Tag: books

The idea of students reading for pleasure during term time has sparked much debate. Simply put though, Oxford’s intensive schedule makes it near-impossible. The...

Although post-collections celebrations usually involve nights out, followed by long, long lie-ins, I spent Saturday morning taking the bus to the Oxford Brookes Headington...

I thought it perplexing that critics felt Intermezzo similar to other works by writer Sally Rooney. Certainly, it shares some familiar ingredients: it’s set...

For some authors, the Bodleian Libraries have not always a safe haven for their work. Although marginalised texts are no longer demarcated with the phi symbol on their spines, with many having re-entered the undergraduate canon, Sophie Price discusses the valuable lessons we can learn from the Bodleian blacklist which remain pertinent today.

Laurence Cooke reviews Samantha Harvey's 'Orbital', the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize.

Adam Leslie has always wandered among stories – daydreaming them, curating them, and now crafting his own. The Lincolnshire-born author, screenwriter, and Blackwell’s employee...

Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History is set in an exclusive college in Vermont but can be read as a satire of Oxford and its students. It invites us to question how little differentiates us from the elitist American universities.

The #booktok stands that have become fixtures of bookshops across the country inspire intense feelings in me. It’s a mix of guilty curiosity, superiority,...

Look no further for the perfect afternoon dawdle, as you chase the ghosts of literary greats through the town.

Maybe we need to start giving a chance to the books we wouldn't usually take a second glance at. 

It looks like, then, the epistolary novel isn’t dying out completely—just reinventing itself.

Weird and wonderful. Heavy at times, strange throughout, but uplifting to the end. An incredible read.

In a desperate attempt to extend the holiday, here are the best books I read this summer...

If there’s one thing that most people appreciate, it’s a good mystery with a clever solution. It is no accident that Agatha Christie is...