Welcome to Footnotes & Tangents!

Start here | A book group for slow reading

Hello and welcome!

I am Simon Haisell, the host of slow reads at Footnotes & Tangents, a website where I re-read the books I love, write guides to accompany them, and invite you all to join me on that journey.

It’s been over two years since I last wrote an introductory post for Footnotes & Tangents. That welcome post went out to a little under 1,000 people. Today, Footnotes & Tangents has over 26,000 subscribers across 159 countries. That’s just bonkers! I have very little idea how or why this project has taken off, but I am delighted that it has.

I thought now, at the close of 2025, would be a good moment to take stock, reintroduce myself and this project, and give you all an opportunity to say hello, introduce yourselves and meet the global community of slow readers in the comments.

This post will be pinned to the front page of Footnotes & Tangents for at least the next year; a gateway for new readers arriving, and a village square for everyone to find each other.

Please use the comments to say hello and let us know a little more about you, where you’re from and what brought you to slow reading at Footnotes & Tangents. I’m so happy you are here.

A brief history of Footnotes & Tangents

I started Footnotes & Tangents on Instagram around 2020 as a place to talk about the books I was reading. In 2022, I saw someone reading War and Peace over the course of a year, a chapter a day, and thought it would be an intriguing way to reread one of my favourite books. I put up a post asking whether anyone wanted to join me. I did not anticipate the response or imagine where this would end up!

2023: Whisky and Perseverance

On 1 Jan 2023, I found myself leading a year-long read-along with hundreds of participants. Me, who had never joined a book club! I was clearly winging it, and I was grateful for the generous spirit of everyone taking part.

We called it “Whisky and Perseverance”, and the discussion took place in an Instagram chat group and on a Discord server. I shared my thoughts each day in my Stories, and those first impressions became the base material for the War and Peace guide on Substack. In November, I met up with a handful of the UK-based readers, and I may have got a little teary.

2024: Wolf Crawl and the move to Substack

At the end of 2023, I began to look around for a more permanent space to host these slow reads. Many people were moving to Substack. I took a look, and liked what I found. I decided to revise what I had written for War and Peace and publish it here, alongside a brand new slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, called Wolf Crawl.

It was an intense year! Had I known how much work was involved, I probably wouldn’t have embarked upon it. Not knowing whether anyone would pay for it, I kept almost everything free. Despite this, over 1,000 people became paid subscribers, and this allowed me to work on Footnotes & Tangents full-time and plan future slow reads.

Wolf Crawl became a labour of love, and I was immensely proud of what I had created. As with War and Peace in the first year, I was writing on the hoof with little time to edit or revise. I announced I would run both again in 2025, revise the material and record audio for each post. That’s when Gretchen Rubin, Liz Craft and Sarah Stewart Holland all plugged the slow reads on their uber popular podcasts, and everything went a little crazy!

2025: New slow reads and collaborations

In 2025, I asked a whole bunch of talented people to get involved with Wolf Crawl and the other slow reads.

Joe Bates arranged music for the podcast, Laura Crow began illustrating the posts and redesigning the logo. Matt Brown from The Londonist kindly agreed to make maps for Wolf Crawl, and best of all, the extraordinary Bea Stitches came on board to write a weekly column on her archival research of the life of Thomas Cromwell. Behind the scenes, Jesse Haughton-Shaw did incredible work researching and creating the further resources pages for the Footnotes & Tangents library.

And I began to expand my book guides with more slow reads: The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell, A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald. We had a fabulous time with these new books, and my own regret is that I didn’t have time to record audio for them.

2026: The Year of Reading Slowly

So here in the UK, 2026 has been designated The Year of Reading, with a national drive to reverse the decline in reading for pleasure.

Over the last three years, Footnotes & Tangents has helped many people get back into books and rediscover their love of literature. My mantra has always been: start slow, find five or ten minutes a day, savour the journey, and make reading a fundamental part of your life. Finishing a book like War and Peace can feel like a superpower, giving you the confidence to read anything – at your pace and in your way.

So many people asked me to repeat War and Peace and Wolf Crawl again in 2026. Alongside these tried-and-tested read-alongs, we are going to dive into five books I love and want to re-read with you. Here’s the full lineup:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all year)

• Wolf Crawl: The Cromwell trilogy 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 (Sept–Dec)

War and Peace | Wolf Crawl | New Slow Reads

Find out more about all the slow reads in the introduction posts for War and Peace, Wolf Crawl, and the new slow reads for 2026. You will need a paid subscription to read the posts and join the discussion, and don’t forget to turn on notifications in your settings to make sure you get the post in your inbox.

My philosophy for Footnotes & Tangents

This is an inclusive and friendly space for slow, curious and creative reading.

Slow reading

There are two sides to this.

I got into slow reading because online reading culture seemed skewed toward reading more books more quickly. Endless talk about our forbidding TBR (to-be-read) piles and our progress towards reading x number of books each year. I got sucked into this, and although I was reading more than ever, I was enjoying reading less.

Other people have stopped reading entirely. Life and its demands, phones and their distractions, have all conspired against us sitting down with a good book. I won’t over-generalise, and everyone’s struggles are their own. But the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 obliterated my focus and attention span. By 2022, I knew I needed to change my approach to reading.

So, whether you feel like you are reading too quickly or want to read more, slow reading is a sweet spot where all kinds of readers can come together for a practice that is forgiving in nature but full of potential and possibilities.

Curious reading

When we slow down, we notice more. We develop patience and curiosity about the words on the page and where they may lead. I have never liked to rate books, and I remain ambivalent about “reviewing” or “critiquing” them. It always seems to me that the interesting questions about a book are not “did you like it” or “is it a good book,” but rather, “where did it take you” and “what did you learn.”

So Footnotes & Tangents is about feeding that curiosity.

Now, we’re all curious about different things. When I write my footnotes and tangents, I’m exploring the ideas and avenues that attract my attention. You will notice something else, and another reader will spot something entirely different.

My hope is that we can all benefit from each other’s curiosity, enriching everyone’s experience of the book and the slow read.

Creative reading

A writer creates the book, but it is not finished until it has been read. And read. And read again. We often feel anxious about not understanding a book correctly or misinterpreting the writer’s intentions. But the beauty of fiction is that there is far more to a book than what the author put in. Stories take on lives of their own, and readers move in to inhabit the world on the page.

Bring your whole self to a book and respond to it in the way that makes sense to you. The book review and literary critique are only two possibilities, but they do not have a monopoly on meaning or authenticity. If a book inspires you to draw, paint, knit, stitch, take photos, tell more stories, or sit down for a conversation with a stranger, or a friend, or with yourself – these things are part of reading. They are its ripples in the world, countless new tales to tell, growing outward from the act of reading.

Introducing your guide

So that’s me, Simon Haisell. I am a writer living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northeast England. I was born in Sheffield, studied anthropology in London and completed my PhD back in 2017. I have worked as a baker in Oxford and have lived for a while in New York and Ecuador. I have two small children, Zack and Mimi, who form the ever-changing centre of my own small world.

I am pretty rubbish at talking about myself, but I recently did an interview for Matthew Long and had a live chat with Sarah Stewart Holland. I’m very happy to answer any questions people might have, and my DMs are always open for anyone who wants a chat. I make no claims to be an expert on literature; I’m just an avid reader who can string a few words together. I’m mildly terrified by how big Footnotes & Tangents has become. It was not the plan. (There was no plan.)

I just keep doing what I am doing and hoping for the best.

But that’s enough from me! I would really like to hear from all of you in the comments and learn more about you. The greatest thing about these slow reads is the community's enormous diversity and the personal and professional insights you all bring to these read-alongs. I’m gladdened by the great civility and respect with which everyone engages with each other, and deeply humbled to play a part in bringing you all together.

This is my last day at my desk this year. School breaks up, the kids come home, and festive chaos is about to be unleashed. Happy holidays, everyone, and I will see you all in the new year for another great year of slow reading.

Simon

Photo by Olga Tutunaru on Unsplash