Archive - The Common Reader

Oh my god I loved this film.

Sep 3 • Henry Oliver

Philip Hensher: How Can You Kill a Book Like That?

The history of the novel in Britain

Sep 2 • Henry Oliver

1:28:43

Some Like It Hot

Carefree mind, all the time, never blue

Sep 1 • Henry Oliver

August 2026

Maria Edgeworth and Adam Smith

A new book from Jeanna Smialek

Aug 30 • Henry Oliver

Hegel and ‘Life of M’

Ryan Ruby in the NLR

Aug 26 • Henry Oliver

Gender parity in fiction writing?

New data from Dan Sinykin

Aug 24 • Henry Oliver

Replacing Orwell with Anna Funder is part of a bigger problem on the OCR A-level syllabus

The philistine supremacy is still at large

Aug 23 • Henry Oliver

Life of M, by Rachel Cusk

Perhaps I am the wrong reader of Life of M. Certainly I find Cusk’s books unsympathetic generally. (I hated Outline.) But I was absorbed enough to want…

Aug 19 • Henry Oliver

Submerged memory: C.S. Lewis and the art of forgetting

When my children were little, they wanted me to make up a story for them.

Aug 18 • Henry Oliver

Nothing is Boring. Arnold Bennett's Self Help

And reading advice from John Stuart Mill

Aug 16 • Henry Oliver

Quests in the Golden Bowl

an essay in Meliora

Aug 15 • Henry Oliver

Why we still read novels

Philip Hensher's new History of the Novel in Britain

Aug 13 • Henry Oliver

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