You are invited to read about a writer whose voice is incredibly aware of a ticking noise in the background of space and time...

‘The truth of the fetish resides in its status as a material embodiment’ (William Pietz)

“I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate anything to me or to interfere with anything I do” (James 40)

‘In the Comedies, Shakespeare seems, if not a feminist, then at least a man who takes the woman’s part’ (Bamber 2)

‘Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, / And in our faults by lies we flattered be’ (Shakespeare, Sonnet 138, lines 13-14)

‘[W]hen you wash your hands, do you feel the water is running on your brain? Of course not’ (Tiptree 50)

“Am I master here, or you? … God shall mend my soul!” (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1.5.77-79)

‘Oh, tourist,/ is this how this country is going to answer you/and your immodest demands for a different world’ (Bishop 89)

‘There stern religion quenched the unwilling flame, / There died the best of passions, Love and Fame’ (Pope 39-40)

‘Thurgh noyse and swetnesse of hir song’ (Chaucer 297)

‘One drear word comprised my intolerable duty – “Depart!”’ (Bronte 279)

‘How serious can it be if it happens all the time?’ (DeLillo 201)

Just because you can’t go back doesn’t mean there won’t be joys, potentially even greater than before...

This portrayal of unrequited love isn’t just about rejection; it’s about the kind of longing that never quite goes away.

Beckett takes the concept of waiting, something we all hate, and turns it into a grand commentary on life itself.

There's no clear moral to this tale at all, rather it's more like an intricate, beautifully written disaster that you can't look away from.

I love talking about what I’m reading, just the people around me aren't so interested. This time, it wasn’t me who started conversations.

Reading a Philip K. Dick (PKD) novel can sometimes feel like wandering through the cannabis-laced imagination of a fanciful metaphysician.

Recognising literature as a cultural artefact, Gallagher and Hartman both explore rewriting narratives to give voice to the silenced.

The country, the city, and the mind: while being an arbitrary split, this is a handy one in Dostoevsky's polemical masterpiece.