It’s here, the host of Footnotes & Tangents, a website where I write guides to the books I love and invite you all to read with me at a gentle pace.

We’re starting a new slow read next week as we begin seven weeks with Pat Barker’s Regeneration. All the details are below, and I’d love you to join us. But first,

• What have you been reading this month?

This is our monthly thread where we talk about the other books we’ve been reading. Let us know your recent and current reads below. The comments section gets fairly busy, so please put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters to help fellow readers navigate the discussion. Thank you!

Leave a comment

News

If you’re new here – hello! If you haven’t already done so, check out our big welcome post to find out what it is all about.

We’ve just wrapped up a 13-week read-along of Midnight’s Children, revisiting a novel I was infatuated with as a teenager. Has the love worn off? Yeah, a bit. But we had a fascinating time unpicking Salman Rushdie’s bewildering story of time and pickles. And the 13-post guide and discussion are all there on the website for everyone to enjoy.

Meanwhile, our two annual read-alongs continue: War and Peace and Wolf Crawl: a year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. We’ll start the second book, Bring Up the Bodies, in May if you would like to join us then.

Curtis Brown

I started this month with some big news:

It’s been an intense 3 years, writing some 150 posts exploring 9 fabulous books. I’ve loved sharing these with you, reading your comments, and watching these stories and slow reading blossom in people’s lives.

Where do we go from here? I’m now working on what this project might look like in print, and I’m excited to have an agent's support at Curtis Brown to help develop these ideas.

Oh, and you can help too! Last month, I set up an online questionnaire to gather your slow read stories. Thank you to everyone who has shared so far – it really is so incredibly helpful and illuminating!

Going live

I did a few recordings this month, one for ’s new podcast coming out later this year. Another with which you can watch here.

I had a lovely chat with of The Middling Place about read-alongs, literature and the books that made us. She runs a book club on her Substack that has recently read Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts. Watch here:

I also had a good long natter with the lovely about all things Cromwell, her Stitching Cromwell project and why we will never ever slow-read Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black (even though it is amazing). Watch here:

And Next Tuesday at 8 pm GMT, I’ll be going live with to discuss the art of slow looking. Check out her Substack, The Reflective Eye. You can tune in on the Substack App, and I’ll upload that video next month.

Watch again: Conversations with Sarah Fay | Sarah Steward Holland | Caroline Donahue

Subscribe now

Join our slow read of Regeneration by Pat Barker (April–May 2026)

This is going to be special.

Regeneration (1991) is a historical novel set in a psychiatric hospital during the First World War. The patients were soldiers being treated for shell shock, a condition poorly understood and not widely recognised at the time. Two of the patients were the war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

Pat Barker’s novel is remarkably complex, exploring themes of memory and trauma, duty and shame, art as resistance and recovery, masculinity, class, and women's roles in war. At its heart is a fascinating portrait of the conflicted and compassionate psychiatrist and anthropologist WHR Rivers.

Regeneration is the first novel in a trilogy, followed by The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize in 1995. And deservedly so; it is an astonishing piece of literature. My plan is to run read-alongs of these two books in 2027 and 2028.

I hope you’ll stick around for those.

Regeneration home page

And here’s a few frequently asked questions about these read-alongs:

1. What is a slow read? And, how does a slow read work?

Every Friday, I publish a discussion post to accompany the reading. This post includes my reflections, additional resources, related imagery and artwork, and interesting links to continue your exploration of the themes, ideas, footnotes and tangents.

I suggest you first read the scheduled section of the book and then come to the post, where you can join other readers for discussion in the comments.

You can read each post in your email inbox, on the Substack app, or on my website. And you can also listen to it as a podcast and download it to your phone.

The rest is up to you! This is your slow read, and you should make it your own. You can chat with other readers or even arrange to meet up, online or offline. You can keep a private journal of reflections or share your thoughts with us in your own posts. Some readers are inspired to create: to draw, paint or knit their way through the book.

Be inspired. There is no right way to read a book.

2. How much reading is there each week?

I have assigned four chapters for the first and last weeks of the read-along. The rest have three chapters. Each is between 10 and 20 pages.

The reading schedule

3. Can I read at my own pace?

Of course! The reading schedule is a guide only.

The schedule gives me time to research and write my posts. But don’t let it cramp your style. We’re not at school, and this is not homework.

Find your rhythm. If you want to race ahead or saunter behind, if life gets in the way, or your curiosity gets the better of you, do what works for you. My posts and our discussion will always be here when you want them.

4. Can I listen instead of read?

Yes! There is no reading snobbery here, and these slow reads are designed to be accessible to those with visual impairments or who prefer to listen instead of reading.

All my posts are released as podcasts. You can listen to these on the Footnotes & Tangents website, on the Substack App, or download and listen to them on your favourite podcast app.

5. How do I join?

It’s a two-step process:

1. Subscribe to Footnotes & Tangents, and

2. Turn on notifications for “2026 Regeneration” in the subscription settings.

If you are not sure how to do this, I have included a tutorial video below.

6. How much does it cost?

The first post of every read-along is always free. For example, here are the first posts for War and Peace, Wolf Hall, and Midnight’s Children. After that, you’ll need a paid subscription to Footnotes & Tangents for £5/month or £50/year. This includes:

• A weekly post with discussion, resources, artwork, videos and further links

• A friendly, insightful and inclusive discussion space in the comments

• A podcast version of my posts to download and listen to on your favourite app

• Access to all my book guides

7. Is there a discount for group subscriptions?

Yes. Two or more people can get 20% off an annual subscription here.

Group subscriptions

8. Can I gift a subscription?

Definitely, you can give someone a monthly or annual subscription here. You can also schedule a gift so they receive it at the perfect time.

Gift a subscription

9. Is there support for readers on a low income?

Yes! This is my day job, and I work full-time to put these guides together, so I am grateful for everyone who can afford to make this happen.

However, I do not want your circumstances to be a barrier to enjoying great literature. So if you are an engaged reader with low or no income, please get in touch so I can support your reading with a complimentary subscription.

10. What is Substack? How do I use it? Help!

If you are new to Substack, don’t panic!

You don’t need the Substack App to read my posts or participate in the read-along. In fact, I recommend avoiding the app if you are not already familiar with it. It may confuse and complicate an otherwise straightforward experience!

Substack is the platform that runs the Footnotes & Tangents website, delivers the emails and manages subscriptions. Don’t think about it as another social media platform, but the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes things go.

Here is a video tutorial for using the website, managing your subscription settings, and finding all the slow-read resources.

11. Any further questions?

If you have a question that I haven’t answered here, please leave a comment, hit reply, or send me a message on Substack. And if you know someone who might love one or more of these slow reads, please share this post with them. Thank you!

My recent reads

This month’s reading included a first foray into the world of Proust (oh, master of similies! I’ll be back), a whole lot of Russell Hoban, some CS Lewis and William Golding, and Alan Garner’s memoir in anticipation of our slow read of Treacle Walker in July. Here’s the full list:

• SWANN’S WAY by Marcel Proust (1913, tr. Scott Moncrieff, 1922)

• TILL WE HAVE FACES by CS Lewis (1956)

• PINCHER MARTIN by William Golding (1956)

• KLEINZEIT by Russell Hoban (1974)

• TURTLE DIARY by Russell Hoban (1975)

• PILGERMANN by Russell Hoban (1983)

• THE MEDUSA FREQUENCY by Russell Hoban (1987)

• MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie (1981)

• WHERE SHALL WE RUN TO? A MEMOIR by Alan Garner (2018)

What have you been reading?

Now it’s over to you. Let us know what you’re reading in the comments.

And if you can put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters, it will help others find books they love or may be interested in.

All the best and happy, adventurous reading,

Simon

Leave a comment

It’s here, the host of Footnotes & Tangents, a website where I write guides to the books I love and invite you all to read with me at a gentle pace.

I’ve got some exciting news and a favour to ask below, but first

• What have you been reading this month?

This is our monthly thread where we talk about the other books we’ve been reading. Let us know your recent and current reads below. The comments section gets fairly busy, so please put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters to help fellow readers navigate the discussion. Thank you!

Leave a comment

Our current slow reads

If you’re new here – hello! If you haven’t already done so, check out our big welcome post to find out what it is all about.

There are currently three read-alongs underway, with more planned later this year. It’s never too late to join in: everyone reads at their own pace, and everything I create is compiled into book guides – as of this month, there are over 150 posts on 9 books!

We’re in Week 8 of all our read-alongs:

War and Peace: Intro | Schedule | Week 1 | … | Week 8

Wolf Crawl: Intro | Schedule | Week 1 | … | Week 8

Midnight’s Children: Intro | Schedule | Week 1 | … | Week 8

Later this year: Regeneration by Pat Barker, The Inheritors by William Golding, Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, and The Children’s Book by AS Byatt.

Join a read-along by updating your notifications in your subscription settings.

Subscribe now

Exciting news

So I have begun work on a book! I am excited, exhilarated and just a wee bit terrified by the prospect. And I am in the early days of planning, but I’ll keep you updated on its progress in the months ahead.

It will be a book about slow reading and a celebration of the sort of reading we do here at Footnotes & Tangents. The reading I am passionate about: intentional, curious and creative responses to books that are alive in the world.

And I need your help

At its heart, slow reading is about the reader’s journey.

Over the last three years, I have heard so many stories of how slow reading has impacted people’s lives: from building confidence and a reading habit to creating a calm refuge in a restless world, from nurturing curiosity and creativity to strengthening bonds between friends and family.

I want to get those stories into this book.

So I would love to hear from you. I have created an online form to record your stories, but you can also reply to this post or email me at footnotesandtangents@substack.com.

Share your slow read story

I am especially interested in

• how your reading experience compares to how you read normally

• how it has affected how you read other books

• and any surprising ways it has impacted the rest of your life

Everything will be kept confidential, and I will always seek your permission before sharing your stories.

Thank you so much for all your time!

Going live

I’ve been too busy to do any Substack Lives this month. It’s our first year of having a child in school, and I’m still getting used to juggling work around school holidays!

But if all goes to plan this month, I’ll be popping up on and ’s podcasts, and on Tuesday 10 March I’ll be doing a live with of The Middling Place to chat about our shared love of literature and slow reads. That’ll be at 8 PM GMT / 1 PM PDT, and we’ll share the video afterwards.

Watch again: Conversations with Sarah Fay | Sarah Steward Holland | Caroline Donahue

My recent reads

Here’s what I have been reading this month.

LITTLE BOY LOST (1949) by Marghanita Laski

This is a brilliantly haunting book. In the aftermath of the Second World War, a British poet goes to France in search of his lost son. His inner world resembles the bombed-out world he moves through, and the "little boy lost" is both himself and the boy who may or may not be his. A book full of ruins.

BLUETS (2009) by Maggie Nelson

What's your favourite colour? According to Nelson, half of the adults in the Western world say theirs is blue. Myself included. Nelson’s response to the colour is entirely her own – tinged with heartbreak, inked with sex – and it makes for a curious addendum to our slow read of Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower.

LIFE CLASS (2007) by Pat Barker

With our slow read of Barker’s Regeneration coming in April, I decided to read some more of her novels. The Life Class trilogy explores how artists depicted the destruction wrought by the First World War. The main characters are young students at the Slade School of Art, who meet in Henry Tonks's life-drawing class. And they are still sketching out their lives when the war tears through everything, altering how they see each other and the world. It’s a book about looking that gets deeper and darker the further in you go.

TOBY’S ROOM (2012) by Pat Barker

For me, this second book is the strongest in the trilogy. The novel's title is a nod to Virginia Woolf, whose brother, Thoby, died at 26 of typhoid. Woolf’s novel Jacob's Room tells the life of a young man through the thoughts of those around him. Barker does something similar for Toby Brooke, who is reported as "Missing, believed killed" in 1917. We piece together the truth through the narratives of his sister Elinor, and her fellow war artists Kit Neville and Paul Tarrant.

NOONDAY (2015) by Pat Barker

In the final book of the trilogy, the narrative jumps to the 1940s and the Blitz, and to a denouement in the ruins between the three main characters, overburdened with grief, bitterness, and loss. The leap forward in time is jarring, and the characters feel peculiarly underdeveloped and out of place against the finely researched backdrop of the Blitz.

JACOB’S ROOM (1922) by Virginia Woolf

After Toby’s Room, I had to read Jacob’s Room! Perhaps because I listened to Juliet Stevenson read this, I thought about how it would make a great radio play. A play for voices, like Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas: its audience eavesdropping on the mind streams of so many people, but with one melancholy exception. An eerie absence at its heart, waves of other people's thoughts pushing you back to land as his are lost forever out to sea.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1999) by John Stuart Roberts

This was background reading for our slow read of Pat Barker's Regeneration. In Barker's novel, Sassoon and Wilfred Owen are patients at Craiglockhart War Hospital. At the heart of the book is Sassoon’s mentorship of Owen and his fascinating exchanges with the psychiatrist and anthropologist W H R Rivers. However, reading this biography gave me the impression that the real Sassoon was the least compelling of these three men. As a sensitive young man in love with words, he struggled to find the object for his poetry that war so acutely supplied. Though he lived another fifty years, he never seemed to recapture that urgent ferocity of voice during the war.

SOLDIERS DON’T GO MAD (2023) by Charles Glass

Continuing my background reading for Regeneration. This is an excellent companion book to Barker's novel, with detailed chapters on the Craiglockhart War Hospital, its patients Max Plowman, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and its chief psychiatrists Arthur Brock and WHR Rivers. If you are joining us in April and would like an introduction to the book, I think this would be a fine place to start.

What have you been reading?

Now it’s over to you. Let us know what you’re reading in the comments.

And if you can put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters, it will help others find books they love or may be interested in.

All the best and happy, adventurous reading,

Simon

Leave a comment

It’s here, the host of Footnotes & Tangents, a website where I write guides to the books I love and invite you all to read with me at a gentle pace.

• What have you been reading this month?

This is my monthly newsletter and a chance to talk about the other books we’ve been reading. Let us know your recent and current reads below. The comments section gets fairly busy, so please put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters to help fellow readers navigate the discussion. Thank you!

Leave a comment

If you’re new here – hello! You are very welcome, and you may want to check out our big welcome post so you feel even more welcome. It’s a great place to start.

Subscribe now

Slow Read News

January is my busiest month, getting three slow reads underway simultaneously: Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (now in its fourth year!), Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Wolf Crawl, our annual slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy.

It’s never too late to join these groups. Everyone reads at their own pace. Here’s what past readers have said about our slow reads.

Besides writing and recording new material, I have my hands full helping new readers find their way around the website, Substack and the slow reads.

You’ll find most questions answered in the welcome packs, and I’ve also added a troubleshooting guide at the bottom of this post. If you’re still stuck, just drop me a message – I’m always on hand to help.

OK, let’s have a head count.

Quick links for our slow reads

Join a read-along by updating your notifications in your subscription settings.

We’re in Week 4 of all our read-alongs:

War and Peace: Intro | Schedule | Week 1 | … | Week 4

Wolf Crawl: Intro | Schedule | Week 1 | … | Week 4

Midnight’s Children: Intro | Schedule | Week 1 | … | Week 4

Later this year: Regeneration by Pat Barker, The Inheritors by William Golding, Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, and The Children’s Book by AS Byatt.

The slow reads are for paid members, but the first post is always free. Complimentary subscriptions are available to readers on low or no income, and there is a 20% discount on group subscriptions.

Subscribe now

Substack Live

One of my goals for 2026 is to do more Substack Lives. Given the choice, I’d hide all day in a book or behind my laptop – so these chats are a good way of getting out of my comfort zone. Plus, they are good fun! Last year, I did one about AS Byatt with and another about slow reads with .

This week, invited me for a chat on her Substack. Sarah works with writers, helping them build their platform on Substack, and we had a great conversation about Footnotes & Tangents’ journey from Instagram side project to bestselling Substack newsletter. You can watch that chat here, or in the video below:

I’ve got more things planned in the next few months, including chats with , , , – hopefully also and down the line. The next live will be with at 11 Feb at 9 PM GMT. Jeff runs his own slow reads at Burning Archive, and recently put up an excellent video on why slow reads are taking over Substack:

Appreciative reading in good company.

Book clubs and book groups are indeed taking off on Substack, and you can find a big list of them here, maintained by .

I’m always trying to find the right words to explain what we are doing with Footnotes & Tangents, and I really quite like Jeff’s description of “appreciative reading.” Jeff, I hope we can explore this further when we meet in a couple of weeks.

My recent reads

Here’s what I have been reading this month. The links below are affiliate links to the Footnotes & Tangents bookshop at Bookshop.org.

EVERYTHING WILL SWALLOW YOU (2025) by

If the late great Douglas Adams and the living legend Ali Smith teamed up to write a book loosely based on the adventures of Wallace and Gromit, with less cheese and more vinyl, you would have something almost but nowhere nearly absolutely unlike Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox. There’ll be someone out there who says we don’t need more books about semi-aquatic dogs that knit, but that person could not be more wrong. Buy this book. Better still, buy the excellent audiobook narrated by Justin Avoth.

EXCELLENT WOMEN (1952) by Barbara Pym

My first Pym, and what a delight! Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman’s daughter in her thirties, living a humdrum life in shabby post-war London. It’s a quiet, understated sort of book. The humour is sharp and dark: there’s a character who has declared war on all birds and takes every opportunity to reduce their numbers by putting them on her plate. But there is a sad aching heart to the novel that reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro’s first-person narrators and their longings for lives unlived.

THE ODD WOMEN (1893) by George Gissing

For some reason, I’ve never read Gissing. George Orwell called him “perhaps the best novelist England has produced.” He wrote 23 novels and is best known for New Grub Street, set in literary London in the 1880s. The “odd women” were the supposed “surplus” of unmarried women in Victorian Britain, for whom there were no men left to marry. Gissing uses this idea to explore the lives of women from across society, including a proto-feminist circle of independent women carving out lives and careers without men or marriage. Despite becoming a bit melodramatic towards the end, it felt surprisingly modern and not the sort of book you might expect from the pen of a Victorian man.

SILENCE (1966) by Shūsaku Endō

Translated by William Johnston. I found this book through a recommendation from Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent, Melmoth, and Enlightenment. It’s the story of a Portuguese Jesuit missionary who travels to Japan in the seventeenth-century to investigate reports that his former mentor has renounced his religion under torture. At this time, the authorities were suppressing Christianity in Japan, and the missionary became a witness and a victim of this persecution. Endō was a Catholic, and Silence is often compared to Graham Greene’s religious novels, especially The Power and the Glory. I thought this was an astonishing book.

THE SAMURAI (1980) by Shūsaku Endō

Translated by Van C. Gessel. Written much later in Endō’s career, The Samurai is a more complex novel than Silence, and probably one of the best works of historical fiction I have read in a long time. It is also set during the seventeenth century. A samurai is sent by his superiors to negotiate trade with the Spanish in Mexico. The voyage takes him to the Americas, to Spain, and finally to Rome. He is accompanied by an unscrupulous Spanish priest, determined to convert Japan to Christianity. It’s thoroughly engrossing, as both characters are forced to react to the shifting landscape of seventeenth-century global geopolitics.

BEOWULF translated by Seamus Heaney (1999)

Hwæt a book! I have never been compelled to read Beowulf, so my first full exposure to the Anglo-Saxon epic poem comes with no resentment at weighty obligation. I just fancied a wintry tale of myth and monsters. And of course it is magnificent!

BEOWULF translated by Maria Dahvana Headley (2021)

Bro! Why read one Beowulf when you read two? There are apparently over 600 translations of Beowulf, and more than 50 English versions. Maria Dahvana Headley uses modern vernacular to give the poem the same in-your-face immediacy that the original must have had for those West Saxons in their meadhall. MDH also offers a feminist interpretation by highlighting the story’s female narratives and emphasising the inflated male egos that boast their way to the grave. Utterly terrific.

GRENDEL (1971) by John Gardner

One more Beowulf before we go? Gardner tells the tale from Grendel’s perspective, so terribly misunderstood by those meadhall men. And you do feel sorry for him in the end, although it is a very odd book crammed with existential philosophy and pontificating dragons. I think it’s time Beowulf and I spent some time apart.

What have you been reading?

Now it’s over to you. Let us know what you’re reading in the comments.

And if you can put THE BOOK TITLE in capital letters, it will help others find books they love or may be interested in.

All the best and happy, adventurous reading,

Simon

Leave a comment

Membership troubleshooting

It’s not all plain sailing. These are the most common issues readers come to me with:

1. I’m not getting any emails. First, check your subscription settings to ensure the relevant notifications are enabled. Next, make sure your newsletter delivery preferences are set to “prefer email.” Finally, add footnotesandtangents@substack.com to your safe list so it doesn’t get filtered as spam.

2. I’m a paid member, but can’t see the paid posts. A common problem occurs when you accidentally subscribe twice with different email addresses. Check your subscription settings to see whether you need to log back in using your paid account.

3. I’m a paid member, but I can’t comment. Note that comments are disabled on the daily and weekly reminder posts for War and Peace and Wolf Crawl. This is deliberate. These posts all link to the relevant chat thread or discussion post, where you can comment.

4. I’ve set up the podcast, but can’t see the most recent podcasts. I recorded and published all the War and Peace and Wolf Crawl podcast episodes last year. They won’t be re-released in your podcast feed, but they're already available for you to work through at your own pace this year.

Subscribe now

Hello, friends and fellow readers!

It’s here, the host of slow read-alongs at Footnotes & Tangents, and I would like to invite you to join the 2026 slow read of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a chapter a day.

Over the last three years, I have run a series of worldwide book groups exploring some of my favourite novels at a gentle pace with rich resources and a fantastic reading community. The first slow read was Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and every year since, I have re-run this read-along.

This post serves as your introduction and welcome pack, containing everything you need to decide if this slow read is right for you. There are also lots of quotes from readers who have joined me this year. For more reviews of our slow reads, check out the testimonials page on the website.

In a nutshell: War and Peace has 361 chapters. We read a chapter a day, and every Wednesday, I send out a link to a post that discusses the last seven chapters. These posts contain chapter summaries, my reflections, paintings, music, useful videos, and links to continue your reading. These posts are also available as a podcast. In the comments, you can connect with fellow readers and discuss the week’s reading. There is also a chat thread for each chapter, linked to from these posts and from the reading schedule.

New in 2026: Next year, you’ll also be able to sign up for a daily post/email that will include a chapter summary, my footnotes and tangents, and a link to the daily chat thread.

War and Peace home page

Also running next year: a bunch of new slow reads starting with Midnight’s Children in January, and Wolf Crawl, our year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why read War and Peace?

I first read War and Peace in 2007. I went backpacking in South America and took the biggest book I could find. All I knew was that it was a classic, and it was very big – 1,358 pages! To my surprise and delight, I discovered a deeply humane novel – sharp, funny and wise – about life’s struggle for peace and happiness amid war and misfortune.

Tolstoy drops you in the middle of a soirée in nineteenth-century St Petersburg, a party packed with truly awful people. You think to yourself: Surely I have nothing in common with these rich Russian aristocrats from another era. There’s no way I would want to spend a year in their company!

But then Tolstoy does something remarkable. This strange world starts to feel very familiar. We recognise the characters in ourselves and in the people we know. Our first impressions give way to a greater understanding, and we start to care about these people as though they were friends and family.

And all this is told with an unerring clarity and compassion. It is like looking into still, clear waters. You see life reflected back at you in the novel. And it’s all here. Within these pages, characters grow up, fall in love, encounter fear, hatred, and despair, and care for and grieve each other. They learn how to live and how to die. They ask big questions, and sometimes they find answers.

“If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.” – Isaac Babel

It’s also a great story, full of twists and turns, high drama and heartache. And first-time readers are often struck by how readable, entertaining and even funny it is. But it’s more than just a great story. It’s a good one. It has a good heart. A rich soul. And the world feels a little better, a little truer, for having read it.

2. Why read War and Peace slowly?

Slow reading is an opportunity to really savour a book. We miss so much when we race ahead. Slowing down not only allows us to notice more, but it also makes us more patient and mindful readers. It can enliven our curiosity, sending us off on adventures we did not anticipate.

Slow reading is also a great way to get back into the habit of reading. Many of the readers I meet here have rediscovered their love of books through these slow reads. As with all habits, the key is to start small and slow. A few pages a day with the support of a friendly community of readers. You may be surprised by the difference it makes.

Some reasons people join the War and Peace slow read:

• It’s been on your list forever, and you finally want to say you’ve read it!

• You used to love reading and want to get back into it.

• You want to be more confident about reading classics and ‘difficult’ books.

• You want to build a daily reading habit.

• You want to create a reading refuge from the world.

• You tend to rush books and want a reason to slow down.

• You want the companionship of fellow readers who are on the same reading journey.

3. How does the read-along work?

War and Peace has 361 chapters. So, it’s the perfect book to read a chapter a day over the course of a year. We start on Thursday, 1 January 2026, and continue to the end of the year, with one day off at the end of each of the four volumes.

Each day, I publish a chapter summary with additional footnotes and tangents, along with a link to the daily chat thread. These posts link to plot summaries for all the characters to help you keep track of who’s who.

Every Wednesday, I will link to a weekly compedium post that compiles all these resources together with an introduction exploring the week’s main theme. These posts have voice-overs and are available as podcasts to download.

You can choose to sign up for the daily email and/or the weekly post. You can chat with readers in the daily chat threads linked to from these posts and from the reading schedule. Alternatively, you can comment on the weekly posts and join the discussion there.

The rest is up to you! This is your slow read, and you should make it your own. You can chat with other readers and arrange to meet up, online or offline. You can keep a private journal of reflections or share your thoughts with us in your own posts. Some readers are inspired to create: to draw, paint or knit their way through the book.

Be inspired. There is no right way to read a book.

4. Which translation of War and Peace should I read?

We have people reading in many languages and different translations. There is no definitive translation in English, and this will ultimately be a matter of personal taste.

My best advice is to sit down in a bookshop and read a few pages from a couple of translations. You will have an instinctive preference. Go with your gut.

Note that if you pick up a free translation online, it will almost certainly be the out-of-copyright version by Louise and Aylmer Maude. This is an excellent choice. However, it is worth noting that some chapters are divided slightly differently from those in the reading schedule. These are not major, and I flag the discrepancies in the schedule, but it is worth keeping in mind.

In the original version, Leo Tolstoy wrote some passages and dialogue in French. Some editions have translated everything into English; others have provided translations in footnotes.

There are seven English translations in print. I am familiar with the three most recent versions, and they all have the same chapter divisions as the read-along:

Anthony Briggs (Penguin Classics)

This was the first translation I read in 2007. It feels very modern and uses British English. I loved it, and it is how I fell in love with War and Peace. It’s a great translation for first-timers, especially those not used to reading classics.

Some non-British readers find the dialogue occasionally jarring, especially the ‘cockney’ soldiers, but the modern style makes it exceptionally easy to read. It’s a solid choice and the firm favourite for many readers.

In this translation, French is translated in the text without footnotes.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage Classics)

This version is often pitched as the most faithful translation with a precise word-for-word translation of the original. I personally find it a little pedantic and flat-footed in places, but you may have a better experience.

If authenticity is important to you (and hey, it was very important to Tolstoy), you may value this serious and scholarly version. It is a popular choice among Literature students, and it is the copy you will probably first find in a bookstore, especially in the United States.

In this edition, French is translated in the footnotes.

Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford World’s Classics)

The Maudes were friends of Tolstoy, and he personally approved this translation. In 2010, it was revised and updated by Amy Mandelker.

I have listened to the original version twice, and this updated version is my preferred translation for the read-along. The language can feel a little old-fashioned compared to Briggs, but I find it a smoother read than the more literal translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky.

In this version, the French is translated in the footnotes as well.

If you would like to dive deeper into the differences among all the translations, I recommend this detailed article on the We Love Translations website.

5. How do I keep track of all the characters?

There are a lot of them! More than 500 characters with over 200 real historical figures, and a character may be referred to by their title, a diminutive, their patronymic, or even a French version of their name.

This is where I am here to help.

I have created a full list of characters. This links to plot summaries for all the major characters. My weekly posts link to these plot summaries and will help you keep the Denisovs and Dolokhovs straight in your head.

The slow read and the daily chat will also really help the names sink in. After that, you should have no problem keeping track.

The Characters of War and Peace

6. How long are the chapters in War and Peace?

War and Peace is around 1,300 pages long. That sounds long, but it means each chapter is only about 3-4 pages. If you are listening, that’s about 10 minutes.

This is the perfect length to read during a coffee break, first thing in the morning or last thing at night.

If you want to develop the habit of reading daily, this is an excellent way to do it. For others, it leaves plenty of time to read more books alongside War and Peace.

7. Can I read at my own pace?

Of course! The reading schedule is a guide only and don’t let it cramp your style. We’re not at school, and this is not homework.

Find your rhythm. If you want to race ahead or saunter behind, if life gets in the way, or your curiosity gets the better of you, do what works for you. My posts and our discussion will always be here when you need them.

8. Can I skip the ‘war parts’?

No.

OK, you can. People do. But I don’t recommend it. The themes of war and peace are so closely entwined in this story, and you will get less than half of what this book has to offer by skipping the battles.

In fact, I’d go further. The title is misleading. It gives the impression that the book is divided into war sections and peace sections. In reality, there is peace on the battlefield and war in the ballroom.

And you may surprise yourself. My best advice is to read without expectations and with curiosity for every page. You never know what may resonate with you, and some of Tolstoy’s most beautiful and important writing describes events in the most frightening of circumstances.

9. Can I listen instead of read?

Yes! There is no reading snobbery here, and these slow reads are designed to be accessible to those with visual impairments or who prefer listening to reading.

I recommend Thandie Newton’s narration of the original Maude translation. Here’s a review. As I mentioned above, it has the slight disadvantage of the occasional difference in chapter divisions. But Newton’s reading is superb.

All my posts are released as podcasts. You can listen to these on the Footnotes & Tangents website, on the Substack App, or download and listen to them on your favourite podcast app.

10. Great, I’m in. When does it start?

Thursday 1 January 2026. The reading schedule is straightforward: we read a chapter a day through the whole of next year, with a day off between each of the four volumes.

2026 reading schedule

In 2025, and ran a War and Peace read-along on their Substack, The Reader & The Writer. They have kindly shared their bookmarks to use with this slow read. You can download them here:

• Jan-Mar War and Peace bookmark

• Apr-June War and Peace bookmark

• July-Sept War and Peace bookmark

• Oct-Dec War and Peace bookmark

11. How do I join?

There are two ways to get the read-along resources. You can sign up for either or both of them.

2026 War and Peace Daily

A daily post/email with a plot summary, additional footnotes and tangents, and a link to the daily chat thread. To sign up to this…

1. Subscribe to Footnotes & Tangents, and then

2. Turn on notifications for “2026 War and Peace Daily” in the subscription settings.

2026 War and Peace Weekly

A weekly email that links to the full discussion post for the last seven chapters. This has the same content as “War and Peace Daily” + a section on the weekly theme + voice-over/podcast version + comments section. To sign up to this…

1. Subscribe to Footnotes & Tangents, and then

2. Turn on notifications for “2026 War and Peace Weekly” in the subscription settings.

If you get stuck, I have included a tutorial video below.

12. How much does it cost?

The first weekly post is free. After that, you’ll need a paid subscription to Footnotes & Tangents of £5/month or £50/year. This includes:

• 361 daily posts with plot summaries, footnotes, tangents, and further links

• 50 detailed weekly posts with discussion, resources, artwork, videos and further links

• A podcast version of these posts to download and listen to on your favourite app

• Chat threads for each chapter and a friendly, insightful and inclusive discussion space in the weekly posts.

• Access to all my other book guides, including Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, and the 2026 guides: Midnight’s Children, Regeneration, The Inheritors, Treacle Walker, and The Children’s Book.

13. Is there a discount for group subscriptions?

Yes. Two or more people can get 20% off an annual subscription here.

Group subscriptions

14. Can I gift a subscription?

Definitely, you can give someone a monthly or annual subscription here. You can also schedule a gift so they receive it at the perfect time.

Gift a subscription

15. Is there support for readers on a low income?

Yes! I would like everyone to enjoy slow reading with us, and I don’t think personal circumstances should be a barrier to great literature. Paying subscribers help me support readers with low or no income by offering complimentary subscriptions to those who need them. So if that’s you, please get in touch.

16. What other books are running next year?

Here is the full lineup for 2026:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all year)

• Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, & The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (all year)

• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Jan–Mar)

• Regeneration by Pat Barker (Apr–May)

• The Inheritors by William Golding (June)

• Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (July)

• The Children’s Book by AS Byatt (Sep–Dec)

Read more about these slow reads here. Read about Wolf Crawl here.

17. What is Substack? How do I use it? Help!

If you are new to Substack, don’t panic!

You don’t need the Substack App to read my posts or participate in the read-along. In fact, I recommend avoiding the app if you are not already familiar with it. It may confuse and complicate an otherwise straightforward experience!

Substack is the platform that runs the Footnotes & Tangents website, delivers the emails and manages subscriptions. Don’t think about it as another social media platform, but the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes things go.

Here is a video tutorial for using the website, managing your subscription settings, and finding all the slow read resources.

18. Who on earth is Simon Haisell anyway?

Good question! I’m still trying to figure that one out. I am a writer living in Newcastle, UK, with a passion for slow, curious and creative reading. If you would like to know more about me and the brief history of Footnotes & Tangents, I recently did an interview for Matthew Long 📚⚓, which you can read here.

I will also be going live on Substack with Sarah Stewart Holland on Wednesday, 3 December at 5PM GMT. Sarah joined us for Wolf Crawl this year, and will be hosting her own slow read of Stephen King’s The Stand next year with Laura Tremaine. We will be talking about slow reading and how we organise and host these read-alongs. If you miss it, the recording will be available on the website afterwards.

Update: Watch that conversation with

19. Any further questions?

If you have a question that I haven’t answered here, please leave a comment, hit reply, or send me a message on Substack. And if you know someone who might love this slow read, please share this post with them. Thank you!

Thank you

As always, I am overwhelmingly grateful for the enthusiasm and insight everyone brings to these read-alongs. It really is something special, and I couldn’t do it without all of you!

Next month, there will be a new welcome post to introduce Footnotes & Tangents and me to new subscribers, and where new and seasoned readers can introduce themselves in the comments.

Until then, best wishes and adventurous reading,

Simon

Subscribe now

Hello, friends and fellow readers

It’s Simon here, the host of slow read-alongs at Footnotes & Tangents, and I would like to invite you to join Wolf Crawl in 2026.

Over the last three years, I have run a series of worldwide book groups exploring some of my favourite novels at a gentle pace with rich resources and a fantastic reading community. For two years, I have led a year-long reading of Hilary Mantel’s magnificent trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light.

The read-along is called Wolf Crawl. This post serves as your introduction and welcome pack, containing everything you need to determine if this slow read is right for you. There are also lots of quotes from readers who have joined me this year and last. For more reviews of our slow reads check out the testimonials page on the website.

In a nutshell: We read around 40 pages a week. Each Monday, I send out a link to the week’s discussion post, packed with reflections, resources, paintings, music, useful videos, and links to further reading. These posts include maps by and archival research from . These posts are also available as a podcast. And in the comments, you can connect with fellow readers, share your experience and discuss the week’s reading.

Wolf Crawl Home Page

Also running next year: a bunch of new slow reads starting with Midnight’s Children in January, and the return of the War and Peace slow read (I’ll post about this one later this month).

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

‘So now get up.’
   Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turned sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why read Wolf Hall?

These are astonishing books. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both won The Booker Prize. Wolf Hall topped The Guardian’s list of the best 100 books of the 21st Century, so far. In a similar list in The New York Times, Wolf Hall came third.

Hilary Mantel died in 2022. “It was always a pleasure”, wrote Margaret Atwood, “to read such a smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, and one with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature.”1

“There was something boundless about Hilary Mantel’s imaginative process,” Colm Tóibín wrote, “She saw historical forces operating with immense clarity, but she also could create with real skill and flair the intimate moment, the tiny scene, the sudden shift of light or of power in a relationship.”

“Mantel bristled with intelligence, looked at everything, saw everything,” wrote Anne Enright. “Mantel was that rare writer,” said Kamila Shamsie, “whom you read and think, I have no idea how your brain goes where it goes, and how it comes back to produce the work that it does.”

“Fierce, fabulous and fearless,” wrote Maggie O’Farrell.

Sarah Perry: “What will we do without her?”

I wanted to remember Hilary Mantel by creating this resource and reading community: a slow and careful study of her books.

These are novels for anyone interested in what language can do. It is historical fiction, and so much more. They are a study of character and conscience, power and ambition, memory, myth-making and the birth of the modern world.

Subscribe now

2. Who was Thomas Cromwell?

Born around 1485, Cromwell was the son of a brewer-blacksmith from Putney, on the outskirts of London. In a spectacular rags-to-riches story, he rose in the service of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to become Henry VIII’s chief minister in the 1530s. On 28 July 1540, he was beheaded for treason.

An architect of the English Reformation, Thomas Cromwell is primarily known for his role in securing the king’s divorce from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and the beheadings of Thomas More and Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.

More was the humanist scholar who gave us the word utopia. He is a Catholic saint and martyr; his life immortalised in the play and film, A Man for All Seasons. Anne Boleyn was the mother of Elizabeth I. Cromwell made her queen and then engineered her downfall on dubious charges of adultery, incest and treason.

Three books, three beheadings. Please read carefully.

• More: Historian Diarmaid Macculloch introduces Thomas Cromwell

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3. Do I need to know the history to read Wolf Hall?

No. Background knowledge is useful but not necessary. This is a story about people and place, characters and conflict. You will learn the history as you become immersed in the story. And I will always be here with additional explanatory notes and resources to fill the gaps in your knowledge of the period.

4. Is Wolf Hall hard to read?

Hilary Mantel’s trilogy is known for its distinctive voice and style. The books are written in the third person from Thomas Cromwell’s point of view. We watch events unfold in the present tense from a place somewhere behind his mind’s eye.

In that space, our pronouns become a little confused: Thomas Cromwell is sometimes “I,” “We,” “You,” but most often “He.” In a book swarming with characters, we can sometimes be a little unsure of who “he” refers to. On such occasions, Mantel steps in with the clarifying and now notorious, “He, Cromwell.”

As I hope you’ll come to realise, this peculiar narrative device is part of the genius of these books. It can take a few chapters to get used to. But once your ear has adapted to Mantel’s style, you will be flying fast and high, entirely under her spell.

Pro tip: My best recommendation to anyone struggling to get into these books is to grab the audiobooks narrated by Ben Miles. Trust me, this is a game changer! Ben Miles brings Cromwell and Mantel’s prose to life.

5. How do I keep track of all the characters?

Wolf Hall has a lot of characters, and at least 14 men called Thomas! There are over 100 named individuals in the trilogy, many of whom have a variety of nicknames and multiple titles.

Each week, I link to plot summaries for each character to refresh your memory. Almost all the characters were real historical people, and in my posts, there will be paintings for you to put faces to those names.

At some point in your reading, Uncle Norfolk will start to feel like the family you wish you never had. Rafe Sadler will be the friend you hope will never let you go. But until then, my posts are here to help!

The Full Cast

6. What is a slow read? And, how does a slow read work?

2026 will be my fourth year running read-alongs of great books.

At the start of each week, I link to the discussion post that accompanies that week’s reading. This post includes my reflections, additional resources, related artwork, and interesting links to continue your exploration of the themes, ideas, footnotes and tangents.

I suggest reading the scheduled section of the book and then coming to the post where you can join other readers for discussion in the comments. These are the same posts (slightly revised) as the 2025 read-along, so you can benefit from all the observations made by last year’s readers.

For the best experience, I recommend reading these posts on the Footnotes & Tangents website; however, you can also access them within the Substack app. All these posts are available as a podcast to download.

The rest is up to you! This is your slow read, and you should make it your own. You can chat with other readers and arrange to meet up, online or offline. You can keep a private journal of reflections or share your thoughts with us in your own posts. Some readers are inspired to create: to draw, paint or knit their way through the book.

Be inspired. There is no right way to read a book.

7. Why read slowly?

Slow reading is an opportunity to really savour a book. We miss so much when we race ahead. Slowing down not only allows us to notice more, but it also makes us more patient and mindful readers. It can enliven our curiosity, sending us off on adventures we did not anticipate.

Slow reading is also a great way to get back into the habit of reading. Many of the readers I meet here have rediscovered their love of books through these slow reads. As with all habits, the key is to start small and slow. A few pages a day, maybe 5–20 minutes reading with the support of a friendly community of readers. You may be surprised by the difference it makes.

8. Can I write for Wolf Crawl?

Yes! In 2024, I started Wolf Crawl on my own. Several readers have written supplementary posts, and I link to them in the main posts.

has written a series of posts on the food of Wolf Hall, has written on headgear, and has written on a variety of subjects, from kingship and fatherhood to magic and religion.

If you would like to take up a particular thread, just let me know so I can add your posts to the guide.

In 2025, the Wolf Crawl team grew with some fantastic contributions to the main posts:

Archives: Lucie Bea Dutton

is a stitcher and obsessive Cromweller, with unparalleled knowledge of the books. Each week, she brings us documents from the archive to shed more light on the story. You can read more about Bea and her Stitching Cromwell project on her Substack: The Thread of Her Tale.

Maps: Matt Brown

writes for The Londonist: Time Machine and has created a series of maps that document every place mentioned in the trilogy. Matt has made over 50 maps to help us navigate Cromwell’s world.

Resources: Jesse Haughton-Shaw

has compiled a library of additional resources for readers to continue exploring the trilogy and Mantel’s work more generally, including reviews, interviews and literary criticism.

Illustrations: Laura Crow

has brought our characters to life with 52 portraits of the key historical figures featured in the books. She’s also designed Wolf Crawl’s beautiful banner and dividers. Check out her website here.

Music: Joe Bates and Sam Cave

When Cromwell is feeling upbeat, he sometimes hears a tune he once heard in Italy: “Scaramella” by Josquin des Prez. For the podcast version of the Wolf Crawl posts, I asked composer Joe Bates to arrange a melancholic interpretation of Cromwell’s jaunty earworm. Joe’s arrangement is performed by guitarist Sam Cave.

9. When does Wolf Crawl start?

Monday 5 January 2026: We start Wolf Hall (17 weeks)
Monday 4 May 2026: We start Bring Up the Bodies (12 weeks)
Monday 27 July 2026: We start The Mirror and the Light (23 weeks)

Full reading schedule

10. How much reading is there each week?

We have 2,007 pages ahead of us.

On average, that is 38 pages a week, or five and a half pages a day. This varies between around 20 and 50 pages. Mantel writes long chapters, so I’ve had to make some editorial decisions about how to divide them up.

11. Can I read at my own pace?

Of course! The reading schedule is a guide only.

The schedule gives me time to research and write my posts. But don’t let it cramp your style. We’re not at school, and this is not homework.

Find your rhythm. If you want to race ahead or saunter behind, if life gets in the way, or your curiosity gets the better of you, do what works for you. My posts and our discussion will always be here when you need them.

12. Can I listen instead of reading?

Yes! There is no reading snobbery here, and these slow reads are designed to be accessible to those with visual impairments or who prefer to listen instead of reading.

If you would like to listen to the audiobook, I strongly recommend the version narrated by Ben Miles. Miles performed Cromwell in the stage adaptations and collaborated with Mantel in the writing of the final book.

All my posts are released as podcasts. You can listen to these on the Footnotes & Tangents website, on the Substack App, or download and listen to them on your favourite podcast app.

13. How do I join Wolf Crawl?

It’s a two-step process:

1. Subscribe to Footnotes & Tangents, and then

2. Turn on notifications for “2026 Wolf Crawl” in the subscription settings.

If you're unsure how to do this, I have included a tutorial video below.

Turn on notifications

14. How much does Wolf Crawl cost?

The first post for each of the three books is free. Here is the first post for Wolf Hall. After that, you’ll need a paid subscription to Footnotes & Tangents of £5/month or £50/year. This includes:

• A weekly post with discussion, resources, artwork, videos and further links

• A friendly, insightful and inclusive discussion space in the comments

• A podcast version of my posts to download and listen to on your favourite app

• Access to all my book guides, including Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and the 2026 guides: Midnight’s Children, Regeneration, The Inheritors, Treacle Walker, and The Children’s Book.

Subscribe now

15. Is there a discount for group subscriptions?

Yes. Two or more people can get 20% off an annual subscription here.

Group subscriptions

16. Can I gift a subscription?

Definitely, you can give someone a monthly or annual subscription here. You can also schedule a gift so they receive it at the perfect time.

Gift a subscription

17. Is there support for readers on a low income?

Yes! I would like everyone to enjoy slow reading with us, and I don’t think personal circumstances should be a barrier to great literature. Paying subscribers help me support readers with low or no income by offering complimentary subscriptions to those who need them. So if that’s you, please get in touch.

18. What other books are running next year?

Here is the full lineup for 2026:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all year)

• Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, & The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (all year)

• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Jan–Mar)

• Regeneration by Pat Barker (Apr–May)

• The Inheritors by William Golding (June)

• Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (July)

• The Children’s Book by AS Byatt (Sep–Dec)

Read more about these slow reads here. I’ll publish an intro post for War and Peace later this month.

19. What is Substack? How do I use it? Help!

If you are new to Substack, don’t panic!

You don’t need the Substack App to read my posts or participate in the read-along. In fact, I recommend avoiding the app if you are not already familiar with it. It may confuse and complicate an otherwise straightforward experience!

Substack is the platform that runs the Footnotes & Tangents website, delivers the emails and manages subscriptions. Don’t think about it as another social media platform, but the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes things go.

Here is a video tutorial for using the website, managing your subscription settings, and finding all the slow read resources.

20. Who on earth is Simon Haisell anyway?

Good question! I’m still trying to figure that one out. I am a writer living in Newcastle, UK, with a passion for slow, curious and creative reading. If you would like to know more about me and the brief history of Footnotes & Tangents, I recently did an interview for , which you can read here.

I will also be going live on Substack with on Wednesday 3 December at 5PM GMT. Sarah joined us for Wolf Crawl this year, and will be hosting her own slow read of Stephen King’s The Stand next year with . We will be talking about slow reading and how we organise and host these read-alongs. If you miss it, the recording will be available on the website afterwards.

Update: Watch that conversation with

21. Any further questions?

If you have a question that I haven’t answered here, please leave a comment, hit reply, or send me a message on Substack. And if you know someone who might love this slow read, please share this post with them. Thank you!

Thank you

As always, I am overwhelmingly grateful for the enthusiasm and insight everyone brings to these read-alongs. It really is something special, and I couldn’t do it without all of you!

There will be two more posts this year. Later this month, I will re-introduce our annual read-along of War and Peace for newcomers. And there will be a welcome post in December for anyone who would like to say hi and (re)introduce themselves!

Until then, best wishes and adventurous reading,

Simon

Hello!

It’s Simon here, the host of slow read-alongs at Footnotes & Tangents.

Over the last three years, I have run a series of worldwide book groups exploring some of my favourite novels, from Tolstoy’s War and Peace, to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, JG Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

Footnotes & Tangents is all about reading curiously and creatively at a gentle pace. In a world that is fast and fraught, this is a rare opportunity to slow down, get lost in a book and share that journey with a friendly and insightful community of readers from all around the world.

Each week, I publish a discussion post to accompany our reading. This is also available as a podcast and includes various footnotes and tangents that have caught my attention or piqued my curiosity. There are images, videos, music, questions, and links to continue your adventure. And everyone can join the discussion in the comments.

Subscribe now

Read slowly with us in 2026

So I would like to invite you to join us for a slow read next year. Here is the full line-up:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all year)

• Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, & The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (all year)

• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Jan–Mar)

• Regeneration by Pat Barker (Apr–May)

• The Inheritors by William Golding (June)

• Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (July)

• The Children’s Book by AS Byatt (Sep–Dec)

War and Peace & Wolf Crawl

I have run a War and Peace read-along for three years, and for the last two years I have organised Wolf Crawl, a slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books.

These have both been spectacularly popular, and there’s been considerable interest in my hosting these again in 2026. So these will both be running next here!

• Intro post for War and Peace

• Intro post for Wolf Crawl

You can already find the book guides that accompany these slow reads on my website, which include podcast versions of over 100 detailed discussion posts, as well as additional character summaries and further resources.

Subscribe now

New slow reads in 2026

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Jan–Mar)

To understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world.

The first 30 years of Indian independence, told by Saleem Sinai, a boy born at the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, at the precise moment modern India came into existence. This is a complex novel, layered with cultural references, mysteries and magic. It won three Booker Prize awards in 1981, 1993 and 2008, and is the perfect opportunity to explore the stories and histories of the most populous nation on Earth.

• Watch: Why should you read “Midnight’s Children”?

I first read Midnight’s Children as a teenager, and was utterly seduced. I can remember my first literary hangover and the absurd fear that I would never read anything this good again. And yet I think I understood very little of what I read. Over 20 years later, it is time to return to Midnight’s Children for a slow read.

To join, turn on notifications for “2026 Midnight’s Children” in your subscription settings.

Join the Midnight's Children slow read

Regeneration by Pat Barker (Apr–May)

A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.

A brilliant, beautiful book, focusing on the psychiatric treatment of soldiers during World War I. Its real historical characters include the anthropologist-cum-psychiatrist, W.H.R. Rivers, and the two war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. It is a novel about trauma, memory, and recovery; life and art; art as witness to life; and life as resistance to death.

• Interview: The Booker Prizes interviews Pat Barker

Regeneration begins a trilogy that concludes with The Ghost Road, a magnificent novel that won the Booker Prize in 1995. I have my heart set on a slow read of that book, superlatively subtle and complex. But to get there, we must start here, in the Craiglockhart War Hospital, with Dr Rivers and his patients.

To join, turn on notifications for “2026 Regeneration” in your subscription settings.

Join the Regeneration slow read

The Inheritors by William Golding (June)

This was a different voice; not the voice of the people. It was the voice of other.

Best known for Lord of the Flies, William Golding won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983, “for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today.”

• Watch: William Golding’s daughter, Judy Golding, introduces The Inheritors

The Inheritors depicts a tribe of Neanderthals encountering modern humans for the first time. Like all fables, it strikes at the universal and resonates through our own troubled times. Golding’s Neanderthals lack the words to make sense of what they see as homo sapiens bring their world to its tragic end. Lyrical and tender, it is darkly brilliant.

‘Each time I revisit The Inheritors I find something new’ – Penelope Lively

And a slow read of The Inheritors will be a great opportunity to explore what we have learned about Neanderthals and our ancestors since the book was published in 1955.

To join, turn on notifications for “2026 The Inheritors” in your subscription settings.

Join The Inheritors slow read

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (July)

There’s not a lot wrong with your eyes, Joe. What beats me is your sight.

Joseph Coppock lives alone in an old house, squinting at the world through a lazy eye. When Treacle Walker comes calling, with his cure-all medicine and his donkey stone, Joe begins a journey through myth and magic, into stories, and down into deep time.

• Watch: Jarvis Cocker reads a section of Treacle Walker

Ninety-year-old Alan Garner is perhaps England’s greatest living writer. He is notorious for taking years to produce slim novellas rich in meaning. His latest book, Treacle Walker, is 152 pages and took seven years to write. You could read it in an afternoon, but where would the fun be in that?

• Watch: Promo video for Treacle Walker from The Blackden Trust

Treacle Walker is where I began slow reading. In 2022, it made the Booker Prize shortlist, and I spent two months excavating the world beneath the words: from magic mirrors to mythic bags, from the bog people to the Bonnacon, chalk horses on the hill, and the sleeping kings within. Birds and bones. Bones and stones.

This is what slow reading is all about. It’s time to re-read Treacle Walker.

To join, turn on notifications for “2026 Treacle Walker” in your subscription settings.

Join the Treacle Walker slow read

The Children’s Book by AS Byatt (Sep–Dec)

No man has a right to dictate another man’s inner life – the furniture inside his skull.

In the summer, I asked you what slow read you’d most like to see. High on that list was Possession, AS Byatt’s 1990 Booker Prize-winning romance of Victorian poets and academic sleuths. Well, I read Possession and loved it. Then I read The Children’s Book, and loved it more.

The Children’s Book follows a group of children growing up through the golden summers of late Victorian and Edwardian England, coming of age in a turbulent world, sleepwalking into war. It’s about children’s literature and changing the world. It’s about mysteries, secrets and lies.

• Watch: AS Byatt talks about The Children’s Book

And the rabbit holes! We will explore fairytales and theatre, pottery and puppetry, anarchists, suffragettes, and war poets. And it will be all over by Christmas.

To join, turn on notifications for “2026 The Children’s Book” in your subscription settings.

Join The Children's Book slow read

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a slow read? And, how does a slow read work?

2026 will be my fourth year running read-alongs of great books.

At the start of each week, I publish a discussion post to accompany the reading. This post includes my reflections, additional resources, related artwork, and interesting links to continue your exploration of the themes, ideas, footnotes and tangents.

I suggest reading the scheduled section of the book and then coming to the post where you can join other readers for discussion in the comments.

You can read each post in your email inbox, on the Substack app, or on my website. And you can also listen to it as a podcast and download it to your phone.

The rest is up to you! This is your slow read, and you should make it your own. You can chat with other readers and arrange to meet up, online or offline. You can keep a private journal of reflections or share your thoughts with us in your own posts. Some readers are inspired to create: to draw, paint or knit their way through the book.

Be inspired. There is no right way to read a book.

2. How much reading is there each week?

As a rule of thumb, I try to divide books up into 40–50 page chunks. Occasionally, there is a little more or a little less than this.

3. Can I read at my own pace?

Of course! The reading schedule is a guide only.

The schedule gives me time to research and write my posts. But don’t let it cramp your style. We’re not at school, and this is not homework.

Find your rhythm. If you want to race ahead or saunter behind, if life gets in the way, or your curiosity gets the better of you, do what works for you. My posts and our discussion will always be here when you want them.

4. Can I listen instead of read?

Yes! There is no reading snobbery here, and these slow reads are designed to be accessible to those with visual impairments or who prefer to listen instead of reading.

All my posts are released as podcasts. You can listen to these on the Footnotes & Tangents website, on the Substack App, or download and listen to them on your favourite podcast app.

5. How do I join?

It’s a two-step process:

1. Subscribe to Footnotes & Tangents, and

2. Turn on notifications for your chosen read-along in the subscription settings.

If you are not sure how to do this, I have included a tutorial video below.

6. How much does it cost?

The first post of every read-along is always free. For example, here’s the first post for War and Peace. After that, you’ll need a paid subscription to Footnotes & Tangents of £5/month or £50/year. This includes:

• A weekly post with discussion, resources, artwork, videos and further links

• A friendly, insightful and inclusive discussion space in the comments

• A podcast version of my posts to download and listen to on your favourite app

• Access to all my book guides, including War and Peace and Wolf Crawl: a year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy

Subscribe now

7. Is there a discount for group subscriptions?

Yes. Two or more people can get 20% off an annual subscription here.

Group subscriptions

8. Can I gift a subscription?

Definitely, you can give someone a monthly or annual subscription here. You can also schedule a gift so they receive it at the perfect time.

Gift a subscription

9. Is there support for readers on a low income?

Yes! This is my day job, and I work full-time to put these guides together, so I am grateful for everyone who can afford to make this happen. However, I do not want your circumstances to be a barrier to enjoying great literature. So if you are an engaged reader with low or no income, please get in touch so I can support your reading with a complimentary subscription.

10. What is Substack? How do I use it? Help!

If you are new to Substack, don’t panic!

You don't need the Substack App to read my posts or participate in the read-along. In fact, I recommend avoiding the app if you are not already familiar with it. It may confuse and complicate an otherwise straightforward experience!

Substack is the platform that runs the Footnotes & Tangents website, delivers the emails and manages subscriptions. Don’t think about it as another social media platform, but the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes things go.

Here is a video tutorial for using the website, managing your subscription settings, and finding all the slow read resources.

11. Any further questions?

If you have a question that I haven’t answered here, please leave a comment, hit reply, or send me a message on Substack. And if you know someone who might love one or more of these slow reads, please share this post with them. Thank you!

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Thank you

As always, I am overwhelmingly grateful for the enthusiasm you all bring to these read-alongs and the contributions people make. I am super excited for the year ahead!

There will be three more posts this year: two in November introducing the year-long War and Peace & Wolf Crawl slow reads. And a welcome post in December for anyone who would like to say hi and (re)introduce themselves!

Until then, best wishes and adventurous reading,

Simon

Hello!

This is Endnotes, a monthly newsletter from Footnotes & Tangents, the home of slow reads and book guides to enrich your reading. I am your host and guide, . You can join a slow read and customise your emails, posts and podcasts in your settings. Thank you!

Poll: Would you be interested in a 2026 War and Peace read-along?

I have run the War and Peace slow read for three years now. Thousands of readers all over the world have joined us in reading the 361 chapters of Leo Tolstoy’s epic over a year. It’s been a bit of a hit!

I’m not officially running the read-along in 2026. However, I can set up the reading schedule and send out the posts, podcasts and chat threads to anyone interested in doing the slow read. I’d love to get a sense of whether there is a demand for this!

News & updates

• I turned 42 last week! A very satisfying milestone, thanks to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Just ask Google. Or watch the TV or film versions where the answer is revealed. Me? I’m happy still searching…

• Wolf Crawl will definitely run in 2026. This is a slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books. The read-along is in its second year, and we are two weeks into our reading of The Mirror and the Light. The last two posts: Week 30 & Week 31.

• War and Peace and Wolf Crawl are for paid subscribers. For free subscribers, we are over halfway through Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety. Recent posts: Week 11, Week 12 & Week 13.

• Upcoming free read-alongs: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe in September and The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald in November.

• 2026 slow reads will be announced in September! There will be no Endnotes newsletter at the end of August, but I’ll be back in September to announce the new read-along picks for 2026. I’m excited!

• The 2026 slow reads are all for paid subscribers. A heck of a lot of work goes into putting these together, so I’m super grateful for all your support. Footnotes & Tangents has a “soft” paywall, which means I give access to anyone on a low or no income to support their reading. If that’s you, please get in touch.

• Special offer summer sale! If you would like to upgrade, there is a 12-month 20% discount, available for the next week. Here’s the coupon!

• I was interviewed by about Wolf Crawl and the pleasure of slow reading The Mirror and the Light. Read that interview here. Wolf Hall Weekend is hosting a celebration of Mantel’s final novel on 6 & 7 June 2026 at All Hallows by the Tower of London. I’ll be chairing a conversation with Dr Lucy Arnold on the themes of memory and haunting in The Mirror and the Light. Get your tickets here.

• I’m going live with ! Caroline is an author, podcaster and writing coach who runs an excellent newsletter & website at Book (& Craft) Alchemy. Substack Live is a live stream session, and oh no, I have never done one of these before – so it will be interesting! Caroline and I are going to talk slow reads and AS Byatt. She’s got a read-along of Possession lined up for September, and I may just announce one of my 2026 picks live on air. So tune in on the app and or in Substack Notes on Friday, 22 August at 16:00 BST.

• Footpaths: a writer’s diary. In June, I began an irregular series of posts on my reading journey and writing process. Here’s the most recent post: #11 My heart is excited. You can get these in your inbox by turning on notifications for Footpaths in your settings.

Customise your Footnotes & Tangents experience

When you subscribe to Footnotes & Tangents, you are automatically signed up to this monthly newsletter. To keep your inbox clear, everything else is opt-in. And there is a lot going on! To customise your experience, edit your notification settings:

Opt-in to read-alongs and more

For some silly reason, you can’t do this in the Substack app. But it works fine from email, mobile or desktop browser. By the way, don’t turn on notifications for Marginalia, which is a section for further resources like character summaries. When the 2026 books are announced, you will be able to opt in to each of these separately.

August Book Groups

In our library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory – a list of read-alongs, book clubs and book groups hosted by readers and writers on Substack.

This will be the last month I update this list. It’s been rather time-consuming, and I need to refocus my energy on other projects. I hope it has been useful!

If you run a Substack newsletter and would like to take over running the Substack Book Group Directory, please get in touch.

Here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in August:

• The Audacious Book Club with : Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power by Parvati Shallow

• The Austen Connection Read-Along with : Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Jul - Aug)

• The Big Read with : Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Jun - Sept)

• The Book Club for Busy Readers with : Live Love Now by Rachel Macy Stafford

• The Burning Archive Slow Read with : The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb - Sep)

• Chasing Fog Book Club with : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all 2025)

• Close Reads HQ with , , : Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Jul - Aug)

• Closely Reading with : Middlemarch by George Eliot (May - Aug) / The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (Aug - Oct)

• Commonplace Philosophy with : Zhuangzi (romanised as Chuang Tzu)

• Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club with : The Incredible Kindness of Paper by Evelyn Skye

• The Cultural Diegetic with : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025)

• Deep Reads Book Club with : Homer’s The Iliad (Jan - June)

• The Eclectic Reader with : Quicksand by Nella Larsen

• Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with : Child from the Sea by Elizabeth Goudge

• The First Books Book Club with : The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy & a secret modern spy novel (Aug - Sept)

• 4,000 Ideas: The Oliver Burkeman Bookclub with : Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (Feb - TBD)

• FrizzLit with : Joan Didion Book Club (Jul - Sep)

• Genius & Ink with : Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)

• The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with : Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery

• Love of Literature with : The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (Jun - Aug)

• More Magic Book Blub with : Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

• Mystics Reading Society with : When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron (Jul - TBD)

• Personal Canon Formation with : ChaucerReading Challenge (continued)

• Pirate Seminar with : A General History of the Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (Jun - Aug)

• Pomus Aureus with : Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante (Jun - Sep)

• Read the Classics with : Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

• The Reader & the Writer with & : War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Phantastes by George MacDonald

• Reading Revisited with & : Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

• The Sixty-Minute Book Club with : Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl

• To All My Darlings with : Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)

• Well-Read Weekend with : The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

Thank you!

And that’s all from me. Many thanks for subscribing to Footnotes & Tangents and joining our slow reads. Remember to grab the 20%-off discount on subscriptions; the special offer runs until next Friday.

I’ll be back in September to announce the 2026 slow reads! Until then, happy reading.

Simon

Greetings!

This is endnotes, a monthly newsletter from footnotes & tangents. You can customise which emails you receive in your settings.

subscribe to footnotes & tangents

A quick update

It’s a short one from me this month as I’m taking a few days off to write. If you are interested in my reading and writing adventures, I have started a little blog on footnotes and tangents called footpaths. As with the book groups, you can get those posts in your inbox by editing your settings.

Our book groups are currently reading War and Peace, Bring Up the Bodies, and A Place of Greater Safety. We will read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe in September and The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald in November.

This week, I was astonished to see that the War and Peace podcast has topped 150k downloads since it began in January. And Wolf Crawl is almost at 100k. I can’t get my head around these numbers, so I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone taking part this year!

Read ‘The Mirror and the Light’ with us!

Starts: 23 July 2025 Ends: 30 December 2025

We shall not escape these weeks. They recapitulate, always varied and always fresh, always doing and never done.

Wolf Crawl, our year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, will start the final novel next month. The Mirror and the Light follows Thomas Cromwell from the beheading of Anne Boleyn in May 1536 to his own execution in July 1540.

If I must choose, this is my favourite book in the trilogy. The language is Mantel at the height of her powers; the first two books haunt the third as the story bends and flows to its inevitable conclusion.

The read-along runs from 23 July through to the end of 2025.

I wrote a detailed 23-week guide last year. I’ll be revisiting and re-recording that material for this year’s slow read, with additional archival material from , maps by and artwork from Crow.

In addition, there are summaries for all the characters and further resources about Wolf Hall and Hilary Mantel. There is a full reading schedule here.

Everyone is welcome to join us for the final leg in the Cromwell saga. You don’t have to have taken part in Wolf Crawl, but you should have read the first two books.

I know many people have put off reading The Mirror and the Light because they didn’t want the story to end. Consider this your invitation and opportunity to complete the trilogy in good company.

You’ll need a paid subscription to access the posts and podcasts. If you want a flavour of the experience, you can read and listen to the first episode of Wolf Crawl for free.

For more on Wolf Crawl, read the intro post here or visit the main page on my website.

Wolf Crawl home page

July Book Groups

As usual, in our library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory. I update this list monthly. If you run a book group or book club on Substack, get in touch so I can add yours to the list.

And here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in July:

• The Audacious Book Club with : Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin

• The Austen Connection Read-Along with : Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Jul - Aug)

• The Big Read with : Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Jun - Jul)

• The Burning Archive Slow Read with : The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb - Sep)

• Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society: The 20th Century Book Club with : Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (Jun - Jul)

• Chasing Fog Book Club with : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all 2025)

• Close Reads HQ with , , : Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Jul - Aug)

• Closely Reading with : Middlemarch by George Eliot (May - Jul)

• Commonplace Philosophy with : The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

• Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club with : Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

• The Creative Kingdom Book Club with : by Julia Cameron (Mar - TBD)

• The Cultural Diegetic with : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025)

• Deep Reads Book Club with : Homer’s The Iliad (Jan - June)

• Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with : The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all 2025)

• The Eclectic Reader with : A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

• Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with : The Valley of Song by Elizabeth Goudge

• Emily’s Walking Book Club with : Persuasion by Jane Austen

• 4,000 Ideas: The Oliver Burkeman Bookclub with : Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (Feb - TBD)

• FrizzLit with : Joan Didion Book Club (Jul - Sep)

• Genius & Ink with : Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)

• Guerilla Readers with : Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy by Brian Stelter

• Interpreting the Great Artificer: Close readings of the works of James Joyce with : Dubliners by James Joyce (May - TBD)

• The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with : Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery

• Love of Literature with : The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (Jun - Aug)

• Melanie’s Frontal Lobe with : Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (continued)

• More Magic Book Blub with : The Web of Time by Flavia Brunetti

• Mystics Reading Society with : When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron

• Pirate Seminar with : A General History of the Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (Jun - Aug)

• Personal Canon Formation with : Chaucer Reading Challenge (continued)

• Pomus Aureus with : Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante (Jun - Sep)

• Read the Classics with : Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

• The Reader & the Writer with & : War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

• Reading Revisited with & : Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri

• The Sixty-Minute Book Club with : The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield

• To All My Darlings with : Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)

Substack Book Group Directory

Thank you!

And that’s all from me. Many thanks for subscribing to footnotes & tangents and joining our slow reads. And I’ll be back next month with more endnotes.

Happy reading,

Simon

Greetings!

This is Endnotes, a monthly newsletter from Footnotes and Tangents. You can choose which emails you would like to receive in your subscription settings.

Today, a personal response to Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is A River Alive?, an update from our slow reads, and a list of next month’s book groups hosted by readers and writers on Substack. Enjoy.

Subscribe now

This forest is alive and singing

In books, we so often see ourselves, fragmented and refracted in a story some other human tells. Memories stir. We recognise life, and life takes on more meaning to renew itself in words.

Then, just occasionally, you read a book where the author has set down your memory precisely as it was. There are no metaphors to mediate what you see, as the past lifts perfectly from the page.

It had been a strange evening. May 2025, warm and bright. I put the kids to bed, did odd jobs around the house and in the garden. While in my ears, I listened to Robert Macfarlane reading his new book, Is A River Alive?:

With every step we take up towards the Cedar Forest on that trail, the sense of the forest’s activity thickens, steams, multiplies, teems. The forest’s noise fizzes around us: hoots, buzzes, clicks, rasps, calls.

And there I am, back in Los Cedros, Ecuador, 2007. I spent two months up in this cloud forest, just north of the equator, in one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

I was in my early twenties, a little unmoored, adrift and disgruntled with myself and with the world. I had never been this far from anything, many hours by mule up a mountain deep into the mist and the mud. And yet here I felt close to something significant. Something alive.

It was here that I took my first copy of War and Peace. In a hammock in the clouds, listening to frogs hidden in the fog, I fell in love with Pierre Bezukhov. Tolstoy beneath the trees, I walked with Natasha by the river, great morpho butterflies dancing about our heads.

It was here I stood on the snake, while planting saplings in a pasture; its tooth leaving a little scar that twitched every time I swam. It was here, one day, I saw a puma watching me. A second, and it was gone.

Some months after I left, Ecuador proclaimed a radical new constitution that granted rights to nature. When mining corporations came to kill Los Cedros, activists and the courts intervened. The forest had a right to exist.

Robert Macfarlane’s book Is A River Alive? begins in Los Cedros in the wake of that ruling. He walks up the same path I walked almost twenty years ago. He meets Josef DeCoux, the larger-than-life American who for forty years was the shipwrecked guardian of that cloud forest.

He died last year, aged 73. When Rob visited, he handed him a copy of Gilgamesh for his forest library. DeCoux said, “Books don’t last long up here.” In the damp, living air.

In 2007, I left behind my copy of War and Peace. I wonder who read it after me? I took with me a piece of wood; a broken walking stick. Here it is on my desk, a memory of two months that turned my life.

Robert Macfarlane came to the cloud forest in search of the source of the Río Los Cedros, where water, air, land and life become almost indistinguishable and one. He was joined on his expedition by mycologist Giuliana Furci, legal activist César Rodríguez-Garavito, and the musician Cosmo Sheldrake.

As they climbed, they composed a song together and in collaboration with Los Cedros. Macfarlane writes:

We call it ‘Song of the Cedars’ because we know we couldn’t have written that song anywhere other than in that place, at that time. The river and the forest have made it possible. It is clear to us that Los Cedros has been our active collaborator, the song’s co-creator.

Macfarlane and his fellow humans want to get the Los Cedros ecosystem legally recognised as the moral author of this song. The Ecuador copyright office remains unconvinced, but it is not such a far-fetched idea in a country whose constitution has expanded the concept of personhood to encompass nature itself.

One day in May, I listened to the song written by a forest I once knew. In the gold edge of evening, the room fell dark as, green on green, the understory grew back. In the air at my skin, something slunk. The memory of a thing.

Trees speak in your leaves please
And streams tell me your dreams

Birds sing me your rhymes please
And stones teach me your times

Earth cover my limbs now
And mould thrive on my skin

Clouds deepen my sight please
And storms lend me your light

In the book beside me, I'd re-met the man who saved my life. Martín Obando, the forest guide who, that day, all but carried me down the mountain. Macfarlane writes, “he is made of steel and stone. His muscles have muscles on them.” I recall his gentle smile, giant strength, his hand guiding my eye to fungi, orchids, bromeliad.

Macfarlane writes:

All around us, we can see the forest extending in ridges and valleys. Mist hangs in scarves. The forest froths with sound: cicadas, birds, frogs, all singing and calling and signalling in a vast semiotic broth.

The forest is alive and singing in my room.

I tell it miracles. Forest, it’s been so long. I have children now! Forest, they are the strangest things. I’m writing a book. I think you’re in it, forest. I think you’re in everything I do now. Forest? I read a book, I heard a song, and memory took root in story to make life make sense once more.

Forest, you are alive. You are still alive. And thank you, forest, for everything. And thank you for your song.

• Find out more about the Los Cedros Reserve on their website and in the documentary linked above.

• Read more about Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is A River Alive?

• Buy Is A River Alive? from my bookshop

Slow read update

At Footnotes & Tangents, there are currently three slow reads underway:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: Main page | Most recent post

• Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel: Main page | Most recent post

• A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel: Main page | Most recent post

Two books on the horizon:

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (September): Main page

• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (November): Main page

All past slow reads are compiled in the book guides section of the website.

The lineup for 2026 will be announced at the end of September!

June Book Groups

As usual, in our library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory. I update this list monthly. If you run a book group or book club on Substack, get in touch so I can add yours to the list.

And here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in June:

• The Audacious Book Club with : Marsha by Tourmaline

• The Austen Connection Read-Along with : Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (May-Jun)

• The Big Read with : Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather / A Supposedly Fun Thing by David Foster Wallace

• The Book Club for Busy Readers with : On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks

• The Burning Archive Slow Read with : The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb - Sep)

• Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society: The 20th Century Book Club with : Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (Jun-Jul)

• Cams Campbell Reads with : Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov

• Chasing Fog Book Club with : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all 2025)

• Close Reads HQ with , , : The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni (Feb-Jun) / The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Closely Reading with : Middlemarch by George Eliot

• Commonplace Philosophy with : Plato’s Republic / The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

• Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club with : Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

• The Creative Kingdom Book Club with : Seeking Wisdom by Julia Cameron (Mar-TBD)

• The Cultural Diegetic with : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025) / Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu / Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin / Maurice by E.M. Forster / Orlando by Virginia Woolf

• Deep Reads Book Club with : Homer’s The Iliad (Jan - June)

• Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with : The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all 2025)

• The Eclectic Reader with : Summer by Edith Wharton

• Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with : The Joy of the Snow by Elizabeth Goudge

• Emily’s Walking Book Club with : Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark

• The First Books Book Club with : Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

• 4,000 Ideas: The Oliver Burkeman Bookclub with : Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (Feb-TBD)

• FrizzLit with : A Farewell to Arms and Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway (May-Jun)

• Genius & Ink with : Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)

• Guerilla Readers with : Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post by Martin Baron

• Interpreting the Great Artificer: Close readings of the works of James Joyce with : Dubliners by James Joyce

• The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with : Anne’s House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery

• Love of Literature with : The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (Jun-Aug)

• Melanie’s Frontal Lobe with : Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (continued)

• More Magic Book Blub with : Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VE Schwab

• Mystics Reading Society with : Wanderland: A Search for Magic in the Landscape by Jini Reddy

• Personal Canon Formation with : Chaucer Reading Challenge (continued)

• Pomus Aureus with : Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante

• Read the Classics with : Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / The Counterfeiters by André Gide (May-Jun) / The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens (Apr-Feb) / Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

• The Reader & the Writer with & : War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (May-Jun)

• Reading Revisited with & : Trust by Hernan Diaz

• Receipt from the Bookshop with : Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

• Science Fiction Reads with : Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

• The Sixty-Minute Book Club with : Recitatif by Toni Morrison

• To All My Darlings with : Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)

• Well-Read Weekend with : The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (May-Jun)

Substack Book Group Directory

Thank you!

And that’s all from me. Many thanks for subscribing to Footnotes and Tangents and joining our slow reads. And I’ll be back next month with more Endnotes.

Simon

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This is Endnotes, a monthly newsletter from Footnotes and Tangents. You can choose which emails to receive in your subscription settings.

Hello all

In this month’s Endnotes, some thoughts on reading dangerously, a reminder of next month’s slow read of A Place of Greater Safety, an exciting announcement for fans of Wolf Hall, and a list of next months’s book groups hosted by readers and writers on Substack.

Reading dangerously

“Are monsters in real life or just in stories?”

We bought Zack some new books. Greek legends, folk tales and short stories from around the world. I read to him about Theseus, who unwinds Ariadne’s thread into the centre of the labyrinth and kills the Minotaur.

Now he knows of mazes, willow and bamboo. We seek them out in England’s cold damp air, and he enters under the enchantment, hand holding his invisible thread.

With stories, the questions multiply: why did Theseus leave Ariadne behind? Why did his father, grieving, throw himself into the sea? What is tribute and revenge? What is death?

He asks me what is story and what is real. I do my best to answer, but feel ill-prepared for the task. There are no minotaurs in mazes, but men are monsters nonetheless. Some things he asks make me want to lie, and say all that is sad and scares is story. Real life is a place of greater safety.

Gregory Cromwell in Wolf Hall: “Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”

When the book is read, Zack potters off to play his games. Imagination is that invisible thread that ties together fact and fiction; the real and pretend. What good are stories that have no truth? What worth has life without the artful lie?

I read him ‘The Girl Who Owned a Bear’ by L. Frank Baum, the architect of Oz and the wizard behind the screen. In this short story, a girl is given a book of beasts. She turns each page, and animals leap into her room. A bear stands before her and threatens to eat her up.

You can’t, she says, for I own you. My name is written in the book, and the book belongs to me.

Zack asks, Is this real or just a story? We turn together to the beginning of his book, and I write on the dotted line: This book belongs to Zack. You own it now, and every word is yours. Some of these things are true, and some of them are lies. But they are all good stories, and for that, they cannot hurt you.

It feels true and not true, which may be the best I can do: a man of forty and a boy of four, equally but differently perplexed by the nature of things.

Next week, we begin a slow read of Hilary Mantel’s novel on the French Revolution: A Place of Greater Safety. It is fiction, but it is true. Not only did these things happen, in one shape or another, but the words on the page conspire to make real things happen in your head, and in your gut.

You are transported and consigned to a place that is not safe. Alive within the story, you love life all the more in terror of its terminus; its inevitable interruption. You own the book, you close the book, but Danton, Camille and Robespierre remain: bears in the room, bleeding from life, ready to eat you.

I cannot explain this to Zack, although his big eyes and his hand gripping mine make me suspect he already knows. Life expands and contracts between us, for perhaps there is not so much wisdom in experience. Just better words to describe what life and story will do.

He has begun to read dangerously, unspooling his imagination into the unsafe stories of our world. I am frightened for him; I am joyous. And I feel dangerously alive.

Read A Place of Greater Safety with us

If you fancy some dangerous reading this year, we start A Place of Greater Safety next Monday, 5 May 2025. The slow read runs for 20 weeks with notes and discussion published every Monday. The reading schedule, cast of characters and further resources can be found here.

To sign up, (1) subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents and (2) turn on notifications for “2025 A Place of Greater Safety” in your subscription settings.

Subscribe now

Wolf Hall Weekend

Last year, I attended the inaugural Wolf Hall Weekend at Cadhay House in Devon. A magnificent celebration of Hilary Mantel’s writing and the Cromwell trilogy.

I am delighted to report that the team are putting on another event in 2026. Wolf Hall Weekend by the Tower takes place on 6 & 7 June 2026 at All Hallows-by-the-Tower, London.

There will be expert panels and keynote talks from historians Tracy Borman and Diarmaid MacCulloch, and the actor Ben Miles, who narrates the audiobooks and performed as Cromwell in the RSC stage adaptations.

On Saturday evening, there will be an exclusive performance of The Mirror and the Light by the Tower Theatre Company. Expect great food, guided walks, and pastime with good company throughout the weekend.

and I will be there, and it would be lovely if some of you can make it as well. There is limited capacity, so mark your diary and grab a ticket now.

Wolf Hall Weekend 2026

May Book Groups

As usual, in our library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory. I update this list monthly. If you run a book group or book club on Substack, get in touch so I can add yours to the list.

And here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in May:

• The Audacious Book Club with : My Documents by Kevin Nguyen

• The Austen Connection Read-Along with : Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• The Big Read with : A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain / The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson

• The Book Club for Busy Readers with : Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis

• Breccia with : Weathering Book by Ruth Allen (Starts 20 March, runs for 9 weeks)

• The Burning Archive Slow Read with : The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb - Sep)

• Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society: The 20th Century Book Club with : The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sheriff (Apr-May)

• Chasing Fog Book Club with : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all 2025)

• Close Reads HQ with , , : The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni / Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

  May: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

• Closely Reading with : Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen

  / Middlemarch by George Eliot

• Commonplace Philosophy with : Plato’s Republic

• Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club with : Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

• The Cultural Diegetic with : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025)

• Deep Reads Book Club with : Homer’s The Iliad (Jan - June)

• Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with : The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all 2025)

• Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with : The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge

• Emily’s Walking Book Club with : Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

• Four Thousand Weeks with : Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (Feb-TBD)

• FrizzLit with : A Farewell to Arms and Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway

• Genius & Ink with : Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)

• The Gentle Book Club with : Move, Rest, Recover by Erin Taylor

• Guerilla Readers with : Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade

• Interpreting the Great Artificer: Close readings of the works of James Joyce with : Dubliners by James Joyce

• The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with : Anne of Windy Poplars by Lucy Maud Montgomery

• Melanie’s Frontal Lobe with : Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (continued)

• More Magic with : Green Teeth by Molly O'Neill

• Personal Canon Formation with : Chaucer Reading Challenge (continued) & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

• Read the Classics with : Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / The Counterfeiters by André Gide

• The Reader & the Writer with & : War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

• Reading Revisited with & : Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

• Receipt from the Bookshop with : The Names by Florence Knapp

• Science Fiction Reads with : The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

• The Sixty-Minute Book Club with : The Apple Tree by Daphne Du Maurier

• Sleuth Hero Alien with : Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

• Symbolism & Structure with : Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Mar-May)

• To All My Darlings with : Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)

• True Stories Book Club with : Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer

Substack Book Group Directory

Thank you

And that’s all from me. Many thanks for subscribing to Footnotes and Tangents and joining our slow reads. And I’ll be back next month with more Endnotes.

Simon

Subscribe now

This is Endnotes, a monthly newsletter from Footnotes and Tangents. You can choose which emails to receive in the notifications list in your subscription settings.

Hi everyone!

This is your monthly update from me about all the slow reads and book groups happening on Footnotes and Tangents, and elsewhere in the Substack universe.

This month, we finished our read-along of JG Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur. This was an exceptionally rewarding re-read for me, enhanced by all the wonderful observations from fellow readers. You can now find my guide to The Siege of Krishnapur in the list of complete book guides.

Meanwhile, readers are a third of the way through War and Peace in our third and final year of reading Leo Tolstoy’s novel, a chapter a day for a whole year. Next month, Wolf Crawlers will complete Wolf Hall, before we head into May, which might as well be called…

Mantel May!

With two big Hilary Mantel read-alongs on the go. Who is brave enough to do both?

On 30 April, we will begin 12 weeks with Bring Up the Bodies, the second novel in Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. You don’t have to have joined us for Wolf Hall, but you should have read the first book at some point.

Mantel was writing a Cromwell duology when the events of 1536 took on a life of their own and demanded their own intense, murderous novel. The dramatic fall of Anne Boleyn through Cromwell’s eyes is electrifying, and you may struggle to slow down for this one!

But there are enormous benefits to doing so. Each week we will have archival documents from , custom-made maps from , and my own footnotes and tangents to enrich your reading. We have paintings and music and additional notes from fellow readers, , and . I cannot recommend these books highly enough, and this slow read is such a magnificent way to experience them.

To sign up, turn on notifications for “2025 Wolf Crawl” in your subscription settings. Wolf Crawl is also available as a podcast, and there are links in each post to help you get set up with the audio version.

Read 'Bring Up the Bodies' with us

Bring Up the Bodies is part of Wolf Crawl, a slow read for paid subscribers: £5/month or £50/year. I also offer complimentary upgrades for anyone on a low or no income, so please get in touch if you would like support with your slow read.

But that is not all. On 5 May, we begin a 20-week slow read of A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel’s thrilling account of the French Revolution. This book gives me the creeps. It’s alive. It’s all-consuming. It is definitely haunted. Come read it with us; it’s probably the only safe way to do it.

The reading schedule is now up, along with a list of further resources. And we are working on a full list of characters.

To sign up, turn on notifications for “2025 A Place of Greater Safety” in your subscription settings. This read-along is free for all, and everyone is welcome.

Please mind your head.

Read 'A Place of Greater Safety' with us

More about this read-along here:

Fellow Wolf Crawler, is testing the water for a James Joyce deep dive in 2026. If you are interested, let her know and subscribe to her newsletter:

April Book Groups

As usual, in our library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory. I update this list monthly. If you run a book group or book club on Substack, get in touch so I can add yours to the list.

And here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in April:

• The Audacious Book Club with : The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

• The Austen Connection Read-Along with : Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Mar-Apr)

• The Big Read with : Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain / Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain / When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

• The Book Club for Busy Readers with : Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

• Breccia with : Weathering Book by Ruth Allen (Starts 20 March, runs for 9 weeks)

• The Burning Archive Slow Read with : The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb - Sep)

• Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society: The 20th Century Book Club with : The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sheriff (Apr-May)

• Chasing Fog Book Club with : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all 2025)

• The Classical Book Club with : Book TBD by vote

• Close Reads HQ with , , : O Pioneers! by Willa Cather / The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni / The Great Mistake by Mary Roberts Rhinehart

• Closely Reading with : Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis / Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen

• Commonplace Philosophy with : Plato’s Republic

• Creative, Inspired, Happy: Read Like a Writer Book Club with : One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

• The Creative Kingdom Book Club with : Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Path to Creative Connection by Julia Cameron (Mar-TBD)

• The Cultural Diegetic with : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025)

• Deep Reads Book Club with : Homer’s The Iliad (Jan - June)

• Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with : The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all 2025)

• Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with : Smoky House by Elizabeth Goudge

• Emily’s Walking Book Club with : Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

• Four Thousand Weeks with : Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (Feb-TBD)

• FrizzLit with : The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald / E.M. Forester Book Club: A Room With a View

• Genius & Ink with : Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)

• The Gentle Book Club with : Breaking Waves by Emma Simpson (Mar-Apr)

• Guerilla Readers with : Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

• The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with : Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery

• Melanie’s Frontal Lobe with : Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (continued)

• Paper Knife with : A Year of Reading Kafka

• Personal Canon Formation with : Chaucer Reading Challenge (continued)

• Pomus Aureus with : One, No One and a Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello (Feb - Apr)

• Read the Classics with : Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

• The Reader & the Writer with & : War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

• Reading Revisited with & : The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

• Receipt from the Bookshop with : The Painter’s Daughter by Emily Howes

• Science Fiction Reads with : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

• The Sixty-Minute Book Club with : The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Sleuth Hero Alien with : Something Close to Magic by Emma Mills

• Symbolism & Structure with : Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Mar-May)

• To All My Darlings with : Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)

• True Stories Book Club with : Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer

• Well-Read Weekend with : On the Road by John Kerouac

Substack Book Group Directory

Thank you

And that’s all from me. Many thanks for subscribing to Footnotes and Tangents and joining our slow reads. And I’ll be back next month with more Endnotes.

Until then, take care and happy reading.

Simon

Hello all

One morning, I unsettle from my sleep, sensing something shift in the black before me. I have been walking in a place I once knew, through rooms that did not exist, to meet strangers who never were. My dream leaves me adrift, uncertain of what I am. But it is morning, and a little hand hunts me out. Finds my nose. Squeezes it. 'My daddy,' she says.

Mariam Louise. A year ago she had no words. A year before, neither did I for her, not so long from her mother's womb, eyes finding focus, head still heavy in my hand. Now, each day she makes herself a little better understood. Words, words, they are never just words.

Somewhere in this winter, she picks up the possessive. She waves it like a wand and sees its magic done. My spoon, my bag, my cup. We must explain to her that not everything belongs to Mimi. But she looks incredulous. We feel foolish. It’s her world now.

She has the measure of it. Its power. She'll introduce me at a party. I turn up and she patters over to drum my chest and beam: 'My daddy!' Here he is, have you met him? He can tuck me up and make me fly, I show him the sheep in all the books. He is happy to have me, to tell him who he is.

There was some other man, who walked in places here before, through rooms that did not exist to meet strangers that never were. He seemed so sure; so riddled with doubt, and perplexed. Struck dumb and frozen in the past; waiting to be called. Waiting to be named.

In Alice Through The Looking-Glass, she wanders through ‘the wood where things have no name’. She forgets herself and befriends a fawn, neither knowing who they are or what to fear. When they are reunited with their nouns, they are delighted, then alarmed. ‘I’m a Fawn!’ the creature cries. ‘And, dear me! you’re a human child!’

Before Mimi, I thought I knew the world of words. I thought I knew their power. But I think now I was just waiting for her to exist herself, stretch out hand and pointed finger, triumphant: my shoes, my hat, my coat. Let’s go.

Outside, the sky is blue, the moon is in the trees. We’re going now, slow and steady. Car and bus. Cat and dog. Naming with each step. Naming Mimi’s world.

Subscribe now

This is Endnotes, the monthly newsletter from Footnotes and Tangents. You can choose which emails to receive in the notifications list in your subscription settings.

Our slow reads

This month, we fleshed out the Footnotes and Tangents Library with the vital help of our resident librarian, . This is your go-to place for resources to supplement your slow reads. I am especially pleased with our list of interviews with Hilary Mantel.

In May, we will begin her haunted masterpiece, A Place of Greater Safety, on the life and times of the revolutionaries of Paris. In the next couple of months, we will put together resources to help you find your way through that book. Join us, from 5 May here:

Slow read A Place of Greater Safety

We are currently reading:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy | Start here | Reading schedule

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel | Start here | Reading schedule

• The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell | Reading schedule

We’re coming to the end of The Siege of Krishnapur. When it is finished, I will add it to the completed book guides for anyone who would like ‘read along’ at a later date.

Finally, I have set up a Footnotes and Tangents bookshop over at Bookshop.org. It will have shelves dedicated to each of the slow reads, plus my current reads and recommendations. If you choose to buy a book there, you’ll be supporting Footnotes and Tangents, as well as a platform that champions independent booksellers worldwide.

Footnotes and Tangents Bookshop

March Book Groups

As usual, in our library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory. I update this list monthly. If you run a book group or book club on Substack, get in touch so I can add yours to the list.

And here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in March:

• The Audacious Book Club with : Back After This by Linda Holmes

• The Austen Connection Read-Along with : Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

• The Big Read with : Range by David Epstein

• The Book Club for Busy Readers with : The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

• Breccia with : Weathering Book by Ruth Allen (Starts 20 March, runs for 9 weeks)

• The Burning Archive Slow Read with : The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb - Sep)

• Byronicaly: The Dostoevsky Year with : Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society with : Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (Feb - Apr)

• Cams Campbell Reads with : Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (May 2024 – Feb)

• Chasing Fog Book Club with : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all year)

• Close Reads HQ with , , : A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Jan-Mar)

• Closely Reading with : Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Jan - Mar)

• Commonplace Philosophy with : The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

• Creative, Inspired, Happy with : Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

• The Creative Kingdom Book Club with : Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Path to Creative Connection by Julia Cameron

• The Cultural Diegetic with : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025)

• Deep Reads Book Club with : Homer’s The Iliad (Jan - June)

• Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with : The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all 2025)

• Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with : The Castle on the Hill

• Emily’s Walking Book Club with : Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

• FrizzLit with : Dorothy Parker Book Club: The Portable Dorothy Parker / E.M. Forester Book Club: A Room With a View

• Genius & Ink with : Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)

• The Gentle Book Club with : Breaking Waves by Emma Simpson

• Guerilla Readers with : Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow

• The Hannah Reads Book Club with : In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Feb - Mar)

• The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with : Anne of Green Gables books (all 2025)

• Melanie’s Frontal Lobe with : Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (continued)

• Paper Knife with : A Year of Reading Kafka

• Personal Canon Formation with : Chaucer Reading Challenge (continued)

• Pomus Aureus with : One, No One and a Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello (Feb - Apr)

• Read the Classics with : Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

• Reading Revisited with & : That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (Feb - Mar)

• Receipt from the Bookshop with : Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman

• The Sixty-Minute Book Club with : Story of your Life by Ted Chiang

• Sleuth Hero Alien with : The Nameless Restaurant: a cozy cooking fantasy by Tao Wong

• The Reader & the Writer with & : War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

• Science Fiction Reads with : Cities in Flight by James Blish

• To All My Darlings with : Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)

• Virginia Woolf Reading Group with : To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Feb - Mar)

• Well-Read Weekend with : Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

Thank you

And that’s all from me. Many thanks for subscribing to Footnotes and Tangents and joining our slow reads. And I’ll be back next month with more Endnotes.

Until then, take care and happy reading.

Simon

Subscribe now

Hello all

This month, I took our eldest for his first swimming lessons. Eczema has kept him from pools for a long time, but with school starting in September, we decided to set him on his way.

Life has left me unready for this moment. My son stands in his swimsuit, hands clasped across his belly, stunned; facing a fear he didn’t know existed half an hour ago. He listens to the teacher and flops, arms outstretched, into the water.

The reward is a hot chocolate in the café outside. He grips it like a raft and tells me he doesn’t want to learn to swim. A memory tugs in the undertow: little limbs flail above and beneath. Muffled din, eyes stinging, and beads of light as I come gasping up for air.

‘It gets better,’ I tell him. You’re scared at first, but each time, you learn a little more, fear a little less. And doing it – the thing you thought you couldn’t – that feeling is like flying. It’s the best feeling there is. This speech: it half convinces myself.

As the new year came in, a few thousand new people found Footnotes and Tangents. Readers from all over the world, living lives I can only begin to imagine, chose to read with me. If you put us all together, we’d fill a small stadium. I close my eyes, and try not to imagine it.

You pick up a book you’ve been putting off. The pages tower to taunt you, and some voice says you’re not bright enough, brave or bloody-minded enough to read me. This book is not for you. You read it anyway.

You read and write, swim and fly into a future once fearful, but less so now.

After his second swimming lesson, he stirs marshmallows in his cup. He tells me you must walk, not run, beside the pool. Look up, head up, when you float on your back, and count the lights. Water may splash your face, but it’s okay. It’s alright.

He says next week he will be ‘experienced’. He tests the power of the new word in his mouth. I ask him if he had fun. Four-year-old poker face and a steely eye. He smiles.

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Our slow reads

January is my busiest month, getting three slow reads underway and helping new subscribers find the posts, podcasts and resources they need.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is the Substack App, which many people use to read my posts. My biggest piece of advice to anyone struggling with the App is to delete it. I don’t use it, and I have designed everything to be easy to use from the website.

Each book has its dedicated page, with a welcome post, reading schedule and further resources. You can save any of these pages in the App, or bookmark them for easy reference.

We are currently reading:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy | Start here | Reading schedule

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel | Start here | Reading schedule

• The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell | Reading schedule

I encourage everyone to read at their own pace, and latecomers are always welcome.

To join, simply turn on notifications for the book of your choice in your subscription settings.

Subscribe now

February Book Groups

Slow reading is having a bit of a moment on Substack.

Some of us want to spend less time with screens and more time with books. Others are looking to change the way they consume literature. Read a little less, but go a little deeper.

In my library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory. I update this list monthly. If you run a book group or book club on Substack, get in touch so I can add yours to the list.

And here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in February:

• The Audacious Book Club with : Homeseeking by Karissa Chen

• The Big Read with : Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison / All About Love by bell hooks

• The Book Club for Busy Readers with : This One Will Hurt You by Paul Crenshaw

• The Burning Archive Slow Read with : The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk

• Byronicaly: The Dostoevsky Year with : Notes from a Dead House by Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society with : Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

• Cams Campbell Reads with : Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (May 2024 – Feb 2025)

• Chasing Fog Book Club with : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all year)

• Close Reads HQ with , , : A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Jan-Mar)

• Closely Reading with : Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• Commonplace Philosophy with : The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (Nov-Feb)

• Creative, Inspired, Happy with : The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

• The Creative Kingdom Book Club with : Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer by Julia Cameron

• The Cultural Diegetic with : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025)

• Deep Reads Book Club with : Jan-Jun: Homer’s The Iliad

• Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with : The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all 2025)

• Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with : Henrietta's House

• Emily’s Walking Book Club with : Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

• FrizzLit with : Dorothy Parker Book Club

• Genius & Ink with : Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)

• The Hannah Reads Book Club with : In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

• The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with : Anne of Green Gables books (all 2025)

• Melanie’s Frontal Lobe with : Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (continued)

• Personal Canon Formation with : Chaucer Reading Challenge

• Read and Think Deeply with : King by Johnathan Eig (Jan-Apr)

• Read the Classics with : Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Persuasion by Jane Austen

• Reading Revisited with & : Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

• The Sixty-Minute Book Club with : ‘The Swimmer’ by John Cheever

• Sleuth Hero Alien with : A Pirate's Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne

• The Reader & the Writer with & : Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Conde

• Science Fiction Reads with : I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

• To All My Darlings with : Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)

• Virginia Woolf Reading Group with : To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Thank you

Many thanks for subscribing to Footnotes and Tangents and joining our slow reads. I’ll be back next month with more Endnotes.

Until then, take care and happy reading.

Simon

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Here’s a question for you:

What was your best read of 2024? I’d love to know whether it is a book you’d like to read again and whether you’d recommend it for a slow read here on Footnotes & Tangents.

Leave a comment

Congratulations to everyone who has finished this year’s slow reads! Don’t stop now — this post is a big bumper list of group reads for 2025, with something for everyone.

This was my first year of running Footnotes & Tangents as a fully-fledged website, newsletter and podcast. It was a colossal undertaking: running two book groups side by side, and researching and writing two posts a week, every week, for a year.

And yet, I am enormously proud of what I have created. I am delighted by the community that gathered around these books, and deeply moved and inspired by the stories readers have shared from their adventures in slow reading.

Below, I link to the intro posts, home pages, and reading schedules for next year’s books. To join, simply subscribe and turn on notifications for one or more books in your subscription settings.

2025 at Footnotes and Tangents

It’s all gone a bit wild here, following generous shoutouts from , , and . Welcome to everyone who heard about us at The Londonist Time Machine, the Happier podcast, or Pantsuit Politics!

I’m running three flavours of slow read next year:

War & Peace is the OG read-along in its third and final year. Like the book itself, the read-along is a ‘large, loose, baggy monster’1. Wolf Crawl is an immersive celebration of Mantel’s writing, getting an exciting makeover in its second year. Finally, I’m writing the ‘first draft’ of guides for four historical novels, and inviting readers to join me on the journey.

War and Peace: the original slow read

Next year is the last year I am running the original slow read: Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace. My priority here is to tidy up the weekly posts, re-record the podcasts and make them into a permanent resource for this year’s and future readers.

War & Peace Home Page | Reading Schedule | Welcome Pack | Podcast Trailer
To join, turn on notifications for 2025 War & Peace in your subscription settings.

Wolf Crawl: the flagship slow read

Writing this 52-week guide to Mantel’s Cromwell books has been a labour of love. In 2025, I will revise and improve these posts with archival material from , maps from , and illustrations from Crow.

Wolf Crawl Home Page | Reading Schedule | Welcome Pack | Podcast Trailer
To join, turn on notifications for 2025 Wolf Crawl in your subscription settings.

New books: experiments in slow reading

Where do you go after Wolf Crawl? I knew I wanted to write a guide to Mantel’s other historical tome: A Place of Greater Safety. I am bookending that read with three historical novels admired by Mantel. These are experiments in slow reading, and I have no idea where these read-alongs will take us.

The Siege of Krishnapur

J. G. Farrell wrote three novels about the decline of the British Empire. The Siege of Krishnapur follows the siege of a fictional Indian town during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of its British residents. It's a dark and absurd critique of imperialism, which won The Booker Prize in 1973.

The Siege of Krishnapur Home Page | Reading Schedule | Starts 13 January
To join, turn on notifications for 2025 The Siege of Krishnapur in your subscription settings.

A Place of Greater Safety

Hilary Mantel’s doorstop on the French Revolution is magnificent and terrifyingly alive. It’s the first novel she wrote, and it almost didn’t get published. We will be making our own place of safety here to help us make it through this book and the revolution in one piece.

A Place of Greater Safety Home Page | Starts 5 May
To join, turn on notifications for 2025 A Place of Greater Safety in your subscription settings.

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe’s novel on Igbo culture and the colonial encounter in Nigeria. A landmark in historical fiction and African literature, I am so excited to be giving this novel the slow-read treatment.

Things Fall Apart Home Page | Starts 29 September
To join, turn on notifications for 2025 Things Fall Apart in your subscription settings.

The Blue Flower

Penelope Fitzgerald’s complex final novel on the early life of Novalis, a foundational figure in German Romanticism. This curious book is often hailed as one of the best historical novels ever written. Let’s explore it together.

The Blue Flower Home Page | Starts 3 November
To join, turn on notifications for 2025 The Blue Flower in your subscription settings.

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I hope you will join me for one or more of these books in 2025. Please explore the list of book groups below for more reading inspiration, and let me know in the comments about your favourite reads of 2024.

Wishing everyone a peaceful new year and many engrossing reads in 2025.

Simon

The Substack Book Group Directory

I maintain a list of active bookclubs hosted on Substack newsletters. It is extensive but not exhaustive, so let me know if you run a book group and would like to be included. The full list is here, and below are all the listings for 2025:

The Audacious Book Club with
Jan: Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Feb: Homeseeking by Karissa Chen
Mar: Back After This by Linda Holmes
Apr: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
May: My Documents by Kevin Nguyen
Jun: Marsha by Tourmaline
Jul: Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
Sep: Moderation by Elaine Castillo / Resting Bitch Face by Taylor Byas

The Big Read with
Jan: The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham / Attention Span by Gloria Mark
Feb: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Feb-Mar) / All About Love by bell hooks
Mar: Range by David Epstein
Apr: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain / Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain / When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
May: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain / The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson
Jun: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather / A Supposedly Fun Thing by David Foster Wallace
July: The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin / Confessions by St Augustine
Aug: Silas Marner by George Eliot / What Stands in a Storm by Kim Cross
Sept: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston / Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Oct: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Oct-Dec) / American Scary by Jeremy Dauber
Nov: I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
Dec: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

The Book Club for Busy Readers with
Jan: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Feb: This One Will Hurt You by Paul Crenshaw
Mar: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Apr: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
May: Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis
Jun: On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
Jul: Days of Wonder by Caroline Leavitt
Aug: Live Love Now by Rachel Macy Stafford
Sep: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Oct: These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Nov: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Dec: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

Close Reads HQ with , &
In 2025:
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare
• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Closely Reading with
Jan-Mar: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Apr: Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis
Apr-May: Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen
May-Jul: Middlemarch by George Eliot
Aug-Oct: The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
Oct-Dec: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Commonplace Philosophy with
Now: The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (Nov-Feb)
Mar: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Mar-May: Plato’s Republic
June: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Aug-Sep: Chuang Tzu
Oct: Aristotle’s Politics

Creative, Inspired, Happy with
Jan: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Feb: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Mar: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Apr: One Two Three by Laurie Frankel
May: Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
Jun: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

The Cultural Diegetic with
2025: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Deep Reads Book Club with
Jan-Jun: Homer’s The Iliad
Jul-Dec: Homer’s The Odyssey

Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with Dana Oljós
2025: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Emily’s Walking Book Club with
Now: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Jan: Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry
Feb: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Mar: Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
Apr: Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

Footnotes and Tangents with
2025: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Jan-Apr: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Jan-Mar: The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell
Apr-Jul: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
May-Sep: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Jul-Dec: The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
Sep-Oct: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Nov-Dec: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

FrizzLit with
Jan-Feb: Dune by Frank Herbert

Genius & Ink with
2025: Dante’s The Divine Comedy

Personal Canon Formation with
Next Year: Chaucer & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Read and Think Deeply with
Jan-Apr: King by Johnathan Eig
May-Jun: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
Jul-Oct: Douglass by David W. Blight
Nov-Dec: Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Read the Classics with
2025: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Feb: Persuasion by Jane Austen
Mar: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Apr: The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
May-Jun: The Counterfeiters by André Gide
Jun: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Reading Revisited with , ,
Jan: Othello by William Shakespeare
Feb: Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
Mar: That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
Apr: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
May: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
June: Trust by Hernan Diaz
Jul: Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
Aug: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Sleuth Hero Alien with
Jan: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

To All My Darlings with
2025: Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young

True Stories Book Club with
Jan: A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter

Substack Book Group Directory

An invitation

In 2025, I invite you to join readers from all around the world to read my favourite novel, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a chapter a day.

This will be the third and final year I will run this read-along. It began in 2023 on my Instagram page. I was so delighted by the whole experience and the response from other readers that this year, I moved the slow read to my website. This allowed me to offer more resources: in-depth weekly posts with audio voice-overs, plot summaries for each character, and daily chat threads.

Next year, these weekly posts will be revised and updated, and made available as a post, a podcast, and an email newsletter, all exclusive to paid subscribers at Footnotes and Tangents.

This post is your welcome pack. It includes everything you need to know about the book and the read-along. I have included quotes from this year’s readers, and you can read their full testimonials here.

At the end of this post, there is my monthly directory of book groups hosted on Substack and details of next month’s listen-along of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, hosted by , which includes a special offer for Footnotes and Tangents subscribers. Many thanks, as always, for reading.

Subscribe now

• “I didn’t expect to love the book as much as I have.” ()

• “I had no idea how readable War and Peace would be, how funny and insightful Tolstoy is.” ()

• “I honestly did not think I would form such a bond with the characters, or enjoy the book so much.” ()

• “War and Peace has it all, packaged in short chapters that are masterpieces of characterization and riveting narrative art. What a storyteller!” ()

  ---

War and Peace home page

1. Why read War and Peace?

I first read War and Peace in 2007. I went backpacking in South America and took the biggest book I could find. All I knew was it was a classic and it was very big – 1,358 pages. I discovered, to my delight, a deeply humane novel – sharp, funny and wise – about life’s struggle for peace and happiness amid war and misfortune.

Tolstoy drops you in the middle of a soirée in nineteenth-century St Petersburg, a party packed with truly awful people. You think to yourself: Surely I have nothing in common with these rich Russian aristocrats from another era. There’s no way I would want to spend a year in their company!

But then Tolstoy does something remarkable. This strange world starts to feel very familiar. We recognise the characters in ourselves and in the people we know. Our first impressions give way to a greater understanding, and we start to care about these people as though they were friends and family.

And all this is told with an unerring clarity and compassion. It is like looking into still clear waters. You see life reflected back at you in the novel. And it’s all here. Within these pages, characters grow up, fall in love, encounter fear, hatred and despair, and care and grieve for each other. They learn how to live, and how to die. They ask big questions, and sometimes they find answers.

‘If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.’ – Isaac Babel

It’s also a great story, full of twists and turns, high drama and heartache. And first-time readers are often struck by how readable, entertaining and even funny it is. But it’s more than just a great story. It’s a good one. It has a good heart. A rich soul. And the world feels a little better, a little truer, for having read it.

• “I was given a copy of War and Peace at 16, so it's been looking down at me from my bookshelves for quite a while.” ()

• “I had tried it a couple of times before but the story was like desiccated spaghetti on the page so the tome sat on my shelf, clearly waiting for this slow read.” ()

• “I expected the book to be difficult to read but was surprised about how down to earth it was.” ( )

• “‘War and Peace is a book I’ve tried to read multiple times, always to get bogged down around page 200. Now I can’t imagine my life without it.” ( )

• “Don’t be intimidated. Take the journey!” ()

2. How does the read-along work?

War and Peace has 361 chapters. So, it’s the perfect book to read a chapter a day over the course of a year. We start on Wednesday, 1 January 2025, and continue to the end of the year, with one day off at the end of each of the four volumes.

Every Tuesday, I publish a weekly post and podcast with a summary of the events of the last seven chapters, a discussion of the themes, artwork relating to the story, and a selection of footnotes, tangents and links to continue your adventure. These posts link to plot summaries for all the characters to help you keep track of who’s who.

With hundreds of readers all on the same page, there are three ways for you to connect and create space to talk about the book:

• There is a chat thread for each chapter. I set these up this year, and we will use them next year. They can all be found in the reading schedule, and in each post, I will link to the previous week's and next week’s threads so you can always find them.

• You can comment on all the weekly posts. Some readers prefer to read a few chapters at a time or have less free time to engage in the daily chat threads. This space is for you.

• You can also start your own discussion threads in Footnotes and Tangents Chat. This can be accessed in a web browser on a computer or in the Substack App on your phone.

The rest is up to you! It’s your read-along. You can engage with other readers and arrange to meet up, online or offline. You can keep a private journal of reflections or share your thoughts with us in your own posts. Some readers are inspired to create: to draw, paint or knit their way through the book. Whatever inspires you: run with it. You never know where it may lead.

The Reading Schedule

• “Cup of coffee, chapter, and then read Simon’s notes and the group’s thoughts.” ()

• “I started on a whim and haven’t missed a day.” ()

• “Slow reading allows space for breathing, reflection and thinking. One day, one chapter at a time.” ()

• “It’s a rare quiet moment in my day, when I can finally transport myself into a different world.” ()

• “The slow read is not only a punctuation point in the day, it's also a highlight.” ( )

3. Which translation of War and Peace should I read?

We have people reading in many languages and different translations. There is no definitive translation in English, and it will ultimately be a matter of personal taste.

My best advice is to sit down in a bookshop and read a few pages from a couple of translations. You will have an instinctive preference. Go with your gut.

Note that if you pick up a free translation online, it will almost certainly be the out-of-copyright version by Louise and Aylmer Maude. This is an excellent choice, but it is worth knowing that some of the chapters are divided a little differently from those in the reading schedule. These are not major, and I try to flag the discrepancies in the schedule, but it is worth keeping in mind.

In the original version, Leo Tolstoy wrote some passages and dialogue in French. Some editions have translated everything into English; others have provided translations in footnotes.

There are seven English translations in print. I am familiar with the three most recent versions, and they all have the same chapter divisions as the read-along:

Anthony Briggs (Penguin Classics)

This was the first translation I read in 2007. It feels very modern and uses British English. I loved it, and it is how I fell in love with War and Peace. It’s a great translation for first-timers, especially those not used to reading classics.

Some non-British readers find the dialogue occasionally jarring, especially the ‘cockney’ soldiers, but the modern style makes it exceptionally easy to read. It’s a solid choice and the firm favourite for many readers.

In this translation, French is translated in the text without the need for footnotes.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage Classics)

This version is often pitched as the most faithful translation with a precise word-for-word translation of the original. I personally find it a little pedantic and flat-footed in places, but you may have a better experience.

If authenticity is important to you (and hey, it was very important to Tolstoy), you may value this serious and scholarly version. It is a popular choice among Literature students, and it is the copy you will probably first find in a bookstore, especially in the United States.

In this edition, French is translated in the footnotes.

Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford World’s Classics)

The Maudes were friends of Tolstoy, and he personally approved of this translation. In 2010, it was revised and updated by Amy Mandelker.

I have listened to the original version twice, and this updated version is my preferred translation for the read-along. The language can feel a little old-fashioned compared to Briggs, but I find it a smoother read than the more literal translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky.

In this version, the French is translated in the footnotes as well.

If you would like to dive deeper into the differences between all the translations, I recommend this detailed article on the website We Love Translations.

• “It's been an amazing, perspective-altering journey and I cannot recommend it highly enough.” ()

• “This slow read of War and Peace with Simon has become one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done this year.” ()

• “I’ve talked about this read-along to anyone who’d listen to me go on about it!” ()

• “This community enriches the whole experience and gives a deeper understanding of history, languages, customs, and overarching themes.” ()

• “I expected that it would be a good way to finish the book, but I had no idea how important the read-along and the community Simon has built would become to my life.” ()

4. How do I keep track of all the characters?

There are a lot of them. More than 500 characters with over 200 real historical figures, and a character may be referred to by their title, a diminutive, their patronymic, or even a French version of their name.

This is where I am here to help.

I have created a full list of characters. This links to plot summaries for all the major characters. My weekly posts link to these plot summaries and will help you keep the Denisovs and Dolokhovs straight in your head.

The slow read and the daily chat will also really help the names sink in. After that, you should have no problem keeping track.

The Characters of War and Peace

• “The slow read has become a warm companion, a welcome refuge from the daily grind.” ()

• “It's the best thing I've done for my mental health all year.” ()

• “Reading War and Peace became a daily sanctuary, providing perspective and calm amidst life's chaos.” ()

• “This last month has had a few ups and downs and I am not lying when I say both read-alongs, but particularly War and Peace due its daily chapters, kept me grounded.” ()

• “I can't recommend this experience highly enough. I absolutely could not have predicted the importance of a slow read in a difficult year.” ()

5. How long are the chapters in War and Peace?

War and Peace is around 1,300 pages long. That sounds long, but it means each chapter is only about 3 to 4 pages. On audiobooks, they last around 10 minutes.

This is the perfect length to read during a coffee break, first thing in the morning or last thing at night.

If you want to develop the habit of reading daily, this is an excellent way to do it. For others, it leaves plenty of time to read more books alongside War and Peace.

• “Simon's daily summaries bring into focus key ideas or things I missed.” ()

• “His index of all the characters is invaluable; there's a lot of them, they go through a lot of changes, and sometimes disappear for a hundred pages before they resurface.” ()

• “Simon’s insights about each chapter helped me when my focus wasn’t quite there, or when I needed historical context or reminders about characters.” ()

• “I’ve enjoyed in the weekly emails the opportunity to see the art and music which illuminates the text.” ()

• “Simon's expert guidance and the community's enthusiasm made it engaging and addictive.” ()

6. Can I read at my own pace?

Of course! This isn’t school, and there are no rules.

If you want to race ahead or saunter behind, if life gets in the way, or your curiosity gets the better of you, do what works for you. My posts and our discussion will always be here when you want them.

All I want is for you to enjoy the experience and get you over the finish line and the last page of War and Peace.

• “In 2023, I finished one book. This read-along has given me the habit of picking up a book every day. Once I carved out a little bit of time, I found more and more. This year, I’m already up to 15 books, not including War and Peace!” ()

• “I find I slow down in all my reading now to really absorb the text and find any hidden meanings.” ()

• “I've noticed as I've read certain other books that I'm catching myself when I'm being critical of the characters and am now more open to seeing their humanity, even when they aren't likeable, which I definitely owe to this slow read.” ()

• “All in all, this experience has been eye-opening for me and has made me a better reader.” ()

7. Can I skip the ‘war parts’?

No.

OK, you can. People do. But I don’t recommend it. The themes of war and peace are so closely entwined in this story, and you will get less than half of what this book has to offer by skipping the battles.

In fact, I’d go further. The title is misleading. It gives the impression that the book is divided into war sections and peace sections. In reality, there is peace on the battlefield and war in the ballroom.

And you may surprise yourself. My best advice is to read without expectations but with curiosity on every page. You never know what may resonate with you, and some of Tolstoy’s most beautiful language takes place in the most frightening of circumstances.

• “War and Peace is a transformative experience that will enrich your life.” ()

• “My depression and anxiety was so great I could barely leave the house. Last year I began seeing an excellent psychologist, who greatly helped, as did a change in medication. Then, in March, I began War and Peace. It sounds exaggerated, but it isn't; everyday something interesting to think about; relating to the characters and my chat friends; it truly lit up my life. Like Pierre and Platon, I found the missing piece. From a person who mostly only went out for groceries, I have been on two marvellous, recent trips this year; to Vietnam and Cambodia, and now just back from the breathtaking Kimberley region of Western Australia.” ()

• “Life is about discovering new things and 2024 will be remembered as the year I happily discovered War and Peace.” ( )

  ---

8. Can I listen instead of read?

Yes! There is no reading snobbery here, and this slow read is fully accessible to those with visual impairments or those who prefer to listen instead of reading.

I recommend Thandie Newton’s narration of the original Maude translation. Here’s a review. As I mentioned above, it has the slight disadvantage of the occasional difference in chapter divisions. But Newton’s reading is superb.

All my posts are released as podcasts. You can listen to these on my website, on the Substack App, or download and listen to them on your favourite podcast app.

9. Great, I’m in. When does it start?

Monday 1 January 2025! The reading schedule is straightforward: we read a chapter a day through the whole of next year, with a day off between each of the four volumes.

2025 Reading Schedule

10. How do I join?

1. Become a paid subscriber at Footnotes and Tangents.

2. Turn on notifications in your settings for ‘2025 War and Peace’. This makes sure that you receive the weekly updates, either as an email or a notification in your Substack App.

Turn on notifications

This video shows you how to get set up and find your way around the website:

• “A few years ago, I had to pack up my deceased aunt’s house. She died a week before her 101st birthday. Among the many books in her house, was a copy of War and Peace. I took it home but I only thought about it again when I saw a post on Facebook about this slow read. I’ve loved every moment of this journey.” ( )

11. How much does it cost?

This slow read is for paid subscribers to Footnotes and Tangents. A subscription costs £3.50/month or £35/year. This includes:

• 50 detailed posts with audio voiceovers, discussion and resources, paintings, videos and further links.

• Extensive plot summaries for all the major characters.

• A friendly and inclusive discussion space.

• A podcast version of my posts to download and listen to on your favourite app.

A paid subscription also includes:

• Footnotes and Tangents Office Hours: A monthly chat thread to connect with readers across the book groups and share current reads and book recommendations.

• Wolf Crawl: A year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy.

• Access to all my book guides.

On 1 January 2025, new subscriptions rise to £5/month or £50/year. This will not affect existing subscriptions, so upgrade before New Year’s Day for the best deal.

Subscribe now

• “Thanks to the supportive mood Simon has set, we have become more than just members of a book club. When my dad was dying, I received so many kind messages from other readers, for example. I think Simon has channelled Tolstoy’s generous understanding of what it means to be human, and he has cultivated that understanding in us too. Who would have thought that an online readalong could become so spiritually meaningful? I’m so grateful for Simon and everyone in our group!” ()

12. Is there support for readers on a low income?

Yes! I have aimed to make this slow read as affordable as possible while providing an income to allow me to keep writing and running the read-alongs. However, I do not want your financial situation to be a barrier to benefiting from reading great literature.

If you are an engaged reader with a low or no income, please get in touch so I can support your reading with a complimentary subscription.

13. What other books are running next year?

Here is the full lineup for 2025:

Jan–Mar: The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell
May–Sep: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Oct–Nov: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Nov–Dec: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
All Year: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
All Year: Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy

Here is the introductory post for Wolf Crawl, our slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy:

14. Any further questions?

If anything is unclear or you have more questions about the read-along, the slow reads or anything else at Footnotes and Tangents, please leave a comment, hit reply or send me a message in the Substack app.

15. Substack Book Group Directory

I maintain a list of book groups, book clubs, read-alongs and slow reads hosted on Substack. The list is updated monthly. Explore the directory to find books and reading communities that interest you:

16. The Audrey Listen-Along: A Christmas Carol

Audrey is an app that curates audiobooks with audiovisual notes from an expert guide. I have created notes for their audiobooks of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. If you like Footnotes and Tangents, you’ll love listening to audiobooks with Audrey.

From December 9th to 18th, they will be running a listen-along of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This is an annual tradition, and each year, they add a few more guide notes and reflections to the original guide. Find out more about the listen-along in the link below:

A Christmas Carol Listen-Along

Audrey has kindly sent me a promo code so that you can enjoy their audiobook for free and take part in the listen-along. Here’s the code:

Thank you for reading

And that’s all from me. I hope I have inspired you to join us for War and Peace 2025. If you took part in the slow read this year or last, I would love to hear from you in the comments. And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Until next month, I am your guide,

Simon Haisell

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

'So now get up.'
   Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turned sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.

An invitation

In 2025, I invite you to join readers from all around the world in a year-long reading of Hilary Mantel’s masterpiece, the life of Thomas Cromwell in three books: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light.

The read-along is called Wolf Crawl. It ran for the first time this year and has been an extraordinary success: a rich and deeply rewarding experience. This post includes quotes from the 2024 Wolf Crawlers, my reading companions on this adventure, and a FAQ with everything you need to decide whether this slow read is for you.

We read around 40 pages a week. Each Wednesday, I share a weekly post packed with reflections, resources, contemporary paintings and music, useful videos and links to further reading. In the comments, you can connect with fellow readers, share your experience and discuss the week’s reading.

Wolf Crawl Home Page

Why read Wolf Hall?

These are astonishing books. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both won the . Wolf Hall topped The Guardian’s list of the best 100 books of the 21st Century, so far. In a similar list in The New York Times, Wolf Hall came third.

Hilary Mantel died in 2022. ‘It was always a pleasure’, writes Margaret Atwood1, ‘to read such a smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, and one with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature.’

‘There was something boundless about Hilary Mantel’s imaginative process,’ Colm Tóibín recalls, ‘She saw historical forces operating with immense clarity, but she also could create with real skill and flair the intimate moment, the tiny scene, the sudden shift of light or of power in a relationship.’

‘Mantel bristled with intelligence, looked at everything, saw everything,’ writes Anne Enright. ‘Mantel was that rare writer,’ says Kamila Shamsie, ‘whom you read and think, I have no idea how your brain goes where it goes, and how it comes back to produce the work that it does.’

‘Fierce, fabulous and fearless,’ wrote Maggie O’Farrell.

Sarah Perry: ‘What will we do without her?’

I want to remember Hilary Mantel by creating this resource and reading community: a slow and careful study of her books.

Wolf Hall is a novel for anyone interested in what language can do. It is historical fiction, but so much more. It is a study of character and conscience, of memory, myth-making and the birth of the modern world.

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Who was Thomas Cromwell?

Born in around 1485, Cromwell was the son of a brewer-blacksmith from Putney, on the outskirts of London. In a spectacular rags-to-riches story, he rose in the service of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to become Henry VIII’s chief minister in the 1530s. On 28 July 1540, he was beheaded for treason.

An architect of the English Reformation, Thomas Cromwell is primarily known for his role in securing the king’s divorce from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and the beheadings of Thomas More and Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.

More was the humanist scholar who gave us the word utopia. He is a Catholic saint and martyr; his life immortalised in the play and film, A Man for All Seasons. Anne Boleyn was the mother of Elizabeth I. Cromwell made her queen and then engineered her downfall on dubious charges of adultery, incest and treason.

Three books, three beheadings. Please read carefully.

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Do I need to know the history to read Wolf Hall?

No. Background knowledge is helpful but not necessary. This is a story about people and place, characters and conflict; you will learn the history as you become immersed in the story. And I will here with all the additional explanatory notes and resources you may want, to fill the gaps in your knowledge of the period.

Is Wolf Hall hard to read?

Hilary Mantel’s trilogy is known for its distinctive voice and style. The books are written in the third person from Thomas Cromwell’s point of view. We watch events unfold in the present tense from a place somewhere behind his mind’s eye.

In that space, our pronouns become a little confused: Thomas Cromwell is sometimes ‘I’, ‘We’, ‘You’, but most often ‘He’. In a book swarming with characters, we can sometimes be a little unsure of who ‘he’ refers to. On such occasions, Mantel steps in with the clarifying, and now iconic, ‘He, Cromwell.’

This peculiar narrative device is part of the genius of these books. It can take a few chapters to get used to. But once your ear has adapted to Mantel’s style, you will be flying fast and high, entirely under her spell.

How do I keep track of all the characters?

Wolf Hall has a lot of characters, and at least 14 men all called Thomas. There are over 100 named individuals in the trilogy, many with a variety of nicknames and changing titles.

Each week, I list the people mentioned in the chapter and link to plot summaries for each character to refresh your memory. Almost all the characters were real historical people, and in my posts, there will be paintings for you to put faces to all those names.

At some point in the trilogy, Uncle Norfolk will feel like the family you wish you never had. Rafe Sadler will be the friend you hope will never let you go. But until then, my posts are here to help!

The Full Cast

What is a read-along?

You can call Wolf Crawl a book club, book group, read-along or slow read. I don’t mind. The basics are the same:

I have divided the trilogy into 52 weekly readings. Each Wednesday, I send out a newsletter for that week’s reading. This post also appears on my website and contains lots of resources and space in the comments for discussion.

The rest is up to you! This is your read-along. In 2024, some readers wrote their own posts to accompany the reading. We can organise meetups, online or offline. We can watch the BBC dramatisation or visit the Tower of London. Some readers get creative, and draw, paint or even knit their journey through the books.

And if you have specific expertise or insight into the books or the period, I would love to get you involved with interviews or guest posts. Please get in touch.

When does Wolf Crawl start?

Wednesday 1 January 2025: We start Wolf Hall
Wednesday 30 April 2025: We start Bring Up the Bodies
Wednesday 23 July 2025: We start The Mirror and the Light

Full Reading Schedule

How much reading is there each week?

We have 2,007 pages ahead of us.

On average, that is 38 pages a week. This varies between around 20 and 50 pages. Mantel writes long chapters, so I’ve had to make some editorial decisions about how to divide up those longer chapters.

Can I read at my own pace?

Of course! This isn’t school, and there are no rules.

If you want to race ahead or saunter behind, if life gets in the way, or your curiosity gets the better of you, do what works for you. My posts and our discussion will always be here when you want them.

All I want is for you to enjoy reading these fabulous books.

Can I listen instead of read?

Yes! This slow read is fully accessible to readers with visual impairments or those who prefer to listen instead of reading. I recommend the definitive audiobooks narrated by Ben Miles. All my posts have voice-overs and will also be available as a podcast to download and listen to on your preferred app.

How do I join Wolf Crawl?

1. Subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents.

2. Turn on notifications in your settings for 2025 Wolf Crawl to receive weekly emails.

This video shows you how to join Wolf Crawl:

Turn on notifications

How much does Wolf Crawl cost?

Wolf Crawl is for paid subscribers to Footnotes and Tangents. A subscription costs £3.50/month or £35/year. This includes:

• 52 detailed posts with audio voiceovers, discussion and resources, paintings, videos and further links.

• Extensive plot summaries for over 100 characters.

• A friendly and inclusive discussion space.

• A podcast version of my posts to download and listen to on your favourite app.

• A bonus series on the trilogy’s ghosts and phantasmal themes, called The Haunting of Wolf Hall.

A paid subscription also includes:

• A monthly chat thread to connect with readers across the book groups and share current reads and book recommendations.

• The 2025 War and Peace read-along, reading Leo Tolstoy’s classic, a chapter-a-day.

• Access to all my book guides.

On 1 January 2025, new subscriptions will rise to £5/month or £50/year. This will not affect existing subscriptions, so upgrade before New Year’s Day for the best deal.

Subscribe now

Is there support for readers on a low income?

Yes! I have aimed to make this slow read as affordable as possible while providing an income to allow me to keep writing. However, I do not want your financial situation to be a barrier to benefiting from this experience.

So if you are an engaged reader with a low or no income, please get in touch so I can support your reading with a complimentary subscription.

What other books are running next year?

Here is the full lineup for 2025:

Jan–Mar: The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell
May–Sep: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Oct–Nov: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Nov–Dec: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
All Year: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (for paid subscribers)
All Year: Hilary Mantell’s Cromwell trilogy (for paid subscribers)

I will introduce the War and Peace read-along next month.

Any further questions?

If you have any queries about the slow read, leave me a comment below, send me an email or a message on Substack.

Substack Book Group Directory

I maintain a list of around 40 book groups and book clubs with newsletters hosted on Substack. Explore the list here:

Find a book group

Bonus: She, Mantel

To finish and by way of farewell, here is a video of a short piece I wrote a while back as a tribute to this trilogy. It’s called “She, Mantel”. Enjoy and I hope to see many of you on the slow read next year!

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Dear reader,

I invite you to join us in 2025 for a slow read of A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel’s magnificent novel set during the French Revolution. A slow read is an extraordinary experience. We take our time, we notice more, and we create space to live within the story. It is mindful reading, and it is for everyone.

We start on 5 May 2025 and will spend 20 weeks in the belly of the beast. This post contains everything you need to know, as well as information about three other books we’re reading in 2025: The Siege of Krishnapur, Things Fall Apart, and The Blue Flower.

Here is the full line-up for 2025:

Each book group has a main page. To join a slow read, (1) subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents, and (2) turn on notifications for your chosen book. I have recorded a how-to video to help you, which you can find in the post below.

1. What is A Place of Greater Safety?

This is the story of the French Revolution from the perspective of three of its main protagonists, Camille Desmoulins, Georges Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre, three provincial lawyers who became revolutionaries in the capital. The old order is collapsing, and something new is coming into being. It will be the making of these men – and then, it will destroy them.

It is an accursed book. Writing it almost killed the author; reading it may cause something to break within you. You live and breathe the lives of its characters; and everyone dies in the end.

This book almost didn’t get published.

In her twenties, Hilary Mantel set out to write “the story of the revolution by some of the people who made it, rather than by the revolution’s enemies.” She researched and wrote the book between 1974-79 while suffering extreme pain and fatigue. Misdiagnosed with a psychiatric illness, she endured unnecessary treatment and major life-altering surgery. By the time it was diagnosed as endometriosis, Mantel had finished an enormous novel that no one wanted to publish.

She feared she had begun her career with ‘a gigantic mistake.’

Fast forward to 1992. Hilary Mantel was forty with four books out. A friend was writing a newspaper article on unfinished first novels. She asked Mantel whether she had one. “I could have lied,” she told The Paris Review, “but it was as if the devil jumped out of my mouth, and I said, Yes, I have!” After labouring long hours through one agonising summer of revisions, she finally published A Place of Greater Safety.

I suppose that book always was more important to me than anything else… It was me doing what I do. And I think, for better or worse, it’s me ­doing what only I could do.

2. Why read A Place of Greater Safety?

When Hilary Mantel died in September 2022, I knew there was only one book I wanted to re-read. I was grieving the death of an author who wrote words that made me feel, and no book makes me feel quite as much as A Place of Greater Safety. In her Author’s Note, she writes:

I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions, change sympathies: a book that one can think and live inside.

We inhabit this book. Novelist Lucy Caldwell writes, “It captures the spirit of the Revolution – it makes you feel you are living through it.” That spirit is at first exhilarating and later terrifying, as our place of safety vanishes to nothing. As the historian Kate Williams says, “Paris bursts from the page” as ordinary lives become extraordinary in new and bewildering times.

A Place of Greater Safety is less well-known and less critically acclaimed than her Cromwell trilogy. But it is astonishing to think that this was her first book. The amount of research, the depth of the writing, and the scale of the undertaking will put fear into the hearts of any aspiring author.

And yet, it is inspiring! If words can do this: create a physiological response, make your heart race and your head pound. If words can make you look up from the page, to check whether you are really alone. And really safe. If words can do this to you, then, there is little doubt that we must read, and we must write.

Mantel said:

When I began work on the French Revolution, it seemed to me the most interesting thing that had ever happened in the history of the world, and it still does in many ways.

“May you live in interesting times” is the apocryphal ancient Chinese curse that is neither ancient nor Chinese. It is apparently as fictitious as the response a Chinese premier once gave to a question about the impact of the French Revolution: “Too early to tell.” We live in interesting times, and we live in a world re-made by events in Paris, 1789. This is a book about those times and our times.

The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particulary unlikely is probably true.

3. How does the slow read work?

2025 will be my third year running slow reads of great books. Here is what I do:

I have divided A Place of Greater Safety into a 20-week reading schedule, starting 5 May and finishing 22 September. Every Monday, I will send out a discussion post to accompany that week’s reading. This post will include my reflections combined with resources and plenty of space in the comments for further discussion.

You will be able to find the reading schedule, weekly posts and further resources on the main page for this slow read:

A Place of Greater Safety

The rest is up to you. This is your slow read, and you should make it your own. Some are inspired to do their own research and write their own posts, others record their thoughts, meet up online or offline, or get creative by illustrating or even knitting their way through the slow read journey. Many or most come along just for the book and the discussion. There is no right way to read a book.

4. How much reading is there each week?

Dividing up A Place of Greater Safety has been tricky. Each week’s reading is around 40 pages. However, Hilary Mantel wrote some long chapters. The longest week is 60 pages, and the shortest is only 25 pages long.

5. Can I read at my own pace?

Of course! Find your rhythm with the readalong. There is an unexpected and enriching pleasure in a slow read. But you may need to swallow the book whole, or life may get in the way, and you find yourself catching up or taking a more scenic route to the finish line.

The reading schedule gives me time to research the reading and write my posts. But don’t let it cramp your style. We’re not at school. This is not homework. And there’s no right or wrong way to read a book.

Find your pace. Take advantage of as little or as much of the discussion and resources. The most important thing is that you enjoy your time with this book.

6. How do I join?

It’s a simple two-step process. (1) Subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents, and (2) turn on notifications for “2025 A Place of Greater Safety”. Here’s a video to walk you through it:

Join the book group!

7. Is it free?

Yes! These posts are free and anyone can join in with the discussion. However, writing Footnotes and Tangents is also my full-time job, and it depends on paid subscriptions to keep it on the road. So, if you can afford to, I encourage you to upgrade to paid to support the slow reads and my writing.

A paid subscription is £3.50/month or £35/year. My prices are going up to £5/month or £50/year on 1 January 2025, but the rise won’t affect existing subscribers, so upgrade before the new year for the best deal.

Paid subscribers enjoy:

• Full access to all my book guides, including Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and three Cromwell books by Hilary Mantel.

• Wolf Crawl 2025. Read Hilary Mantel’s trilogy: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light over 52 weeks.

• War and Peace 2025. Read Leo Tolstoy’s classic, a chapter a day with weekly posts and daily discussion.

• Chat. A monthly ‘office hours’ chat thread to catch up, share our current reading and plan future slow reads. Paying subscribers can only start their own chat threads at any time.

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Paid subscribers also help fund complimentary upgrades for engaged readers with low or no income. If that’s you, get in touch so I can support your reading!

8. What are the other slow reads in 2025?

A Place of Greater Safety is one of my favourite historical novels. To accompany it, I have chosen three books recommended by Hilary Mantel. For me, this will be an adventure. I have read each book only once and I have far more questions than answers. Whether you have read them before, or are coming to them for the first time, I would be delighted if you joined me for the journey.

The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

Mantel writes:

An idiosyncratic masterpiece, wise and richly comic, set in India in 1857 in a besieged town garrisoned by the British. Original and endlessly entertaining, it repays repeated readings.

We will read this book over nine weeks, starting 6 January 2025.

• More on The Siege of Krishnapur.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Mantel writes:

A classic of African writing and a book of world stature, Chinua Achebe’s novel is set in a Nigerian village in the 1890s, where traditional society and the individual’s role falters in the face of modern and western influence. It is a gripping human story, universal in its appeal.

We will read this book over five weeks, starting 29 September 2025.

• More on Things Fall Apart.

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

Mantel cites Fitzgerald and her final book as an influence on her approach to historical fiction. It tells episodes from the early life of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a foundational figure in German Romanticism.

We will read this book over seven weeks, starting 3 November 2025.

• More on The Blue Flower.

I will also repeat this year’s enormously successful slow reads for paying subscribers:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

361 chapters starting on 1 January, a chapter a day. Weekly discussion posts and daily chat threads, with character and chapter summaries, so you will never feel lost. There will be a post dedicated to this readalong in November. You can read the intro to this year’s readalong here.

Wolf Crawl: Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy

Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light, read over 52 weeks with weekly discussion posts full of resources and reflections on the text. It was a great pleasure and a labour of love to create this book guide and slow read in 2024. I will revise and send out the posts to new readers in 2025. I’ll post more about this next month. You can read this year’s intro here.

9. Any questions?

If you’ve got a question I haven’t answered here, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, hit reply, or send me a message on Substack. And if you know someone who might love one or more of these slow reads, please share this post. Thank you!

10. Substack Book Directory

Every month, I update a list of book groups with active Substack newsletters. The list currently has 37 groups and includes fiction and nonfiction, classics and contemporary novels, poetry, plays and philosophy. Do take a look!

Find a book group

And that’s all from me. Have a great month, and I’ll be back at the end of October with an introduction to the 2025 slow read of the Cromwell books. See you then!

This is my monthly update to all subscribers to Footnotes and Tangents – book guides and slow reads of great books.

We currently have two groups: Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. Read on to find out which books will be featured in 2025. And scroll down for the latest version of the Substack Book Group Directory to find other readalongs and book clubs hosted on Substack.

Footnotes and Tangents is now a year old! Twelve months ago, I decided to turn this Instagram side project into a full-blown newsletter. By the end of 2023, I began to work full-time writing Footnotes and Tangents – and I haven’t looked back!

Thank you to everyone for making that happen. This is an evolving project, an adventure in reading literature with creativity, compassion and curiosity.

Footnotes and Tangents encourages everyone to make great books their own. Each reading experience is unique; we live inside stories and renew them as we read and retell them. You are the only expert of that encounter so I cannot tell you how to read a book. Instead, I attempt to be a guide and a companion in that journey and create an inclusive space to share our adventures in literature.

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Book groups in 2025

• A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (Free)

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Free)

• The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G.Farrell (Free)

• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (Free)

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Paid)

• The Cromwell trilogy: Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies, The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (Paid)

Next year, I will re-run the year-long slow reads of War and Peace and Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy for paid subscribers. I will talk more about these two readalongs in October and November.

Alongside these re-runs, I am exploring Mantel’s other great historical novel, A Place of Greater Safety, and three works of historical fiction that Mantel especially admired: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G.Farrell and The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald. I will introduce these books in next month’s post, along with the reading schedules and how to sign up.

Like this year, next year’s new titles will be free for everyone. If you have the means to support my writing with a paid subscription, it will help me continue this project and offer ‘scholarships’ to subscribers on low or no income. This year, I have been working full-time on the book guides. Hopefully, next year’s subscriptions will allow me to dedicate time to researching and writing my own novel.

Finally, to reflect the detail and quality of the completed book guides, new paid subscriptions will rise to £5/£50 on 1 Jan 2025. Existing subscriptions will not change, so upgrade this year for the best deal at £3.50 a month or £35 a year.

Subscribe now

Thank you again for joining me on these reading adventures. I’ll be back next month with more on the 2025 reads. In the meantime, please explore my list of book groups with Substack newsletters. And if there’s a book you would like to read slowly and together, let us know in the comments and maybe someone might be inspired to lead a reading!

Have a great month and happy reading,

Simon

Substack Book Group Directory

If you would like to update your details here or add your own book group, book club or read-along, please send me a message on Substack.

For past books, peruse the archive.
For the most up-to-date list, click here.

Key: 📞 video meetups 🎧 podcasts

The Audacious Book Club 📞
Host: • Last: Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin • Now: The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza

The Big Read
Host: • Last: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin • Current: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Aug–Oct)

Cams Campbell Reads
Host: • Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (May 2024 – Feb 2025)

Close Reads HQ 🎧
Hosts: , , • Last: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward • Now: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset & Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Sept–Jan) • Next: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor & Jumping Jenny by Anthony Berkley

Closely Reading
Host: • Last: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton • Now: Passing by Nella Larsen (Sept) • Next: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (2025)

The Common Reader 📞
Host: Henry Oliver • Last: As You Like It by William Shakespeare • Now: Twelfth Night & Hamlet (Discussion: 8 Sept) • Next: Troilus and Cressida & Anthony and Cleopatra (Discussion: 13 Oct)

Creative, Inspired, Happy 📞
Host: • Last: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (July) • Now: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (August) • Next: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (October)

The Crossroads Gazette’s Audio Book Club 🎧
Host: • Now: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta»
Host: Dana Oljós • Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (July – Dec 2024)

Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub
Host: Julie Witmer • Last: Linnets & Valerians • Now: Island Magic

Emily’s Walking Book Club📞
Host: • Last: Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb (July) • Now: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (Sept)

Everything is Amazing
Host: • Now: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz

Footnotes and Tangents 🎧
Host: Simon Haisell • Last: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel • Now: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy & The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel • Next: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (2025)

FrizzLit
Host: • Last: Persuasion by Jane Austen • Next: Flannery O'Connor & Dune by Frank Herbert (Jan – Feb)

Gentle Book Club
Host: • Now: Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love by (Aug-Sep) • Next: Kokoro by (Sep-Oct)

MakingHistory and Lifelong Learning 📞
Host: • Now: The Science of Reading by Adrian Jones & Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative Intelligence by Angus Fletcher (with Tracy Gustilo)

Melanie’s Frontal Lobe
Host: • Now: Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Notes from the Town Hermit
Host: • Next: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (September–December)

Paper Knife
Host: • Now: A Year of Reading Kafka

The Paulo Coelho Read Along
Host: • Last: Manual of The Warrior of Light • Now: Veronika Decides To Die • Next: Eleven Minutes

Peak Notions 📞
Host: • Last: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (April) • Now: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (July)

Personal Canon Formation
Host: • Last: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien • Now: Emma by Jane Austen • Next: Jonathan Swift & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Poetry & Process
Host: • Last: The Journey by Mary Oliver • Now: A Hundred Bolts of Satin by Kay Ryan

Read the Classics
Host: •Now: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Sep) • Next: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Oct) & Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (Nov) & The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (Dec)

Reading Revisited
Host: & & • Last: East of Eden by John Steinbeck • Now: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen • Next year: 2025 list

Receipt from the Bookshop
Host: • Last: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wasteland by Sarah Brooks

The Recovering Academic
Host: • Last: My Ántonia by Willa Cather

The Selfish Bookclub
Host: • Last: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert • Now: Playing Big by Tara Mohr

The Story Social
Hosts: & • Last: Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (July) • Now: Good Material by Dolly Alderton (Aug)

Virginia Woolf Reading Group
Host: • Last: Mrs Dalloway • Next: To the Lighthouse (next year)

Walking Away
Host: • Now: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (July – September)

It is my birthday, and I am in a celebratory mood! Here’s a video:

Twelve months ago, footnotes and tangents was just a little side project on Instagram. A year on, I now work full-time on this newsletter, writing the book guides and running the slow-read book groups. Last week, I finished work on the guide for Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies:

Complete guide to Bring Up the Bodies

To celebrate, I’m running a half-price sale on annual subscriptions! From January, the four book guides will be exclusive for paid subscribers, along with the Wolf Crawl and War and Peace read-alongs – both of which will run in 2025 for those who felt the FOMO this year. This offer expires at midnight tomorrow BST.

Half price subscription for 1 year

In the next few months, I’ll be finalising our books for 2025 and setting up Wolf Crawl as a podcast. I am enormously excited about the future of footnotes and tangents and look forward to sharing more great books with you soon.

As usual, you can scroll down for a list of other book groups hosted by readers and writers on Substack. I’ll see many of you in our book chats and discussions this week. Have a fabulous August, and I’ll be back next month with more details on next year’s reads.

Simon

Substack Book Group Directory

If you would like to update your details here or add your own book group, book club or read-along, please send me a message on Substack.

For past books, peruse the archive.
For the most up-to-date list, click here.

Key: 📞 video meetups 🎧 podcasts

The Audacious Book Club 📞
Host: Roxane Gay • Last: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (June) • Now: Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Zoom: 30 July)

The Big Read
Host: Jeremy Anderberg • Last: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë • Current: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Cams Campbell Reads
Host: Cams Campbell • Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (May 2024 – Feb 2025)

Close Reads HQ 🎧
Hosts: David Kern, , • Last: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee • Now: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset • Now: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (July–Aug) & Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Aug–Dec)

Closely Reading
Host: haley larsen, phd • Last: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The Common Reader 📞
Host: Henry Oliver • Last: As You Like It by William Shakespeare • Next: Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and Hamlet

Creative, Inspired, Happy 📞
Host: Evelyn Skye • Last: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (July) • Next: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (August)

Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta»
Host: Dana Oljós • Now: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (July – Dec 2024)

Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub
Host: Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub • Last: The Little White Horse • Now:Linnets & Valerians

Emily’s Walking Book Club 📞
Host: • Last: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (June) • Now: Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb (July)

Everything is Amazing
Host: Mike Sowden • Now: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz

Footnotes and Tangents 🎧
Host: Simon Haisell • Last: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel • Now: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy & The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel • Next: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (2025)

FrizzLit
Host: Christopher Frizzelle • Last: Herman Melville • Now: Persuasion by Jane Austen (July) • Now: Dune by Frank Herbert (August – September)

MakingHistory and Lifelong Learning 📞
Host: Dan Allosso • Last: Capital Order by Clara E. Mattei • Now: Dream of a Democratic Culture by Tim Lacy

Notes from the Town Hermit
Host: Tiffany Chu • Next: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (September–December)

Paper Knife
Host: Leonard Gaya • Now: A Year of Reading Kafka

The Paulo Coelho Read Along
Host: Colm Holland • Last: The Fifth Mountain • Now: Manual of The Warrior of Light• Next: Veronika Decides To Die

Peak Notions 📞
Host: Laura Kennedy • Last: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (April) • Now: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (July)

Personal Canon Formation
Host: John Halbrooks • Last: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien • Now: Emma by Jane Austen • Next: Jonathan Swift & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Poetry & Process
Host: Brian Funke • Last: The Creek by Jim Harrison • Now: The Journey by Mary Oliver

Reading Revisited
Host: Jessica Risma & & • Last: East of Eden by John Steinbeck • Now: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen • Next year: 2025 list

Receipt from the Bookshop
Host: Katie Clapham • Last: In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas (June)

The Recovering Academic
Host: Joshua Doležal • Last: My Ántonia by Willa Cather

The Selfish Bookclub
Host: Sarah Raad • Last: Big Magic by • Now: Playing Big by Tara Mohr

The Story Social
Hosts: Jodie Melissa Rogers & • Last: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (June) • Now: Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (July)

Virginia Woolf Reading Group
Host: Tash • Last: Mrs Dalloway • Next: To the Lighthouse (next year)

Walking Away
Host: Jared Henderson • Now: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (July – September)

Welcome to a new monthly bulletin from Footnotes and Tangents, the home of slow reading of historical novels. Endnotes will include news from me and an updated list of book groups, readalongs and slow reads taking place on Substack. I hope this Book Group Directory will be a useful resource for you to find your next slow read.

All this year, we have been reading War and Peace and Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. There will be new books in 2025, alongside revised and updated versions of our current readalongs for those who missed out this year. I’ll give more details in future posts, but one book is definitely on our agenda for 2025: Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety.

This newsletter is best read online here.

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Wolf Hall Weekend

Here I am, last Sunday, leading a panel on the Exeter Conspiracy in The Mirror and the Light. The Earl of Devon, festooned in a cape emblazoned with the shield of his ancestors, is showing us a lock of Gertrude Courtenay’s hair. In the 1530s, Gertrude narrowly escaped the headman’s axe. Her husband, Marquess of Exeter, was not so fortunate. Neither was Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, who went to the block in 1541, aged 67. One of her descendants, also called Margaret Pole, was with us in the audience on Sunday.

The Wolf Hall Weekend was a celebration of Hilary Mantel’s writing. David Holland conceived the idea shortly after Hilary’s death in September 2022. It took place on 22 and 23 June at Cadhay House, East Devon, a Tudor manor house beloved by Hilary and a short drive from her home in Budleigh Salterton.

This was a very special weekend, full of warmth and humour, insight and creativity – and a few tears. I was struck by its diversity, bringing together historians, writers, artists, actors and photographers in a rich exchange of ideas and experience. This was a testament to Hilary’s generosity as a person and power as a writer to move and inspire us all. There’s a full list of the weekend’s speakers here.

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch set the tone in his opening talk on ‘Revisiting the Thomas Cromwell of history.’ When Diarmaid picked up Wolf Hall, he was astounded to discover the same Thomas Cromwell he had found in the archive. He got in touch with Hilary to tell her as much, the start of a special relationship between writer and historian. I strongly recommend his biography of Cromwell as a veritable fourth book in Mantel’s trilogy.

Other historians joining us included Dr Lauren MacKay, Dr Elizabeth Norton and Dr Owen Emmerson. Owen spoke about the incredible discovery of Cromwell’s Book of Hours, the same book that appears in the Holbein portrait.

Thomas Cromwell himself took the stage in the form of Ben Miles, the definitive narrator of the audiobooks who performed Cromwell in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s adaptations of the trilogy. Ben memorably told Hilary that reading Wolf Hall helped him understand what it means to be English. He and fellow actor Aurora Dawson Hunte gave us a tantalisingly short performance from the stage version of The Mirror and the Light. Aurora presented her own talk on ‘Ghosts, spirits and muses’, a subject very dear to my heart as readers of The Haunting of Wolf Hall will know.

Ben was joined by his brother and photographer George Miles to talk about The Wolf Hall Picture Book. This is a rather extraordinary project that pairs quotes from Hilary Mantel with photos of contemporary London. It reminds us of how the past haunts the present if only we learn new (and old) ways of seeing and how to look around corners. This was Hilary’s extraordinary gift, according to her literary agent, Bill Hamilton. He and editor Nicholas Pearson joined David Holland in conversation about working with Hilary and about her brilliant Reith Lectures on historical fiction.

Over the weekend, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting some half dozen of you guys, including , who insisted on capturing a sheepish Simon Haisell on camera. Thanks Tracey!

It was an utter delight to put faces to usernames. The online world can seem so strange and disconnected, so it is beautiful to get a sense of all the people brought together and into conversation in this community. At some point in the future, I’d love to plan a Wolf Crawl Meetup in London. And if there is anything I can do to help readers in other countries connect, do let me know.

I also finally got to meet ! Dr. Lucie Bea Dutton has been stitching the Cromwell books for almost a decade now. We met over on Instagram, and she now has her own newsletter on Substack. Bea is wonderful and kind and a goldmine of knowledge about the books. She is also an inspiration. Her work embodies what I call creative reading: the idea that the book is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning, for each reader brings their whole being to the book and, in reading, makes something entirely new.

Or, as Hilary said after the publication of The Mirror and the Light:

A book isn’t complete until it is read. And there are as many interpretations as there are readers.

This weekend and this year of slow reading are also beginnings. A book is never just a book, and I know without a doubt that these encounters across the page will change lives and create new worlds. I am as ever impatient to know what happens next.

There are no endings. If you think so you are decieved as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.1

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The weekend stirred up all kinds of memories for me. It reminded me that a few days after Hilary died, I wrote a short piece of writing about how her words made me feel. It is languishing in an Instagram caption, and I thought I should give it some love and rehouse it here on my website. I have also recorded it for those who prefer to listen to these things:

The Unmaking

In memory of Hilary Mantel (1952 – 2022)

These books are dangerous. Because they are alive.

And life is not safe.

If it were, we would not be born, but come dreamed into essence. Sprites in the mist, dancing at dawn, without memories or care.

There would be no last battle in the bedchamber. Blood in the bowl. Lights flashing on the night ward. Cold feet in an empty house.

For good or for ill, some old giant found our thoughts, wandering in a green glade wood. Gathered up in a sack, he hauled us back, to a cave before time, with a fire at its lip.

Here in twilight, firelight and drum, he poured our thoughts slowly in. To bones and flesh, bound in skin. A body new, but already frayed. Broken in the breaking in.

It was the giant that told us stories. And how to speak to the dead. At the back of his cave, water fell beyond black. And ghosts sat playing dice. Painting monsters on the wall.

By morning we were fully made. With breath and pulse, eyes and elbows. Nightmares, dreams. We said farewell.

But a body made, can be unmade. And the ghosts came with us. The monsters too. Those teeth, those claws, flashing in candlelight, slipping from the rock.

So we're lost in the woods and we're moving fast. We've stories to tell, but no time to tell them. Ghosts to outrun, but the day's running on.

We come to a river. And open sky.

Above, birds scatter and strange silhouettes. Gods, giant moths — men with arms raised & feathered, flying to the sun. Climbing ladders to heaven.

We want to get up and follow them there, but our hearts ache from trying. Our feet: lead in our boots.

So into the water we wade. It's not deep, it's not fast. Fish graze our ankles, a heron watches us cross. There's music and laughter somewhere beyond. Voices remembered from long ago.

We'll make it, we say, a place of safety awaits. Though the river grows dark and the heron flies away.

The water is rising, tears from the mountain. Fast now and swallowing whole trees in its flow.

Midway you wonder, what will become of your memories. Your stories? Your ghosts?

For the past is fiction, the future is myth.

And now's the unmaking. The silence of words.

Book Group Directory

Footnotes and Tangents is part of a growing ecosystem of book groups, readalongs and slow reads on Substack. This directory lists active newsletters and what groups are reading so everyone can find their next slow read.

If you host a book group on Substack and would like to be included, send me an email or direct message. An online version of this list will be updated here.

The Big Read

Host: • Last: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë • Current: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Close Reads HQ

Hosts: • Now: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset & To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Closely Reading

Host: • Now: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Everything is Amazing

Host: • Now: On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz

Footnotes and Tangents

Host: • Last: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel • Now: Bring Up the Bodies & War and Peace • Next: The Mirror and the Light (start 22 July)

Notes from the Town Hermit

Host: • Next: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (September)

Paper Knife

Host: • Now: A Year of Reading Kafka

Personal Canon Formation

Host: • Last: Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien • Now: Emma by Jane Austen • Next: Jonathan Swift & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The Recovering Academic

Host: • Last: My Ántonia by Willa Cather

Virginia Woolf Reading Group

Host: • Last: Mrs Dalloway • Next: To the Lighthouse (next year)

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That’s all from me. As always, if you have any questions about Footnotes and Tangents and the book groups, just reply to this email, send a direct message on the app, or leave a question in the comments.

I wish everyone a wonderful July, and I’ll meet many of you soon between the pages of our current slow reads.

Simon