#Leaving the Atocha Station
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litsnaps · 1 month ago
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quotespile · 1 year ago
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No matter what any poet did, the poems would constitute screens on which readers could project their own desperate belief in the possibility of poetic experience, whatever that might be, or afford them the opportunity to mourn its impossibility.
Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station
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man-reading · 8 months ago
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Leaving the Atocha Station
by Ben Lerner
Veering between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a dazzling introduction to one of the smartest, funniest and most audacious writers of a generation.
Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his attitude towards art. Fuelled by strong coffee and self-prescribed tranquillizers, Adam's 'research' soon becomes a meditation on the possibility of authenticity, as he finds himself increasingly troubled by the uncrossable distance between himself and the world around him. It's not just his imperfect grasp of Spanish, but the underlying suspicion that his relationships, his reactions, and his entire personality are just as fraudulent as his poetry.
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apexpoet · 2 years ago
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Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
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book51ut · 11 months ago
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Review of Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
I read this one bc it was recommended by a friend who is never in the same city as me, when i told him i was moving to Spain. Let me say, as an American living in Spain, it is quite relatable. I’m not living anywhere nearly as lovely as Madrid, but so many parts just rang so true, being an American in Spain & hating other Americans in Spain, insisting that i can’t speak spanish even though i can get by, and feeling like the year is passing me by like a hazy heroin high, slowly & then all at once. I would recommend it to other expats or temporary foreigners, it’ll hit home. I am also a poet, so I really related to the author & the sense of despair and annoyance with writing. I don’t find myself capable of reviewing the book without this bias of familiarity on both fronts, so I won’t. Maybe if you’ve never experienced it, you won’t like the book. But this is my review, and I did experience it, so i liked the book.
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clancyycat · 2 months ago
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books i read in 2024: 2.0 bc tumblr ate my last list
gregor and the curse of the warmbloods - suzanne collins (jan)
gregor and the marks of secret - suzanne collins (jan)
gregor and the code of claw - suzanne collins (jan)
the cartographers - peng shepherd (jan-feb)
god spare the girls - kelsey mckinney (feb)
untamed - glennon doyle (feb-mar)
grimoire girl - hilarie burton morgan (apr)
lore - alexandra bracken (may)
holy the firm - annie dillard (may-jun)
the christie affair - nina de gramont (may-jun)
we show what we have learned - clare beams (may-jun)
there's always this year - hanif abdurraquib (jun)
the ocean at the end of the lane - neil gaiman (jun)
trigger warning: short fictions and disturbances - neil gaiman (jun)
the rural diaries - hilarie burton morgan (jul)
wolfish - erica berry (jul)
bless the daughter raised by a voice in her head - warsan shire (jul)
the trouble with poetry - billy collins (jul)
fever 1793 - laurie halse anderson (jul)
we run the tides - vendela vida (jul)
the last true poets of the sea - julia drake (jul)
we have always lived in the castle - shirley jackson (jul)
foxfire: confessions of a girl gang - joyce carol oates (aug)
neverwhere - neil gaiman (aug)
manhattan beach - jennifer egan (sep)
the mary shelley club - goldy moldavsky (sep)
leaving the atocha station (oct) (don’t read this)
the god of endings - jacqueline holland (nov)
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septembriseur · 2 years ago
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I’m in Spain for a work thing. I flew into the Madrid airport, and I had kind of a tight connection to make: my flight landed just before 8 PM, and the last train from the Atocha train station to Barcelona, where I was spending the night, left at 9:15. From the airport to Atocha is, on paper, a 30-minute commuter train ride, so it seemed like— again, ON PAPER— as long as my flight landed on time, I should be okay.
I reached the commuter train terminal at the airport at 8:15. Great! There were commuter trains scheduled at 8:17, 8:32, and 8:47. I got to the platform. Apparently, I had missed the 8:17 train? Okay, no problem. I waited.
No trains came. No future trains were listed on the platform displays. 8:30 came and went. No sign of any train. Tourists milled about, confused. Spaniards: unfazed.
8:45 came and went. An announcement was made that a train would come at some point, but was 15 minutes late.
A train arrived at about 9 PM. It declared itself to be going to Atocha. Everyone going to Atocha got on board.
After two stops, an announcement was made that the train was not going to Atocha, but rather terminating at a different stop. Everyone on board was confused, and a long conversation ensued about whether or not the train was, in fact, going to Atocha.
At the next stop, more people going to Atocha boarded the train. When we told them that the train was not going to Atocha, they said that they thought the train probably WAS going to Atocha in spite of the announcements, because there had been a big rearrangement of trains in December and now you never knew where a train was going when you got on it.
We arrived at the different station where the train was supposedly terminating. There was no announcement. More people going to Atocha got on the train. The train did not leave. Eventually, the lights on the train went out, so we got off the train and got on a different train. This train declared itself to be going to Alcalá de Henares. Then, after a few stops, all its electronic displays crashed, rebooted with the Windows logo, and announced that the train was going to the airport.
However, the train in fact went to Atocha, where I arrived at 10 PM. There were no more trains to Barcelona and I had to spend the night in a capsule hotel.
When I told my husband about this, he said that if it had happened on a British TV show, the show would have been accused of anti-Spanish racism.
The end.
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clunelover · 5 months ago
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Okay I’m almost done with Leaving the Atocha Station at which point I’ll have read all three of Ben Lerner’s novels in a week. I’m fully obsessed. I think he’s great. When I try to explain what makes them unique, it probably sounds pretentious but I don’t think it is. Like, in The Topeka School he uses third person when talking about the main character, a teenage boy who is a barely fictionalized version of himself, but then very occasionally will switch, abruptly yet seamlessly, to first person. That could be confusing or annoying, but he makes it work. So cool. I guess he’s primarily a poet and I might be obsessed enough to give the poems a try.
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wrappedincircles · 2 months ago
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2666 - Bolaño (49)
The Neapolitan Novels - Ferrante (46)
My Strugle - Knausgård (40)
Solenoid - Cărtărescu (39)
Septology - Fosse (32)
Lincoln in the Bardo - Saunders (26)
Austerlitz - Sebald (24)
The Sellout - Beatty (21)
The Road - McCarthy (19)
Against the Day - Pynchon (18)
Never Let Me Go - Ishiguro (18)
Hurrican Season - Melchor (17)
Cloud Atlas - Mitchell (16)
The Books of Jacob - Tocarkzuk (15)
Gilead - Robinson (14)
White Teeth - Smith (13)
The Last Samurai - DeWitt (12)
The Passenger & Stella Mair - McCarthy (12)
The Corrections - Franzen (12)
The Goldfinch - Tartt (12)
The Pale King - Wallace (11)
Flights - Tokarczuk (10)
Piranesi - Clarke (10)
The Years - Ernaux (10)
Kafka on the Shore - Murakami (10)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Tokarczuk (9)
House of Leaves - Danielewski (9)
Seiobo There Below - Krasznahorkai (8)
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming - Krasznahorkai (7)
Inherent Vice - Pynchon (7)
A Brief History of Seven Killings - James (7)
Ducks, Newburyport - Ellmann (7)
No Country for Old Men - McCarthy (6)
Freedom - Franzen (6)
Outline - Cusk (6)
Trieste - Drndić (6)
Small Things Like These - Keegan (5)
The MANIAC - Labatut (5)
The Employees - Ravn (5)
Leaving the Atocha Station - Lerner (5)
Milkman - Burns (5)
Atonement - McEwan (5)
The Netanyahus - Cohen (5)
The Wizard of the Crow - Thiong'o (5)
Pachinko - Lee (5)
Station Eleven - Mandel (5)
Tyll - Kehlmann (5)
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets - Alexievich (4)
Train Dreams - Johnson (4)
The Vegetarian - Han (4)
Nox - Carson (4)
Oblivion - Wallace (4)
Erasure - Everett (4)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell- Clarke
Tenth of December - Saunders (4)
Our Lady of the Nile - Mukasonga (4)
A Naked Singularity - De La Pava (4)
The Nickel Boys - Whitehead (4)
Foster - Keegan
Annihilation - VanderMeer (4)
Stories of Your Life and Others - Chiang (4)
The Idiot - Batuman (4)
Belladonna and EEg - Drndiç (4)
Convenience Store Woman - Muraka (4)
The Underground Railroad - Whitehead (4)
Brothers - Yu (4)
Her Body and Other Parties - Machado (4)
The Prague Cemetery - (4)
Animal Money - Cisco (4)
Detransition, Baby - Peters (4)
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Vuong (4)
Persepolis - Satrapi (3)
By Night in Chile - Bolaño
When We Cease to Understand The World - Labatut
Happening - Ernaux
Border Districts - Murnane
Demon Copperhead - Kingsolver
The Sympathizer - Nguyen
Bleeding Edge - Pynchon
The Human Stain - Roth
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Díaz
Americanah - Adichie
My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Moshfegh
Evicted - Desmond
Seeing - Saramago
Zone - Énard
Submission - Houellebecq
HHhH - Binet
Minor Detail - Shibli
The Instructions - Levin
The Adversary - Carrère
Tomb of Sand - Shree
Cannonball - McElroy
A General Theory of Oblivion - Agualusa
My Work - Ravn
Tram 83 - Mujila
The Flamethrowers - Kushner
Heaven - Kawakami
Trilogy - Fosse
Capitalist Realism - Fisher
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jewel-odom · 5 months ago
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Book Review: Leaving the Atocha Station (2011)
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Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner was published in 2011 and won the Believer Book Award for the same year. Lerner’s debut novel, it was also named one of the best books of 2011 by the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and the Guardian, among others, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the New York Public Library’s 2012 Young Lions Fiction Award. Lerner is most prominently a poet, part of what makes this novel so alluring – he writes very lyrically, taking the reader on a syntactical ride that is arguably more important than the plot itself.
The plot follows Adam (or Adán) Gordon, an American poet spending a year abroad in Madrid on a prestigious fellowship in 2004. As Adam tells people throughout the novel, the purpose of his fellowship is to research and write a long and serious poem about the Spanish Civil War, a topic Adam knows nothing about and has absolutely no interest in. This sets him up to feel like a fraud, a sense of insecurity that permeates everything he does and almost ruins him. This feeling comes to a head when the 2004 Madrid train bombings occur, and Adam is shoved into a turbulent moment of passionate protest in Spain. Despite how dramatic this sounds; many people concur that Lerner seems to reject the idea of plot with this book.
While events do happen to and around Adam, the text is much more focused on Adam’s perception of people rather than the events themselves. Maureen Corrigan, writing for NPR, says the novel is “one of the most compelling books about nothing I've ever read.” Pages on pages are spent inside Adam’s head as he obsesses over the idea of being fake: a fake artist, a fake poet, a fake bilingual. He is afraid he is not capable of experiencing real emotion or real art, a concept the book opens with and follows through two romantic relationships and several blossoming friendships. This is something of a ‘meta-fiction’, something self-aware, both ironic and not ironic, fiction and not fiction, real and not real.  
An interesting article about Leaving the Atocha Station (which I first read for a 21st century American literature class – shoutout to Dr. Clark) discusses how Lerner experiments with the use of mediation and perception in LTAS. I would highly recommend reading this article (linked at the end) written by Daniel Shields from the Los Angeles Review of Books. My own experience of Lerner’s work became much clearer when I began to think of it in terms of an ironic and self-aware commentary on mediation and how one perceives their own experiences rather than something driven by plot.
This book is a very different experience from my previous two reviews. It falls more into the ‘literary’ category: it is dark, thought-provoking, and not the fun beach read that A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is. However, despite having read it almost a year ago now, it still prevails as one of my favorite books and lingers in my mind as I move throughout my daily life.   
~SPOILERS AHEAD~
I recently read George Saunders’ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain (which I would strongly recommend, if you are at all interested in literature and/or writing), where I first heard of skaz narration. Skaz narration, an old kind of oral narrative originating in Russia, pops up in Saunders’ chapter on “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogal. While reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but think of Lerner’s novel. The basis of skaz narration is that the story is told through an untrustworthy or unreliable narrator and the reader knowsit. As Shields comments on in his review, Adam is not only incredibly subjective in his experience of the world, but also filters it through the use of tranquilizers, pills, weed, and alcohol. This filters it for the reader as well, making him the perfect example of a skaz narrator.
This was the kind of self-reflexive point of view that drew me into this book. I felt like I was reading more than just the story on the page – I was being forced to read between the lines to find the real story. Perhaps one of my favorite consistent plotlines is the dynamic between Adam, Isabel, and Teresa. The two women repeat the same conversation with Adam constantly: Adam insists his Spanish and bad and each woman, confused, tells him it is perfect. As the reader, who do you choose to believe? This is the question of all skaz narrators. But just as important as the unreliable narrators are the reliable side characters who question them, prompting the reader to question them as well.
Another reason I love this book so much is the intersection of art within it. Famous paintings, artists, monuments, writers, and poets are referenced throughout as Adam considers how he fits in amongst them. This intertextuality adds another layer of experience to the novel. I found myself looking up pictures of what Adam was looking at before reading his internal dialogue so I could attempt to recreate his experience. In this, the novel, or rather I, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Adam does not understand his own creative process; he thinks he is a fraud. However, by the end of the novel he is highly successful. Yet I, the reader, still didn’t understand his creative process. Even looking at the same things he was, I didn’t feel any more of an ‘artist’, the same way he didn’t feel any more of an ‘artist’. This novel embodies what the plot revolves around: the creative ‘process’ is messy, elusive, and to an extent, nonexistent.
On that note, I’m going to end it here. I could go on and on about this book, so as always, leave your opinions in the notes.
Sources:
Leaving the Atocha Station: https://coffeehousepress.org/products/leaving-the-atocha-station
NPR Article: https://www.npr.org/2011/11/09/142109786/life-without-plot-in-leaving-the-atocha-station
Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/still-hungry/
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/609280/a-swim-in-a-pond-in-the-rain-by-george-saunders/
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litsnaps · 8 months ago
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quotespile · 2 years ago
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I believe she imbued my body thus, finding every touch enhanced by ambiguity of intention, as if it too required translation, and so each touch branched out, became a variety of touches.
Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station
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theyearlywalk · 10 months ago
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Ben Lerner - Leaving the Atocha Station
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2023readingyear · 1 year ago
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thecoffeephilosopher · 2 years ago
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The Hatred Of Poetry
The Hatred Of Poetry
I do not like the provocative title. I don’t think it is particularly useful. Years ago, before I became a father, I read Lerner’s first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station (I have not read any of his poetry, or rather, any of his poetry collections; I have probably read one of his poems in a magazine), but Hatred is my first time returning to him. The actual contents are much less provocative…
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ayearincontent · 2 years ago
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2023
key
bold = highlight of 2023
+ = not new in 2023
# = book club
books
The Lost Daughter, Elena Ferrante (trans. Ann Goldstein) (2006)
The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner (2018)#
One Day, David Nicholls (2009)
Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (2022)#
A Man in Love, Karl Ove Knausgaard (trans. Don Bartlett) (2009)
Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata (trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori) (2018)#+
The Orton Diaries, Joe Orton (ed. John Lahr) (1996)
Heatwave, Victor Jestin (trans. Sam Taylor) (2021)
The Color Purple, Alice Walker (1982)#
Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner (2011)#
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante (trans. Ann Goldstein) (2013)
All The Devils Are Here, David Seabrook (2002)
Milk Teeth, Jessica Andrews (2022)
Hot Milk, Deborah Levy (2016)
If I Had Your Face, Frances Cha (2020)#
A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City, Edward Chisholm (2022)
So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan (2023)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver) (1979)
Assembly, Natasha Brown (2021)#
Carmilla, Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)#
When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut (trans. Adrian Nathan West)#
audiobooks
The Call of the Weird, Louis Theroux (2005)
For the Record, David Cameron (2019)+
films
Knives Out (2019)
Glass Onion (2022)
Belfast (2022)
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Aftersun (2022)
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Palm Springs (2020)
The Menu (2022)
The Worst Person in the World (2022)
Building Jerusalem (2015)
Close (2022)
Barbie (2023)
Logan Lucky (2017)
All My Friends Hate Me (2021)
The Lobster (2015)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023)
Fracture (2007)
albums
'Dance Fever', Florence + the Machine (2022)
'Cautionary Tales Of Youth', Lapsley (2023)
'MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE...', Easy Life (2022)
'in/FLUX', Anna B Savage (2023)
'Where I'm Meant to Be', Ezra Collective (2023)
'Mid Air', Romy (2023)
'Ella and Louis', Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (1956)
exhibitions
'Dia Al-Azzawi: Painting Poetry', Ashmolean Museum
'Spain and the Hispanic World', Royal Academy
'Hilma af Kilnt & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life', Tate Modern
live music
Weyes Blood, Roundhouse
Easy Life, Alexandra Palace
Sofar Sounds, Holborn
Open Mic Night, Backstory
Soul Central, Stanway House (my wedding!)
��nder Focan Trio, Nardis Jazz Bar
The Aaron Parks Quartet, Ronnie Scott's
theatre
Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty, Sadler's Wells Theatre
A Little Life, Harold Pinter Theatre
restaurants
The Lion, Winchcombe+
Pierre Victoire, Oxford+
The Perch, Binsey+
Morse Bar, Randolph Hotel, Oxford
Noble Rot, Soho+
Viet Corner, Balham+
Foley's, Fitzrovia
Tongi, Balham
Nobu, Shoreditch
Sophie's, Soho
The Eastern Eye, Brick Lane
Made in Italy, Clapham Junction+
Chez Jules, Edinburgh
Morton's Bistro, Gilmorton
No 29 Power Station West, Battersea
Rondo, Holborn+
Taberna da Baixa, Lisbon
Ponto Final, Lisbon
Sacramento, Lisbon
El Deseo, Ibiza
Cottons, Ibiza
La Bodega, Ibiza
Smoke & Salt, Tooting
Antica Trattoria della Pesa, Milan
The FisherMan Pasta, Milan
Baobab Organic Burger, Milan
La Casa Iberica, Milan
Felice a Testaccio, Milan
Osteria del Proconsolo, Florence
I' Girone De' Ghiotti, Florence
Entoca Pitti Gola e Cantina, Florence
Fooderia, Manarola
Il Porticciolo, Manarola
Nessun Dorma, Manarola
Ananasso Bar, Vernazza
Ristorante La Torre, Vernazza
Boisdale, Belgravia
Oakhill, Matlock
Caraffini, Chelsea
Coal Office Restaurant, King's Cross
Thai Night @ Milk, Balham
Canto Corvino, Spitalfields+
The Royal Oak, Gretton+
Wild Oven, Stanway House (my wedding!)
The Back Garden @ Dormy House, Broadway
La Cave, Annecy
Bon Pain Bon Vin, Annecy
Bleu 1801, Annecy
Côté Jardin @ La Maison Bleue, Annecy
La Table de Yoann Conte (**), Annecy
Pane Cunzato, Holborn
Lao Cafe, Covent Garden
Galata Art Smyrna Restaurant Cafe, Istanbul
Antakya Kebap asmalı, Istanbul
Tarihi Eminönü Dürümcüsü, Istanbul
Bilice Kebap, Istanbul
Cafe Privato Restaurant, Istanbul
Asmalı Mescit Dürümcü, Istanbul
Pandeli, Istanbul
Galata Kitchen, Istanbul
Muutto, Istanbul
Yöremiz Pide Lahmacun, Istanbul
Cappadocian Cuisine, Goreme
Wood Fire Barbeque, Goreme
Paket Kiymali Salonu, Ihlara
Beydilli Kebap Barbeque, Goreme
Yeşil Vadi Göreme Şubesi, Goreme
Kale Terrasse Restaurant, Goreme
Le Relais de Venise l'Entrecôte, City
Juliet's, Tooting
Forza Win, Camberwell
The Ginger Fox, Hassocks 
Shack Fuyu, Soho+
Noizé, Fitzrovia (x2)
Socius, Burnham Market+
The Brisley Bell, Brisley
Forza Wine @ NT, South Bank
Yuu Kitchen, Shoreditch
Circolo Popolare, Fitzrovia
Obica, Soho
Forza Wine, Peckham
Pachamama East, Shoreditch
Master Wei Xi’An, Holborn
podcasts
The Ricky Gervais Show (XFM)+
The Russell Brand Show (Radio 2)+
The Always Sunny Podcast+
The Adam Buxton Podcast+
Kermode & Mayo’s Take+
Books and Authors+
Literary Friction+
The New Statesman Podcast+
The Rest is Politics+
A Very British Cult
How I Built This+
The Prospect Podcast
Working It+
The News Agents
The News Meeting
Today in Focus+
The Slow Newscast+
Law in Action+
A Long Time in Finance+
The Lawyer Podcast+
Young Again
tv
The White Lotus (series 2)
Severance (series 1)
Succession (series 4)
The Bear (series 1-2)
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (series 16)
Beckham (limited series)
Boiling Point (series 1)
Top Boy (series 1-3)
Top Boy: Summerhouse (series 1-2)
talks
David Nicholls, Backstory
foreign travel (no 'favourites of the year', all excellent)
Edinburgh
Lisbon
Ibiza
Italy (Milan, Bellagio, Santa Margherita Ligure, Cinque Terra, Tuscany)
Lake Annecy
Turkey (Istanbul, Cappadocia)
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