Happy Monday, everyone.

Welcome to the very first issue of the 2PoundPaperback. Here is your – from now on, weekly – dose of my book-related insights, book news, and updates on my writing projects.

Post-release note: I have removed the paywall from this post so you can check out the whole thing for free :) If you want to read more about the whole project, you can do that here.

What I'm Reading:

Boyhood Island by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Premise: This is the third of six volumes in Knausgaard's My Struggle. If you're not familiar with the cultishly-adored project, the basic idea is that a Norwegian bloke writes thousands of pages, in agonising detail, about the life of a Norwegian bloke writing thousands of pages. This may sound boring but is utterly tremendous.

The first volume, A Death in the Family, centres on Knausgaard's relationship with his father; the second, A Man in Love, is about leaving his wife, falling in love, moving to Sweden (which he hates), and having kids. Boyhood Island, as the title suggests, is about Knausgaard's childhood on the island of Trømoya.

Points of interest: This may be my favourite of the sequence so far. There's a sense of lightness in the narration, and incredibly smooth shifts between different modes in the text. For example, on the one hand, we get beautiful reflections on the stature of trees and the perception of time – but on the other hand, seriously graphic descriptions of pooing. Another interesting effect is in returning to the locations of earlier volumes with the consciousness of a child, rather than an adult. Especially with Knausgaard's grandmother's house, we have the feeling of a parallel reality rather than only a different time.

What I'm Writing:

I've finished two pieces that'd been banging around my head for a while. One is about the centenary of The Great Gatsby (which happened on the 10th of April) and what excessive appropriation means for our relationship to texts and media in general.

The other one is a meditation on reading process and about whether there's a right way to read a novel. My original opening for this essay was some auto-fictional stuff about learning to read, but it didn't really fit – so I've excised that as the start of a short story.

New Release:

Notes to John by Joan Didion.

Premise: Notes to John is made up of journal entries that Didion started writing in 1999, in which she records her sessions with a psychiatrist. The entries are addressed to her husband, John Dunne.

There's a lot of heavy stuff here – depression, anxiety, guilt, alcoholism, and a complicated mother-daughter relationship. The latter seems to predominate –specifically through Didion's fears about her daughter, Quintana's, death.

Points of interest: This one's already been doing the rounds – largely due to its controversy. Didion passed away in 2021 and it's hard to imagine that she would've wanted this published. I'll probably still buy it.

Book News:

This was a few weeks ago, but it's too insane not to include: A Suffolk museum has discovered a human-skin bound book.

The skin comes from famous Georgian-era murderer William Corder, and the book details his trial and crimes. Bizarrely, this is the second book made out of his skin – the first has been on display in the museum since 1933. But the curators discovered mention of this one in a catalogue and found it sitting on a bookshelf in one of their offices. 

Anyway, binding a book in human skin is called ‘anthropodermic bibliopegy,’ in case that ever comes up in conversation. Apparently, it was a common practice for punishing criminals in the 1800s. 

Question I'm thinking about:

What causes children and adults to perceive time differently? That a year is longer for a child makes sense – it is a larger proportion of their total life – but what about how quickly an hour can pass?

Have a wonderful week, everyone.

Much love and see you next Monday,

Blake