Short-story writer and novelist; won the Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo, and teaches craft weekly in Story Club.
loved
This week we’re working on a lovely story called “The Illumination of Santiago” by the wonderful Chilean writer, Nona Fernández (translated from the original Spanish by Idra Novey.) It makes me happy every time I read it. It’s a very simple, honest story that exudes confidence – confidence that the world is beautiful and mysterious and bears examination.
His Story Club newsletter, introducing the week's short story pick
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.