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Sam Leith

@questingvole.bsky.social

6.4K followers 1.3K following 1.1K posts

@spectator lit ed. “Clock-white, still friendly to the earth.” https://bit.ly/TheHauntedWood

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · Sep 4

My book is out in paperback TODAY. All about children’s books, which are the best and most important sort. bit.ly/4pdXMNt

The Haunted Wood | Oneworld

'A MARVEL' PHILIP PULLMAN Do you remember the first time you fell in love with a book? The stories we read as children extend far beyond our childhoods; they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys ...

bit.ly

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Reposted by Sam Leith

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 8h

Everyone agrees that we're currently in a dotcom era-like AI bubble. People disagree what sort of bubble it is.

There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.

My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

It's Giving Enron

On the AI bubble, and the various echoes of the dotcom crash

open.substack.com

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 8h

Get thee behind me, Santa

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 8h

I now know the difference between a mitre and a bevel, and have made it up the stairs without once visiting A & E. Not the anticipated outcome but I’m now giving up writing and becoming a carpenter.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 8h

Too late! Thanks, though!

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 12h

I’m trying to make a dado rail, an ambition so far from realistic I might as well be proposing playing Rugby for England.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 12h

No way this doesn’t end badly for me

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 12h

I think I thanked you for that very generous and sensitive review at the time, but if I didn’t let me thank you now. Great to have such a critic; and I envy you your smalls. Oh the places you’ll go!

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Jeremy Wikeley @jwikeley.bsky.social · 12h

New post: why children's books are the most important genre, plus another run out for my bit on @questingvole.bsky.social's The Haunted Wood (now out in paperback): jwikeley.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

The end of childhood reading

An old piece, and some new thoughts

jwikeley.substack.com

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 21h

And there I was thinking Thomas Pynchon was an aburdist novelist. Turns out he was documentarian all along.

Stephen Lurie @luriethereal.bsky.social · 1d

Time to tune in to some analysis from Antifa expert…Chef Andrew…Gruel?…founder of…American Gravy Concepts?

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 1d

Dare you to go on stage and say “Hello, Cleveland!”

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 1d

This is amazing, Andy. Congrats. Backlisted into America!

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Miller on the Threshold @iammilliam.bsky.social · 1d

Welp, Backlisted has just been moved to the biggest stage at the 92nd St Y due to “unprecedented demand”. Join the waiting list, New York! Two weeks today, we’ll be celebrating William Maxwell, a century of the New Yorker and, oh yeah, a decade of @backlisted.bsky.social. Tickets via 92NY.org.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 1d

What a lovely thing to hear. Thank you!

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 1d

Three different children simultaneously, from different rooms: “DAAAAD!” Only a nationwide Vodafone outage can get me such simultaneous attention from my kids.

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waltydunlop @waltydunlop.bsky.social · 2d

Job occupations, from an 1881 census. Every one of these sounds like something a sorely provoked Captain Haddock would should at someone in times of heavy stress.

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Miller on the Threshold @iammilliam.bsky.social · 2d

Readers of my first book Tilting at Windmills may be interested to learn that the inner sleeve of @warringtonruncorn.com’s new LP depicts the ‘betong’ category of miniature golf course, as utilised in international minigolf tournaments to this day. Hats off to that dead town planner!

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 3d

Tony Blair and Nick Clegg hosted dinner giving tech bosses access to UK minister

Exclusive: Six tech leaders dined with investment minister, documents reveal, underlining growing influence of ex-PM’s consultancy Tony Blair and Nick Clegg hosted a private dinner earlier this year at which a select group of technology entrepreneurs were given access to a key minister, official documents have revealed. The former prime minister, who is a champion of the tech industry, held the dinner in an upmarket London hotel in his capacity as the head of the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) political consultancy. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 2d

the damn communists at the Cato Institute are at it again

Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 4d

New from me at Cato: I go through the numerous and massive First Amendment and academic-freedom violations of Trump's proffered "compact" with universities and then talk about the mechanism by which it would be enforced, by way of what I describe as a "retroactive push-button guillotine."

Universities Must Defend Their Independence by Rejecting Trump's "Compact"

The Trump administration has proffered a “compact” to universities that would require them to surrender their independence and academic freedom. How many First Amendment violations can we identify in ...

www.cato.org

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 4d

Immigrant Nobel Prize winners exiting the United States

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 4d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

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Joel @snufkinlib.bsky.social · 4d

This is Real Existing Situationist Praxis

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 5d

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest.

There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day.

What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid.

It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

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The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 5d

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 5d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 5d

And here’s the also excellent @john-self.bsky.social from our pages

Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming is a long, hard slog

The Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who sounds like a sneeze and reads like a fever, is on a mission to build our collective stamina. His novels have always resisted easy interpretation, with t...

www.spectator.co.uk

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 5d

YES! Good point. Gizzamoment.

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 5d

Nobel to Laszlo Krasznahorkai! Want to know what the fuss is about? Here’s the excellent @harikunzru.bsky.social writing about him in the Spectator a few years back

The trapper and the trapped

The Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai has only lately become known to Anglophone audiences, through the masterly translations of George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet. Work written and published in ...

www.spectator.co.uk

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