What a joy to celebrate A.S. Byatt with Simon Haisell today. There aren’t many of us book nerds in the world who are passionate enough to obsess over one book for months at a time in front of an audience. Simon has been doing this for years and has deservedly built a loyal following dedicated to his thoughtful takes on classics like War & Peace as well as much of Hilary Mantel’s catalogue, in the Wolf Crawl, which I’ve delighted in being part of throughout 2025.
Earlier this year, quite close together, Simon and I each sparked on the idea of slow reading A.S. Byatt. A prizewinning brilliant author, she wrote multiple novels that captured both awards and popular readership, topping bestseller charts. Possession and Angels & Insects were each adapted as films, and many people count her books as all-time favorites.
I’d read Possession in my twenties, and was pulled back to it this spring, devouring it in days and immediately possessed with the idea of doing a slow read myself. Simon was pointed toward Byatt by requests from the Footnotes & Tangents community and was quickly ensnared by her writing.
In this conversation, we look at what makes a book a good candidate for a slow read, how Simon got started running read-a-longs on Substack, and when you can expect to read A.S. Byatt via each of our publications… Simon spills one title I cannot wait to read with F&T in 2026.
For those wondering where to direct requests for A.S. Byatt t-shirts (other than my husband, who made mine for me) please ask girlparts.co to add this brilliant author to their offerings. If we all ask them, I suspect they will do it!
To join the Possession slow read September 1
Simply upgrade to a paid subscription here at Book & Craft Alchemy.1 You’ll automatically get the weekly reading debrief, which will come as a podcast and a written post.
We start reading September 1 with an introduction post from me, and discussion and the debriefs will begin September 8 — we’re discuss and debrief once everyone has finished the pages for that week.
The reading schedule will be up August 27th and is edition agnostic. Many people have reported finding copies in charity shops, which is wonderful. Any copy works!
Thanks again to
and all the crowd who joined us live. You really made this an occasion and we’re already looking forward to doing it again in the future.Paid members of Book (& Craft) Alchemy - you are all set already! You’ll get these posts automatically to join us. Those who don’t want to slow read can opt out, but everyone from paid will get the initial posts - there’s no extra step to join, other than finding a copy of the book.
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