Welcome to Reads & Reveries: The Newsletter

Subscribe to read my bi-monthly newsletter, talking all things books and whatever else I just happen to be thinking about...

This newsletter has been a long time coming but, as with almost everything I do, a little procrastination was required first.

I’m sure most of you reading this have come via Instagram but for those of you who’ve stumbled across this letter some other way, or just need a reintroduction, my name is Tasnim and I’m a reader, book reviewer and speech and language therapist (currently on hiatus but more on that another day).

Here, you will, of course, find all the book chat you’ve come to expect but with a little more of me. The reveries to my reads, if you will.

The other day, I came across a quote by Toni Morrison, where she says, “writing is really a way of thinking – not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet”, and that is the most adequately anyone could describe the intent, or what underlies the impossible-to-quiet desire, behind this newsletter. If writing is a way of thinking, then this is how I’m choosing to share any thoughts I think are worth sharing.

As someone whose internet presence is mainly on Instagram or ‘Bookstagram’, and has been for a good few years, it’s clear that it has become a very different space (something I’ll touch on in a future letter, I’m sure) but the reality, too, is that it has always been more of an image-based platform so asking people to read the entire word count’s worth of a caption (plus several ‘continued in the comments’ comments) just because I want to run my mouth, feels like a bit of an ask.

Also, the internet generally, and social media specifically, encourages and facilitates the consumption of information (and other people’s business) in a way that I find quite alarming if I give it too much thought, but I do like the idea that newsletters demand that our consumption is a little less passive: if you’re reading this, you’ve chosen to be here and I like the thought of that.

So, if you’re wondering what you can expect from me, to some extent I am definitely making it up as I go along. However, this much I’m sure of: there’ll be conversations about books and a deeper dive into whatever I’ve been reading, there’ll be book news and signposting to events that I think are worth paying attention to, and, quite honestly, anything else I find vaguely interesting, whether that’s what I’ve been listening to, watching, or just generally experiencing.

And then, in amongst all of that, I also imagine this will be the only space I share thoughts relating to my experience of loss and grief, five months on from my mum’s death. If it feels like things took a bit of a turn there, I’m sure we’ve all worked out by now that life can do that quite suddenly, even if not always so tragically, and that that doesn’t always have to be a bad thing even if, in the moment, it doesn’t feel like a particularly good thing, either.

If that all sounds good to you, please do subscribe. I’m excited about this and I think you should be too!

Speak soon,

Tasnim