatest preoccupation is her nose — a trivial concern, certainly, but sadly reflective of the way many of us learn to critique ourselves as young women. Amy does not catastrophise; she acknowledges she’s very beautiful in many ways but, alas, not in the nose department.

“If anybody had asked Amy what the greatest trial of her life was, she would have answered at once, ‘My nose.’ When she was a baby, Jo had accidentally dropped her into the coal-hod, and Amy insisted that the fall had ruined her nose forever. It was not big, nor red, like poor ‘Petrea’s’; it was only rather flat, and all the pinching in the world could not give it an aristocratic point.”

She is teased mercilessly by Jo for her improper use of sophisticated words, whether by calling Aunt March ‘a perfect samphire’ when she meant vampire or Laurie a Cyclops when she was shooting for Centaur. But Amy shakes off the teasing and admonishments of her sisters off like water off a ducks’ back, with her youngest child status also helping her become a resilient and determined little woman — as we will see.

“‘That boy is a perfect cyclops, isn’t he?’ said Amy, one day, as Laurie clattered by on horseback, with a flourish of his whip as he passed.

‘Oh my goodness! That little goose means a centaur, and she called him a Cyclops,’ exclaimed Jo, with a burst of laughter.’”

Pickled limes

Something else that makes Amy intensely relatable is the peer pressure she feels to live up to the social norms established by her school mates. This desire to fit in stays with her into womanhood, though tempered by perspective over time. The pickled limes episode, where Amy begs pocket money from her older sister to buy some of the favoured treats and hand them out to her friends, only to be brutally punished by her school teacher, is perhaps the most illustrative example of this.

Amy is subject to serious cruelty in this scene, from some of the girls in her class as well as her teacher, but resolves to bear the humiliation stoically. She accepts her rapping on the wrist and stands before the class with her little chin raised in dignity. This early chapter makes clear we’re dealing with no ordinary little girl in Amy March, but one who is committed to grace under even the most trying circumstances.

“But Amy had not forgotten Miss Snow’s cutting remarks about ‘some persons whose noses are too flat to smell other people’s limes, and stuck-up people, who were not too proud to ask for them’; and she instantly crushed ‘that Snow girl’s’ hopes by the withering telegram, ‘You needn’t be so polite all of a sudden, for you don’t get any.”

There is outrage, certainly, and disdain for those who have wronged her, but Amy does not throw her toys out of the pram or make a scene, but rather seeks solace and comfort in her family. It’s in her home, amongst her people, that Amy feels comfortable in her own flawed skin. Beyond the Marchs’ four walls is where she stretches and remoulds herself to suit her surroundings, which ends up making her the most esteemed sister by society at large.

The unforgivable crime

Except Amy does throw her toys out the pram once, with very severe consequences.

The burning of Jo’s manuscript is one of those literary moments that’s seared into your memory forever. The audacity! The bare-faced bitchiness! The utter horror! And the fact it results merely from Jo refusing to take Amy along to a play because she’s too young makes the reader feel as though we’re back at square one with the girl — she really is irrational and dislikeable, surely.

I’m intrigued by Alcott’s decision, here, to pit two sisters against one another so brutally. As our author was also one of several girls, I can only assume it’s a deliberate example of quite how bad things can get between sisters without an irreconcilable rift resulting.

I can’t be sure of your moral compass, but I do know I did things as a child, the guilt and wider fall-out from which made me think I ought to turn myself into the police. Trite as it may sound, these are the incidents that batter our characters into shape; doing wrong to others is just as formative as being wronged yourself. We see some of this in Jo, too, with her fiery temper, and perhaps Meg with her materialistic longings, but it’s most extreme in Amy.

By including this rather shocking incident in a cosy book for young ladies, Alcott lays the critical foundations for Amy’s unstoppable rise.

Salad and ice cream

Amy’s back on the straight and narrow, and persuades Mother March to let her invite some friends over and use their own and the neighbour’s wagon to host a day of lunching and painting — the 19th century equivalent of ‘Prosecco and Paint-a-Pot,’ if you will.

Alas, after Amy sends the entire family into a tailspin of preparations and is herself inconsolable with nerves ahead of the day, just one girl turns up for the occasion. It’s a tale as old as time for tweens and teens; that crushing disappointment of realising your friendships are more tenuous and fickle than you thought and — in Amy’s case — unable to surmount class barriers.

This chapter gives us the second example of Amy weathering considerable humiliation with fortitude and grace, as she dutifully ferries her one companion about and sits her down to a luncheon fit for 10. It also gives rise to one of my favourite scenes of March family dynamics, whereby they are forced to eat the remains of Amy’s lunch for days after the event and the eternally mild-tempered Mr March turns it into a lesson on the history of salad.

“A warning look from her mother checked any further remarks, and the whole family ate in heroic silence, till Mr March mildly observed, ‘Salad was one of the favourites dishes of the ancients, and Evelyn’ - here a general explosion of laughter cut short the ‘history of sallets,’ to the great surprise of the learned gentleman.”

My favourite thing about Amy as a character is her endless reserves of optimism. Despite holding herself, others and the world to a very high standard — ripe for frequent disappointment — she is also the most adept at picking herself up and brushing herself off after a setback. It’s the unlikely stoicism of this angelic young lady that makes her so fascinating.

Talent vs genius

All the girls have their hobbies and passions: Beth her music and her beloved cats, Jo her novels and outdoorsy spirit, Meg her pleasure in dress-making and home-making. Amy’s passion is for art, and this manifests itself in various craft experiments in her younger years like making mud people and trying her hand at charcoal drawings.

Here, too, she is both an optimist and a realist, seeming wise beyond her years when she eventually proclaims that she is no genius, but is talented at many things and that still makes her worthy and accomplished. I love this about her; that she doesn’t throw down her paintbrush in fury that she’ll never match the old masters she witnesses in Rome, but instead learns both that she still has something to contribute to society and that she herself gains something meaningful from her creativity. That lesson is more resonant today than ever before.

“If ‘genius is eternal patience,’ as Michael Angelo affirms, Amy certainly had some claim to the divine attribute, for she persevered in spite of all obstacles, failures, and discouragements, firmly believing that in time she should do something worthy to be called ‘high art.’ She was learning, doing, and enjoying other things, meanwhile, for she had resolved to be an attractive and accomplished woman, even if she never became a great artist.”

The socialite

While art continues to be her guiding light, Amy never loses sight of real-world opportunities and constraints. She seems to be born with an innate worldliness which is all the more surprising given her parentage, with Aunt March telling Meg – “Your parents, my dear, have no more worldly wisdom than a pair of babies.”

This virtue, or vice, depending how you see it, is best illuminated through Amy’s interactions with Jo. The two sisters clash more often than any of the others due to their markedly different outlooks and demeanours, and this is brought to light brilliantly in the chapter ‘Calls.’ While Jo finds the social convention of calling on one’s neighbours archaic and boring, Amy insists that it’s necessary for them to get on in the world.

“Women should learn to be agreeable, particularly poor ones; for they have no other way of repaying the kindnesses they receive. If you’d remember that, and practise it, you’d be better liked than I am, because there is more of you.”

The above quote illustrates not only that Amy is willing to own, but not be diminished by, their poverty, but also that she’s aware of her own personal limitations vs those of her sisters. Jo voices the peculiarly advanced attitude of Amy for a girl of her age when she says, “we can’t agree… for you belong to the old set, and I to the new; you will get on the best, but I shall have the liveliest time of it.”

Nonetheless, Jo — as well as Laurie and the rest of the Marchs — is fiercely loyal to Amy and disgusted by mistreatment of her by anyone other than herself (another wonderfully realistic portrayal of sisterhood from Alcott). When Amy volunteers at the local art fair and falls victim once again to the petty nastiness of teenage girls, losing her prominent position for selling her wares, the rest of the extended family rally energetically to the cause. Showing a marked evolution from pickled limes gate, Amy not only does not cause a scene in response but is also actively gracious toward the other girls.

The muse

We discover just how much Amy has grown as a person, shaped and chiselled into someone stronger and more admirable, through Laurie’s eyes. Thanks to her gifts of tact and elegance, it’s she that her aunts choose to take abroad — much to Jo’s dismay.

When the pair meet in Nice, both on some version of The Grand Tour, it’s clear that while Amy has flourished the young man has floundered. He is moping, aimless and sulking after Jo’s rejection, and Amy responds with the force of her entire family’s admonishments, though they are across the sea.

She persuades Laurie to pull up his socks and set his mind to something — in other words, to stop behaving like a spoilt child and instead to appreciate all the opportunities he has. This is youngest sibling Amy in a new role, that of the mentor, and it takes the reader by surprise as much as it does Laurie. It also makes him fall in love with her.

Slowly but surely, amidst the sun-baked streets and dappled groves of Nice, Laurie finds the inspiration he’s been looking for — not in his surroundings, but in his companion.

“The phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before his mind’s eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies and blue ribbons. He did not give the complaisant wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine, and grew quite fond of her, as well as he might, - for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated any mortal woman.”

I love the subtly shifting tone of these passages, as Amy truly morphs into a little woman and the nature of her and Laurie’s relationship begins to evolve. It’s by no means a mere holiday romance, either, with tragic news from home brings the pair closer together in grief as well as merry-making.

The happy ending

“Mrs March and her husband smiled and nodded at each other with happy faces, — for they saw that their youngest had done well, not only in worldly things, but the better wealth of love, confidence, and happiness. For Amy’s face was full of the soft brightness which betokens a peaceful heart, her voice had a new tenderness in it, and the cool, prim carriage was changed to a gentle dignity, both womanly and winning.”

The happy couple are back on solid ground and the news must be broken to Jo and extended to the wider family. The reader shares their anxiety in leaving a blissful bubble for the interpersonal dynamics of real life, but no March can look upon them for long before realising it was always meant to be.

It’s in the final chapters of Little Women that Amy’s rise meets its apex. While one sister struggles with the chaos of raising children on little means and another is only just realising the object of her heart’s desire, Amy has hit the jackpot — and then some.

She has ‘married well,’ as she always said she must, but not to any old aristocrat; to the man who has been an extension of their family for many years. She will have money, and be able to stay close to home — the embodiment of the ‘castles in the air’ the girls long for throughout the book.

It’s a relief to find Amy isn’t too serious for her signature one-liners, though, as she assures Laurie she didn’t marry him for money but rather for his nose.

The sheer contentment of the final chapter, Harvest, is tempered slightly by the revelation that Amy’s child — named Beth — is not in good health and a cause of concern for her mother, grandmother and aunts.

The decision to include this deeply human struggle in our last vision of Amy is, I believe, Alcott’s way of telling us she will still face trials, like everyone else, but she is now possessed of the fortitude and grace to weather the storms to come.

“Trifles that have borne their part

In girlish hopes, and fears, and shames.

The record of a maiden heart,

Now learning fairer, truer spells.

There is an important moment which WILL happen (it just depends how soon), where mud will streak through the snow or an ink blot will smear the notebook, and initial panic gives way to a sort of relief. The worst has happened and it’s not that bad; it’s just a new year after all.

I’m a paid-up member of the resolutions club — I am, at the fibre of my being, a planner and a goal-setter. But I’m also aware this is a double-edged sword, which is why I set resolutions in a very particular way this year — one that prioritises joy and stops making me the problem. You can read them here.

I skipped into work on Monday as peppy as it gets, only to be felled by the largest and most time-pressurised task known to man landing on my desk. I had to dig very deep, but I just about held onto my resolution to romanticise being a frazzled English woman á la Bridget or Iris.

We’ve got a long way to go in 2026, so let’s buckle up and enjoy the ride (read: medicate with books).

Word of the month

Apricity: the warmth of the sun on a cold winter’s day.

Loving and loathing

Loving: Vinted. Literally why have I ever bought anything new in all my live-long days? Ok, I'll draw the line at underwear. Especially delighted to see as their new books ambassador; a fabulous pairing.

Loathing: ‘Ins and outs’ — I get the premise, but life is not a trend. Also, apparently ‘not texting back’ is ‘out’ and I’m not falling for that propaganda; not texting people back is a survival strategy.

Recommending

If December was the month of gift-guides on Substack, then January is the month of resolution-setting. I’ve deeply enjoyed a few pieces, but especially sharing her approach to the Era’s Method. What I love about it is she approaches her planning in three-month chunks, identifying the fact that one year can contain multitudes and a single attitude, approach or to-do list is unlikely to sustain you for the duration. This is especially true of my 2026, which on paper looks like three different lifetimes.

While on the subject of pressure, I was grateful for ’s article on eating disorders. One of the very worst things about getting older has been realising quite how many eating disorders — in all their different, nuanced manifestations — surround me. What makes this so much more difficult is that we have no acceptable language through which to discuss it, even if it's harming loved ones. This piece weaves personal experiences with broader observations, and I was so glad someone was brave enough to write about it.

Finally, I was thrilled to access Adam Kirsch’s article, ‘Reading Is a Vice’ in The Atlantic via a gift link I stumbled across on Instagram. Truly, those are the thrills I’m seeking this year.

The article makes an argument I wish I’d thought of myself: pointing out the moral and democratic duty to read is just about the worst way to get young people reading — instead, we should sell it for what it is: an affliction, antisocial, worldview-warping: in other words, a vice!!!

“Telling someone to love literature because reading is good for society is like telling someone to believe in God because religion is good for society. It's a utilitarian argument for what should be a personal passion.”

Podcast (series): Friends Thru a Lens via Sentimental Garbage

If, like me, Friends leaving Netflix at the end of December felt like a personal affront, I’ve got just the thing. Caroline O’Donoghue’s swept in and saved the day with a new mini series. There are seven episodes, all pushing over the 1.5 hour mark, and each analysing Friends through a different ‘lens’ — weddings, Phoebe’s childhood, the holidays, Joey’s acting career etc. If you only have time for one, make it ‘Relative Values’ with Dolly Alderton; not just an epic dissemination of the family dynamics that shape the series, but hilarious (of course) and packed with advice for writers.

Desert Island Discs: Lorraine Kelly

I dip in and out of Desert Island Discs (the podcast version), but I’m so glad I reached for this out of January boredom. Lorraine needs no introduction, of course, but gosh she’s just such a perfect embodiment of light and dark, warmth and fury — loving hard but taking no prisoners. Highly recommend for insights into her fascinating upbringing, the seismic stories that defined her career and her Shackleton obsession.

Reading diaries

My year with Shakespeare

2026 is my year with Shakespeare — a deep dive into the written plays, catching as many performances on screen or in the theatre as I can, and exploring retellings and biographies of the Bard. I kicked the journey off in the best possible way, with Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench.

The structure is a sort of memoir meets love letter to the playwright, with fellow thespian Bernard O’Hea recording a series of interviews with Judi about the many parts she’s brought to life. I knew this already, of course, but the woman gives new meaning to the word iconic — I laughed out loud so many times, from her utter disdain for The Merchant of Venice to the tales of her backstage debauchery.

I decided to start with Hamlet and I LOVED IT. It’s taking every shred of my willpower not to write a literary analysis of The Fate of Ophelia by Taylor Swift, but my god I can see why that character captured Taylor Swift’s imagination. I also really enjoyed the introduction by Professor Cecil Watts, which described the two critical camps surrounding this play: that it’s an incoherent mess representing a low point for a great author, and that it’s a fabulously nuanced experiment with realism. Naturally I saw none of that in the text, just a great story, which is why I always read the introduction last rather than first. Interesting, nonetheless.

Finally, I have begun Hamnet with bated breath. I feel an odd sense of trepidation when it comes to reading something so highly regarded, let alone the hype surrounding the film coming out this weekend, so I’m taking my time with it and letting it all soak in. Full review to come in the next instalment of Murmurations.

The 2026 core curriculum

I’m taking a slightly more structured approach to my reading this year, if anything to alleviate some of the agonising indecision that strikes whenever I need to pick my next read. Of course, this includes my year with Shakespeare, but also some classic authors I have NEVER read: Thomas Hardy, who?

I’m hoping this approach will stop me buying more books, too. One can hope.

Briefly noted

The easy reads that kept me warm over the festive period.

• Uncharmed by Lucy Jane Wood: Very good, this girl knows what she’s doing and it’s only her second novel. It didn’t quite live up to Rewitched, her debut, for me, but I think the storyline of the first was just a little more me.

• The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens: I’ve been picking something new from my volumes of the Christmas Books each year, and I loved this one. The idea of the cricket on the hearth intrigues me as a recurring motif in classic literature, and this story had such a genuine moral message.

• The Burning Issue of the Day by T.E Kinsey: sometimes I feel like the only person on earth who knows about the wonderful Lady Hardcastle mysteries, but I know this can’t be true, as Kinsey would do just fine with or without me. A lady gentlewoman and her maid-meets-sidekick solve a litany of grisly goings-on in the fictional village of Chipping Bevington.

Currently reading

• Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

• Hawkfall and other stories by George Mackay-Brown

Up next

• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

• The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

Can you tell I’m a deeply seasonal reader?

Until next time!

The problem with most resolutions, except the fact they make you a sitting duck for targeted marketing campaigns come January, is two-fold. Firstly, they focus on outcome, not input. Is it really, truly within your powers to guarantee promotion? Is it about losing weight, or eating more healthily? I’m just not buying it this year, but I am big into resolutions — so what should they look like?

Well, that brings me to my second point: traditional New Year’s Resolutions deprive, rather than bring joy. They talk about cutting, reducing, minimising. You only need to glance at my home to know I’m no minimalist; so why live like one? I’ll never be a tech boss who wears the same black turtleneck and trousers every day — thank goodness. So you can keep your bio-hacking: my resolutions are about maximising the joy.

1. Be part of more live audiences

We have an increasing array of experiences at our fingertips, thanks to the wealth of digital media available in the modern age. I’m all for this — it helps to increase accessibility by lowering costs and physical barriers to absorbing culture. However, I also know there’s nothing like the thrill of being part of a live audience and I want to prioritise these experiences over the coming year. I live in Cheltenham, aka ‘the festival town,’ so there’s lots of opportunities there, but I'll be looking further afield, too. Free or paid, lecture or play, being part of a live audience fuels our natural need for community and connection which is increasingly underfed in the digital age.

2. Do more with my hands

Given the amount of time I spend typing in and outside of work, this may sound strange. But beyond reading and writing, I’m keen to lean into more tactile experiences in 2026. The obstacle has often been that I’m not very good at crafting nor cooking, but I’ve decided not to let that bother me anymore. Being outcome-focused has driven too many of my life decisions to date, and now I want to look at what I get from the process. As this will also be the year of saving money, I’ll be spending more evenings and weekends at home and will need hobbies to sustain me. At the moment, I’m thinking about collaging and junk journalling, doing lots of puzzles (which calms my mind like nothing else) and painting (badly). Please do hit me with your handsy recommendations for the supremely untalented.

3. Spend a year with Shakespeare

This post is full of little hints as to the nature of the big old change I’m making in 2026, but I’m keeping that on down-low for now. However, I do need to start brushing up on my Shakespeare. While I have read a few of the Bard’s plays and seen some of them performed over the years, there are definite holes in my knowledge. I’ve picked several plays I want to read over the coming year, and I’m going to supplement these with RSC production recordings and film and television adaptations —recommendations welcome. I’ve recently been listening to Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, Judi Dench’s memoir of sorts which is told through the many stage parts she’s played in Shakespeare’s plays. It’s absolutely wonderful, and I highly, highly recommend it. More on this and my Shakespeare journey in my January newsletter.

4. Build my dream second-hand wardrobe

I resolve to become a thrifting extraordinaire. Buying fast fashion simply makes me unhappy, and I’ve done it over the years due to budget constraints and the ‘ease’ it offers. No more! The motto is going to be quality over quantity, sourcing a vintage piece or two each month to build a dopamine-stimulating wardrobe of my favourite colours, patterns and brands. Not only does this mean I'll avoid looking the same as everyone else, but I’ll also put more thought into my purchases and avoid the inevitable regret and donation cycle I’ve been stuck in for the last few years.

5. Embrace my inner frazzled Englishwoman

If my 2026 were a Friends episode, it would be an all-time classic — for better or for worse. The one where they get married and have a career change and… lose the plot? Hopefully not. On the face of it, you might expect very chic and organised resolutions for the new year. Not so, because I know that would be utterly unrealistic. I’m going to be short of money, I’m going to be busy, I’m going to have a lot of competing priorities. If my first few years of adulthood have taught me anything, it’s that if you can’t laugh when the car doesn’t start and you spill coffee down yourself — all before 9.00am — then life will start to feel like a grind very quickly. In 2026, I’m romanticising my inner frazzled Englishwoman and learning to find humour in the setbacks and tedium. That doesn’t mean I can’t be fabulous while doing it: think Kate Winslet in The Holiday or Bridget Jones.

Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions of the compassionate variety? I’d love to hear them.

In the last edition of Murmurations, I pledged to enter wood mouse mode for the rest of the year — no striving or exerting allowed. As with any goal, there have been relapses in the form of partying and anxious spirals, but actually my comrades in Brambly Hedge have some things to be proud of. I’ve baked muffins and eaten many a mince pie, I’ve wrapped gifts while listening to audiobooks and I’ve spent my work-from-home lunch breaks making paper chains.

Most importantly, I’m getting better at the whole ‘saying no’ thing. The ultimate test came recently when, despite having made some important decisions regarding my future career, I was offered a promotion of sorts in my current job and felt myself swaying on the spot. It was a sharp reminder that we are absolutely, well and truly conditioned as human beings to say yes to everything — especially if it equals more money and status.

That was a particularly gruelling chapter of the month gone by, but I feel like superwoman now I'm out the other side with my head held high and my identity — shock — still in tact.

When I was little, the first poem I knew off by heart was Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (apparently children don’t know any poems by heart these days, which makes me sad). However, it’s a different and arguably more famous poem of his that’s been at the forefront of my mind for the last few weeks.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken | Robert Frost

If you’re wrestling with a decision, keep those words at the front of your mind heading into the new year.

The most cortisol-spiking time of the year

Wood mouse winter or not, there’s no denying that the close of the calendar year brings an onslaught of obligations, from Christmas shopping and social engagements to closing work projects.

Here are three things I’ve noted down over the past month which seem like a good idea but will derail your mental health:

1. Shopping the sales

I fall into this trap every year. Trawling websites for fear of missing out, only to either buy something I hate deep down or walk away with decision fatigue and no acquisitions, having wasted several hours doom-scrolling. The golden rule, as I see it, is sales purchases are a good idea in just two scenarios: a) you have an extremely specific target, know where to get it and know what sort of money you’re going to save or b) you stumble across something totally unexpectedly and buy it instantly in a fit of joy. Any sort of scouring or ‘just looking’ is simply not worth it: the sales will defeat you.

2. Succumbing to organised fun

No one will remember if you were at client crazy golf in a few month’s time. Take a day off, literally — it’s never as fun as they make it sound.

3. Being a domestic goddess

You don’t need to make an advent calendar entirely from gingerbread. Hand-embroidered stockings are not essential to the festive season. Last year I attempted Christmas cookies and my kittens kept jumping on the counter and wading through the dough and I ended up in tears.

Ok, cheerier things to come…

Word of the month

Eucatastrophe: the joy of the happy ending.

This one came from On Fairy Stories, J.R.R Tolkien’s famous essay which I finally made time to read. It’s as wonderful as everyone says it is.

Loving and loathing

Loving:

• Velvet socks

• Retro Christmas lights

• Vintage mulled wine glasses

You can keep your minimalist Christmas.

Loathing: Microsoft Teams

It’s too late in the year for meetings that could have been an email.

Recommending

Substacks that made me snort

Because a little laughter goes a long way in December.

• This hilarious romp through the absurdities surrounding the Peltz-Beckham marriage(s) from was a tonic, even if I am always embarrassingly behind on the celebrity lowdown.

• The worst person in the world by — a fabulously reassuring piece on being annoyed for no reason at all.

Gift guides worth your time

I wasn’t on Substack this time last year, and I'm astounded by the number of gift guides available over here. I’m a sucker for a gift guide, but if another one suggests I gift my mother a build-your-own bouquet Lego set I’ll scream.

Here are two I actually enjoyed:

• A Very Whimsical Christmas Wishlist from

• My literary gift guide by

Podcast: ill advised with Bill Nighy

I consume a lot of podcasts, and many of them are within the ‘self-improvement’ genre. Sometimes these contain absolute gems that have genuinely revolutionised my life, but most of the time they’re just there for reassurance. Also, it gets old trying to be a better person.

That’s why I’ve fallen hard for Bill Nighy’s new podcast, ‘ill advised.’ The premise is that Bill offers agony aunt style advice with absolutely no authority to do so, because he’s grumpy about lots of things, has unpopular opinions on most things and does not live in any way like an ordinary person.

Bill unpacks problems from a few contributors in each episode, which range from someone’s horse suddenly being in a mood with them to the correct sort of shirt collar, and then gives listeners a mini playlist and a book recommendation for the week. It’s silly and refreshing and comforting, with the introduction varying slightly each week but usually including something along the lines of: “If you are socially adept and enjoy healthy relationships, there’s nothing for you here.”

Oh and the voice. Listening to Bill has the same effect on me as listening to jazz.

A (non) guilty pleasure film

One evening earlier this month I found myself unable even to read, I felt that overstimulated. I ended up watching Netflix’s new Champagne Problems until well past midnight, and it was just what the doctor ordered. An endearing American woman, a handsome French man, the beautiful settings of Paris and the vineyards of Champagne… lots of clichés and stereotypes, naturally, but this has a genuinely appealing narrative and made me laugh AND cry which is all I can really ask from these films.

Reading diaries

Frankenstein update

A few weeks ago I finished this wonderful novel and proclaimed that it’s the best I’ve ever read. Two related things have happened since I finished Frankenstein.

Firstly, I watched Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation and it left me weeping but also feeling a bit cold. Let me try to explain. I think I watched it too soon after I read it for the first time — like, a week or two after. The novel was too fresh (and exalted) in my mind, so the film was always going to jar.

HOWEVER. The Creature is acted wonderfully, and the scene of devastation in the cottage is rightfully elongated in the film compared to its rather sudden coming and going in the book. Other choices I feel more ambivalent about, including the whole William and Elizabeth thing. But my real bugbear was that Victor is grievously dislikeable from the beginning of the film — arrogant, chippy and selfish. In the novel, my empathy for Victor fuels the moral dilemma I feel once he becomes firmly pitted against the Creature, but in the film I'm rooting for the Creature from the off. Anyway — just in case you needed another opinion on the film.

Secondly, I spent the day in a local secondary school and observed an A-Level English discussion on Frankenstein. Let me tell you: I had to sit on my hands to contain my enthusiasm in that lesson. I appreciate the majority of students are there to get a grade, rather than fall passionately in love with the novel as I have done, but it was still so uplifting to hear their takes and observations on Shelley’s classic, including some perspectives I would never have thought of.

Finally, a question. Which is the best Mary Shelley biography to read? There are so many…!

Advent by Gunnar Gunnarsson

This felt like an early Christmas gift, even if it was a gift to self. Truth be told, I bought it because I simply couldn’t resist the cover of the new edition (see above), which is among the most compelling I’ve ever seen.

Advent is an Icelandic classic, first published in 1926. Unusually, it was originally written in Danish as Gunnarsson — though a native Icelander and never straying from his homeland for subject matter — was living and studying in Copenhagen.

It tells the story of a man, his dog and his sheep who set off on the first Sunday of Advent each year to save sheep who have been left behind during the autumn roundups.

Our hero, Benedikt, is getting older and weather-beaten by his annual expeditions in treacherous conditions. There are religious overtones throughout in the traditional sense, but there's also something… divine? sacred? about this novel on a more subliminal level.

It's not moralising enough to be a fable and it's certainly not a fantasy, but this tale of solitude, endurance, communion with nature and man’s everlasting friendship with animals leaves you wanting to be a better person.

I can’t wait to revisit this one this time next year.

Briefly noted

Where I try to describe other recent reads in just three words…

• Katabasis by R. Kuang - Hellish, clever, stressful

• Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J Klune - sequel, queer, zeitgeisty

• Still Writing by Dani Shapiro - original, empathetic, motivational

Currently reading

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (reread)

• Shakespeare by Judi Dench

• Hawkfall and other stories by George Mackay-Brown

Up next

I’m planning to continue my little Shakespeare moment to close out 2025…

• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

• The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

While other seasons tend to meld into a blur, especially summer, the months feel much more distinct during winter. As such, this post takes us through from the cosy ‘ber months all the way up to the month of love, when the first hopeful signs of spring are often dashed by snowfall.

Gifting is 100% my love language, so I’ve included a short segment of gift recommendations. As always, there’s a full index of mentioned books at the bottom of this post (all 33 of them).

Ritual: Set your alarm an hour earlier than you need to be up (stay with me). Make a coffee or your preferred hot drink, switch on heaters and Christmas lights, and get back into bed or curl up on the sofa with your current read. In my humble experience, reclaiming the first part of your day for yourself before life gets in the way is always, always worth an earlier start.

Advent

I know it’s not astronomically winter until December 22nd, but if you still think it feels like autumn at this time of year, then you’re living on another planet – or at least not in England. I extend Advent to the last couple of weeks of November; 25 days are simply not enough festive fun.

In between the decorating and Christmas shopping, this is the time to retreat for a quiet hour or two and tackle some of those reads you promised to read this year. For me this is The Return of the King, the final instalment in the LOTR marathon I began at the start of the year and a fitting way to close out 2025. Journeying to Mordor with a couple of hobbits for company, without having to move from the comfort of your own log burner, is peak winter.

In the new and shiny section Hatchards, I couldn’t resist the new translation of Gunnar Gunnarsson’s short novel Advent. The cover is simply beautiful and I do love it when something does what it says on the tin. The blurb tells me I’ll follow the shepherd Benedikt who spends the lead-up to Christmas venturing into the Icelandic mountains to rescue sheep — as well as some other souls in need during the bleak midwinter. Lead the way, Benedikt.

As the season progresses, my ability to read anything not festive or not previously read dwindles right along with my advent candle. In honour of wood mouse winter – my pledge to not strive or exert for the rest of this year — I intend to take this very seriously. I’m planning a reread of Little Women, which is one of those novels that — while it spans all seasons, really — always conjures up Christmas.

Ritual: Adopt the Icelandic tradition of exchanging books on Christmas Eve or — if you’re not spending Christmas itself with your fellow book-lovers — do this instead of yet another Secret Santa exercise. I adore the fact that Iceland has made it a tradition to be antisocial for the evening and ring in Christmas Day with a new read.

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