Top 12 authors

I began my email newsletter, Talk about books, in November 2020 and I’ve sent out new posts approximately every two weeks since then. So far, there have been 108 posts. There are some authors that I’ve returned to frequently, others that I’ve written about only once but may revisit in future. Listed below are the twelve authors about whom I’ve written most. I’ve included posts that appear here on my personal site, either because I wrote them before I started Talk about books or in a few cases because they are further comments on something I’ve already written about in the newsletter.

Kate Atkinson

• Rereading Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum;
• Kate Atkinson, the Jackson Brodie series;
• A fabulist’s adventure: Kate Atkinson, Transcription;
• Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series revisited
• Content warning: Sexual violence in Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn

Wilkie Collins

• Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith and Wilkie Collins’s Armadale;
• A double standard: Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady
Incontestable wills: Wilkie Collins, No Name

Michael Dibdin

• After all, Zen was just a policeman: The moral trajectory of Dibdin’s Venetian detective;
• An infant in its cradle: William Blake’s prophetic serial killers (Dark Spectre);
• “This persistent universe game”: The conclusion of Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen series;
• Death in Florence: du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel and Dibdin’s A Rich Full Death

William Empson

• Finite though unbounded: the abolition of infinity in the poetry of William Empson;
• “To overreach the devil”: William Empson partly rewrites Marlowe’s Faustus;
• “Still to be plagued in hell”: Christopher Ricks and William Empson on Doctor Faustus;
• An epical forged cheque: William Empson reads Ulysses;
• William Empson and Andrew Marvell’s widow;
• And not to yield: William Empson, “The Wife Is Praised”;
• Poetic imagery: William Empson and the visual imagination in the criticism of poetry;
• “Not human to feel safely placed”: Further reflections on the poetry of William Empson

Tana French

• Tana French, In the Woods;
• Tana French, The Likeness;
• Daughters and fathers: The Secret Place and The Trespasser;
• Fractured spaces: Faithful Place and Broken Harbour
• One of the lucky ones: Tana French, The Wych Elm

Kazuo Ishiguro

• Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go;
• Kazuo Ishiguro’s short stories: Nocturnes;
• “Solemn oaths undone in cruel slaughter”: The Buried Giant;
• Intelligent AF: Klara and the Sun

Ian McEwan

• On “Dover Beach”: Ian McEwan’s Saturday
  
• Sweet and Innocent: Spy stories by Ian McEwan;
• “An exemplary case of unacknowledged self-persuasion”: Enduring Love;
• Two short novels by Ian McEwan: Amsterdam and On Chesil Beach;
• The paramount consideration: Ian McEwan, The Children Act;
• More about Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth: not rushing into print

Andrew Marvell

• A Dialogue between the Soul and Body;
• Andrew Marvell’s objects;
• Marvell and Mortalism: A supplementary note to my essay on “A Dialogue between the Soul and Body”;
• Mistaken long: Andrew Marvell and pronouns again;
• The paradoxical ambition of Andrew Marvell’s Third Advice to a Painter;
• “Prelate of the grove”: A note on ambition and preferment in Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House”;
• “What course and opinion he thinks the safest”: Religion and divine justice in the work of Andrew Marvell

Thomas Middleton

• Middleton and Rowley, A Fair Quarrel;
• Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling;
• “A villain not to be forsworn”: The Revenger’s Tragedy;
• “Fools will serve to father wise men’s children”: Women Beware Women;
• The cruel comedy of Thomas Middleton: A Trick to Catch the Old One and other city comedies

Sally Rooney

• “Oh my god, shut up”: Sally Rooney, short story writer;
• Morally neutral at best: Conversations with Friends;
• Social distance: Beautiful World, Where Are You

Salman Rushdie

• Midnight’s Children: “A thousand and one dead ends”;
• You’ve got a right to be angry: Salman Rushdie, Fury;
• Shifting ground: The Ground beneath Her Feet;
• “What, not one hit?” Salman Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh;
• Floating upwards from history: Salman Rushdie, Shame;
• Two falls and a Submission: Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses;
• Flight from paradise: Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

Scott Turow

• Judicial misconduct: Turow’s judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers;
• Anatomy of a series: Scott Turow’s Kindle County novels;
• Impeaching his own witness: Pleading Guilty and The Laws of Our Fathers

There’ll be more about Scott Turow in about seven weeks’ time and it’s likely that I’ll return to some of the other authors mentioned above before too long. Here is a full list of all the authors I’ve written about so far in the newsletter. If you’re so inclined you can sign up for the emails, get the RSS feed or explore the web archive on the sign-up page.

Posted by Art on 18-Jan-2025.