Issue #253

• By number and title. >>Concerning the Future of Souls.

• Making meaning and being made by it. >>Gliff.

• Making it make sense. >>Slowing the Sun.

• The river was writing me. >>Is a River Alive?

• Coming to his senses. >>Is a River Alive?

• An unfortunately brief encounter. >>Delirious.

• A metaphorical middle finger. >>Hunchback.

• Connective tissues. >>This Compulsion in Us.

• In the mirror of a page. >>This Compulsion in Us.

• SUBMIT!

• A writer’s attempt to describe chronic pain. >>Pathemata.

• Heartbreaking. >>The Safekeep.

• Complexity to clarity. >>The Covid Response.

• Not to grieve.

• The first review. >>A Different Kind of Power.

• Empathy is a kind of strength. >>A Different Kind of Power.

• Soft, grassy, sweet-smelling. >>Japan, An autobiography.

• She is and she does. >>Groundwork.

• How Jane Austen pulled it off. >>Emma.

• Emerald green.

• A sickening plan.

• A hybrid brain.

• Half the volume.

• The marketing is still crap.

• Our film recommendation this week: All We Imagine as Light.

• Frederica Sala.

Issue #252

• Using the world. >>On the Calculation of Volume.

• Writing without fear. >>The Seers.

• Dancing on the page. >>The Seers.

• Blood, sweat, tears, and body shaming. >>Cry When the Baby Cries.

• Writing is not therapy. >>Sad Tiger.

• Hands fluent with silence. >>Slowing the Sun.

• In pursuit of a frictionless life. >>Perfection.

• “Authenticity.” >>Perfection.

• There once was a woman who. >>Natalja’s Stories.

• Soothing, rinsing, complex. >>Kataraina.

• A challenging and peculiar life. >>This Compulsion in Us.

• Prismatic Gilgamesh. >>Sophus Helle’s translation.

• Mapping the geographies of memories. >>Clay Eaters.

• On walking and looking as a way of life. >>Still Life with Remorse. >>Women Holding Things.

• Kaleidoscopic. >>Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors.

• Out of the coma. >>The Abyss.

• Two weapons that the powerful dread. >>Theory & Practice.

• The reader thinks it isn’t a novel. >>Theory & Practice.

• The tender narrator. >>Books by Olga Tokarczuk.

• Is this fascism? >>Disaster Nationalism.

• Thinking place.

• Information to inform your submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill.

• Creative constraints.

• Smashing the teapots.

• A question of free will.

• Our film recommendation this week: Bleak Moments.

• The splash of a drop.

Issue #251

• Weighing up the contenders. >>Your pick.

• Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon, and Mother Night. >>The Book of Guilt.

• Why 1979, specifically? >>The Book of Guilt.

• Disrupting stereotypes. >>Hine Toa.

• Squinting at mountains. >>Mountainish.

• Flooded roads, falling rocks. >>Mountainish.

• Notes on danger and dialogue. >>Mountainish.

• How should we respond to what has been lost? >>Slowing the Sun.

• A struggle or a gift? >>Slowing the Sun.

• The morning after. >>Delirious. >>The other winners.

• The lessons we’re still to learn. >>The Covid Response.

• i am elsewhere. >>rock flight.

• In search of a home. >>All recommended by us!

• Man flicking free of feet.

• Anything could happen. >>Boodle Boodle Boodle.

• Why we still need novels. >>There Are Rivers in the Sky.

• My sadness is not a burden. >>Things in Nature Merely Grow.

• Exquisite, craggy detail. >>Clear.

• The rooms of fiction.

• Drafting Mrs Dalloway. >>Mrs Dalloway.

• 100 Mrs Dalloways.

• Against algorithms.

• Who’s eating publishers’ lunch?

• Does the unconscious exist?

• It cannot be denied.

• Words themselves are under threat.

• Huia. >>Wow.

• How to write a book.

• The world’s shortest maths article.

• Ivor Cutler interviews Ivor Cutler.

• Show your face.

• Body on the edge of crisis.

• Our film recommendation this week: Head South.

• How to focus on writing your book.

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Bulletin #250

• Plants teach us how to think differently. >>Tree Spirits Grass Spirits.

• Enough is enough. >>Slowing the Sun.

• The radical lord of light entertainment. >>Erik Satie — Three Piece Suite.

• Gymnopédies & Gnossiennes. >>Erik Satie — Three Piece Suite.

• What did we learn? >>The Covid Response.

• To the round meadow. >>Powsels and Thrums.

• The story goes. >>A Leopard-Skin Hat.

• Between repose and movement. >>The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth.

• Fiction Round Table. >>Read this short list.

• The joys of house museums. >>Makeshift Seasons.

• What happened to my friend. >>Visas Now!

• The kēhua that haunt her. >>Whaea Blue.

• Wouldn’t you like to be normal? >>The Edge of the Alphabet.

• The power of perspective. >>Universality.

• Fitting in. >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• International Booker TV: >>On the Calculation of Volume. >>Perfection. >>Heart Lamp. >>A Leopard-Skin Hat. >>Under the Eye of the Big Bird. >>Small Boat. >>Read the books!

• Picking the best-written books.

• A forgotten expedition. >>A Training School for Elephants.

• Ned Wenlock gets it. >>Tsunami.

• Arsenals of democracy.

• Why the Romans stopped reading books.

• Does dream inception work?

• New-new.

• Our film recommendation this week: Move When the Spirit Says Move.

• Endpapers.

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Issue #249

• Authors and their bookshops.

• One of those who had disappeared. >>The Place of Shells.

• Obstacles and solutions. >>On the Calculation of Volume: 1.

• The work had already been done. >>A Leopard-Skin Hat.

• The threads shine through. >>You Are Here.

• What does the literature of the working class look like? >>On the Clock.

• Poverty and service work. >>On the Clock.

• A semi-infinite novel. >>Caret.

• Working while grieving. >>And the Walls Became the World All Around.

• Footnotes to a lost manuscript. >>The Ways of Paradise.

• Shine On.

• Whose voices are these? >>Parade.

• Dissecting the present. >>The Great When.

• Naomi walks the Earth. >>Northbound.

• Ōrongohau.

• Instantly iconic. >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• Every tender thing breaks. >>We Do Not Part.

• Frog-free. >>Conceiving Histories.

• Unconcerned with the connections between words and meanings. >>Freedom, tyranny, &c.

• A teenage holiday journal (1821).

• Straddling the border.

• An interview with a grain of sand.

If you enjoyed The Interesting Times, buy the interesting books!

Issue#248

• Books picked me up on bad days. >>Bookish.

• Why this need for definitions? >>Slender Volumes.

• Rewriting Georges Perec. >>Perfection.

• The age of aimless aspiration. >>Perfection.

• The fissures between one’s ideals and reality. >>Theory and Practice.

• Instantly iconic. >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• Sociopathic, horny, ambitious, confused. >>The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

• A definite example of good and evil. >>Tony Fomison: Life of an artist.

• Marae food sovereignty. >>Pātaka Kai.

• Extraordinary delivery. >>Mary and the Rabbit Dream.

• Reality itself is blazing and burning. >>Slender Volumes. >>Hotel Theresa. >>Islands.

• How Clarice Lispector disrupts our notions of good and bad. >>Read C.L.

• Ending Neoliberalism. >>Futilitarianism.

• Expanding a global presence. >>Tsunami.

• Organising knowledge.

• Self-branching beings.

• My darlings.

• Drawnworks.

• Our film recommendation this week: No Other Land.

• Also recommended: Locked-Up Time.

• Knitting through digital decay.

Issue #247

• Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. >>You Are Here.

• More of an observer. >>Mountainish.

• Nothing is done because it was there. >>Mountainish.

• Can we ever rely on our brains? >>Changing My Mind.

• The scent of citrus. >>On a Woman’s Madness.

• This is wrong. >>Who’s Afraid of Gender?

• Making a claim on language. >>Minor Detail.

• A Taiwanese novel masquerading as a rediscovered Japanese novel. >>Taiwan Travelogue.

• Reduced to a lego block. >>Mammoth.

• Does writing matter? >>Question 7.

• A garden in this wretched world. >>A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East.

• Health anxiety and the writer’s calling. >>Kafka’s diaries.

• The Natural. >>Vehicle.

• The future of fiction and truth. >>Never Let Me Go.

• Celan’s ferryman. >>Under the Dome.

• The past is in the present is in the future.

• Rocks and racism. >>Rock Against Racism.

• Our film recommendation this week: Hive.

• Also: The Battle of Algiers.

• Roz and Emily eat their way through Midwood.

If you enjoy The Interesting Times — buy the interesting books!

Issue #246

• Influence and empowerment. >>Books of Mana.

• Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind. >>Wrong Norma.

• The edges of normalcy. >>The Edge of the Alphabet.

• Creative culmination. >>We Do Not Part.

• 11 things you learn when writing a novel about alpaca breeders. >>Star Gazers.

• Interview with an alpaca. >>Star Gazers.

• The heron and the snake. >>Gloss.

• Visionary tales. >>Mrs Calder and the Hyena.

• Prickly. >>Theory and Practice.

• The water in winter is cold. >>Petroglyphs.

• Fun with David Graeber. >>Books by David Graeber.

• David Graeber’s lasting influence on anthropology and activism. >>As If Already Free.

• “Books picked me up on bad days.” >>Bookish.

• The perfect climate-change novel? >>The Rings of Saturn.

• Blood, sweat, tears and body shaming. >>Cry When the Baby Cries.

• The biggest little press in the world. >>Books published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

• The summer soundtrack.

• On the chess circuit.

• Our film recommendation this week: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.

• Also: The Bibi Files.

• The Centaur Scale.

If you enjoyed The Interesting Times, buy the interesting books!

Issue #245

• First, the germ. >>On the Calculation of Volume.

• Day 121. >>On the Calculation of Volume.

• A memory campaign. >>Heroines.

• Laughter and tears. >>Childish Literature.

• A literary inheritance. >>Childish Literature.

• My Wonderful Description of Flowers. >>Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other.

• Chasing their dreams. >>Poorhara.

• Eight hours. >>The Sleepers.

• Your tone isn’t always the toniest. >>Speak / Stop.

• Fighting fate. >>The Watermark.

• Navigating romance. >>Reinventing Love.

• Remembering and forgetting. >>Question 7.

• The writing shack. >>Question 7.

• The merry fellowship of bothies. >>In Search of Simple Shelter.

• "Confiscate this sign.”

• How metaphor works.

• 16000 censored artworks.

• Not I.

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Issue #244

• Hope for the future. >>Gliff.

• A novelist who looks into the dark. >>Gliff.

• A communal space of writing. >>Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other. >>Committed.

• What is children’s literature for? >>Books by Katherine Rundell.

• “I want to be hopeful.” >>Books by Han Kang. >>Pre-order We Do Not Part.

• A killer and a critic. >>Walking Practice.

• United in torment. >>What Kingdom.

• “I must divorce!” >>If Only.

• After the buzz. >>I Who Have Never Known Men.

• Kafka: A world of truth. >>Diaries.

• Speculative fiction in the age of Artificial Intelligence. >>Hum.

• Open on Inland. >>Inland.

• Trying (and really failing).

• Sharing the bill with your younger self. >>Krapp’s Last Tape.

• What interacting with chatbots can reveal about ourselves.

• X is for…

• Can you save the Weimar Republic?

• Our film recommendation this week: Maurice and I.

• Our other film recommendation this week: Praying for Armageddon.

• I will not write unless I am swaddled in furs.

Support The Interesting Times by purchasing the interesting books.

Issue #243

• Phoning in from Te Araroa trail. >>Your signed copy of Naomi Arnold’s book at a special price.

• The weight of estrangement. >>The Position of Spoons.

• The power of the book. >>The Message.

• Destination big box store. >>Help Wanted.

• Who is controlling the plot? >>The Watermark.

• Listening to Palestinian silences. >>{ … }

• A rare interview with Gerald Murnane. >> Books by Gerald Murnane.

• Hayek’s bastards. >>Crack-Up Capitalism. >>Hayek’s Bastards.

• Life calls for a cheese souffle. >>French Cooking for One.

• A deadly book for naughty children. >>A copy for the child of your choice.

• The black sheep.

• Masters of the ice. >>To the polar regions.

• Overwhelmed by The Spectacle.

• The creature from the id.

• The forgers’ Hall of Fame.

• You’d be surprised how closed-minded you are.

• Breaking the power of the 1%.

• Pluck the Owl, anyone?

• Reset and refresh.

• Our film recommendations this week: Heart of Glass.

• And also: Marguerite’s Theorem.

• The life-changing magic of keeping absolutely everything.

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Issue #242

• The art of watching and being watched. >>The Sleepers.

• The art of writing a cookbook. >>French Cooking for One.

• The power of the book. >>The Message.

• Fame and license. >>Memories of Distant Mountains.

• Navigating romance and the Patriarchy. >>Reinventing Love.

• Attrition in friendship. >>Understanding Brecht.

• Everything upside down. >>Biography of X.

• No place like home. >>Stranger in My Own Land.

• The cheap books problem.

• Embracing ambiguity — one sentence at a time.

• The illustrated envelopes of Edward Gorey. >>Born to Be Posthumous.

• A history of Janet Frame’s desk. >>A history of Janet Frame’s other desk. >>The Table.

• A guide to the Regulatory Standards Bill.

• 391.

• Enough already.

• Out of the cesspit.

• Couldn’t put it down.

• Our film recommendation this week: 45 Years.

• Live and learn.

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