The Reader – Autumn 2008

How exciting to come across something new! Well, after 31 issues, this dynamic little magazine isn’t new, but I confess I had never seen it before – it’s not always easy to find British publications in US bookstores. This terrifically satisfying journal comes from Liverpool (with contributors this issue from Belfast, Liverpool, Australia, Oxford, and Lancaster). “New writing/book talk/news and reviews” is how The Reader accurately characterizes itself.

How exciting to come across something new! Well, after 31 issues, this dynamic little magazine isn’t new, but I confess I had never seen it before – it’s not always easy to find British publications in US bookstores. This terrifically satisfying journal comes from Liverpool (with contributors this issue from Belfast, Liverpool, Australia, Oxford, and Lancaster). “New writing/book talk/news and reviews” is how The Reader accurately characterizes itself.

Number 31 features poetry (with entertaining poets bios in a Q&A format, and photos); fiction; essays; interviews on reading and writing; “your recommendations,” a composite review essay; “your regulars,” columnists with short dissertations on reading and books in answer to readers’ questions; “reading lives,” writers on writing; full length book reviews; “book world,” mini essays on literary topics (blogging, for example); “the poet on his work,” a poem by Jeffrey Wainwright which he dissects and explicates; and even a crossword puzzle and a quiz. It’s all wrapped up in a compact, cleverly designed little volume. How did they get such small type so readable?

“Of all the pleasures of reading I rank this the highest – hearing a voice, speaking as if it were directly to you – almost as a confidence – of something the writer has come to know for himself: come to know at a cost, or as a joy, but the knowledge of which, as he conveys it, feels indispensable to our humanity,” says novelist and critic Howard Jacobson in his essay, “It’s the Thought That Counts.” And, indeed, the work in The Reader possesses these qualities. Insights earned. Observations arrived at thoughtfully and after much consideration. Urgency. Poignancy. Introspection. Connection. I loved poet Andrew McNellie’s contribution, “Once,” to the “reading lives” section. He weaves, quite deftly, a personal family story with a larger exploration of language. Frank Cottrell Boyce’s story about a new mother’s anguish learning to cope with the long, lonely days is wry and witty. These pieces are matched in quality by nearly everything in the issue.

“Books are indispensable,” the editors tell us in their introductory note, “because they remind us of a world in which books might not have been indispensable.” That goes for smart little magazines, too, I would say, judging by this delightful issue of The Reader.
[www.thereader.co.uk]