Gordon MacMillan

@gordonmacmillan

Worked at Twitter. Content & social strategy. #books #writing #politics. Second novel Blind Dates. First novel Songs for your Mother. Blog:

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Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jul 11

Farage isn’t working.

An outdoor advertising poster for Lord bin face who is running in the Clapton by election against Nigel Farage.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jul 10

At what point did making books harder to read become a sign of literary quality? I've been reading King Fisher & Prophet Song, & it got me thinking about literary fiction's affair with missing quotation marks and unconventional punctuation. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/07/at-w...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jul 4

The greatest writer of the American West isn't who most people think. For me, it's Annie Proulx. Here's why her Western writing is unmatched. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/07/why-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jun 28

I've finally written about one of my all-time favourite novels. Frank Herbert's Dune isn't just a masterpiece of sci-fi. It's a novel about climate, religion, power, AI and the dangers of charismatic leaders. It's more relevant than ever. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/06/why-...

Why Frank Herbert’s Dune remains the greatest science fiction novel ever written, and why its themes of ecology, AI, power and messianic leadership feel more relevant than ever.

A desert landscape evoking Arrakis from Frank Herbert’s Dune, with rolling sand dunes under a vast sky.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jun 27

Beautiful prose can make a worldview feel inevitable. This essay asks whether literary admiration can survive closer scrutiny. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/06/beau...

Headline: Beautiful writing and difficult reputations
Description: A literary collection featuring Monsters, The White Album, The Year of Magical Thinking, The Sun Also Rises, Money and The Ballad of Black Tom.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jun 19

Start with a forgotten crime writer. End up with Orwell, Cornford, the International Brigades and an entire lost literary world. That is the joy of a reading rabbit hole. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/06/down...

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Copies of Studies in a Dying Culture by Christopher Caudwell, Death of an Airman by Christopher St John Sprigg and Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell.

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Three essential books for exploring Christopher Caudwell’s world: his cultural criticism, his Golden Age crime fiction and Orwell’s first-hand account of the Spanish Civil War.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jun 14

One hundred years after The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published, its most famous trick still works. Why it's always worth revisiting Agatha Christie. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/06/read...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jun 12

The difficult woman in fiction was never really unlikeable. She was inconvenient, and that is what made her interesting. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-...

Why difficult, messy and so-called unlikeable women in fiction matter, from Jane Eyre and Austen to Moshfegh, Ferrante and Emma Cline.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jun 7

Campus novels are rarely about education. They are about ambition, reinvention, class anxiety and badly behaved clever people. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/06/why-...

Why we keep returning to campus novels -- seven campus novels to read.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Jun 1

BookTok, Goodreads and Substack have made reading more visible. The question is whether visibility has made it deeper. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/06/is-l...

An image based on Andy Warhol that says: How many books did you read this year? A reflective look at BookTok, Goodreads, Substack and online book culture, asking whether the literary internet deepens reading or performs it.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· May 19

Are novels really getting shorter and simpler, or is fiction adapting to a culture where attention has become harder to defend? tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/05/why-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· May 12

Writing live news can be tough, as MPs all become ministers.

The front page of The Times where mistakenly reported 80 ministers have asked Keir Starmer to go

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· May 4

Some novels comfort. Others ask to be endured. This post considers *A Little Life*, the debate around its relentless sadness, and five challenging books to read next. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/05/when...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Apr 27

Why are unlikeable characters often the most compelling in fiction? From Yesteryear to Yellowface, a look at the messy, difficult people we cannot quite stop reading. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Apr 19

For anyone curious about where to go after Dostoevsky’s shorter works, these are for me the top five Russian novels that matter most. It is part reading list, part invitation to stop circling and dive in. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/04/why-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Apr 10

Readers are no longer just consuming book culture. They are shaping it. A new post from Tangled Prose looks at how BookTok, blogs, newsletters, and online communities influence what gets noticed, revived, and remembered. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Apr 10

Ah the @theguardian.com all things to all people.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Apr 5

Some Joan Didion quotes get repeated so often they start to float free of the work. But her best lines still carry an entire way of seeing inside them. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/04/seve...

Seven Joan Didion quotes that reveal what made her writing so singular, from her ideas about place and memory to the stories we tell in order to live.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Apr 4

Say what you like about Iran’s hardline regime, but Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s summation of this make it up as you go war, is good. Although @Thetimes can’t work out which type has plane has been lost but is clear it starts with an F.

Report from The Times on the missing US pilot

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Apr 3

Are readers craving seriousness again? Not solemnity, just fiction with depth, patience, and the sense that something is truly at stake. I’ve been thinking about that through Claire Keegan, Paul Lynch, and Marilynne Robinson. #booksky tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/04/are-...

A reflective look at whether readers are returning to serious fiction, literary novels, and books with emotional and intellectual depth in a fast-moving reading culture.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Mar 29

Some writers can be recognised within a paragraph. Occasionally, within a line. A distinctive sentence in fiction is defined by many things, from rhythm to syntax, restraint, and voice. #booksky tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/03/what...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Mar 24

Some rereads are cosy. Some are sharp. Either way, they tell the truth (or at least a version of it). Here’s why we reread, and what it can reveal about your season. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Mar 20

The disappearing literary middle - the quieter, beautifully written novels that do not always get the attention they deserve - is disappearing, and here's why readers should care. tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/03/ther...

A conversational look at the disappearing literary middle, why midlist fiction matters, and the books that still prove thoughtful, ambitious novels can find devoted readers.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Mar 13

Why are we reaching backwards in our reading lives right now? BookTok, backlist, and the pleasure of long novels that insist you slow down. Plus a mini list of books that read like trends. #booksky tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Mar 9

If you’re in a reading slump, nothing is wrong with you. Sometimes it’s tired brains, overstimulation and too many choices. Here’s your guilt-free reset plan #Books tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/03/read...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Mar 5

wrote about the aftermath of finishing something incredible, and what to read next without betrayal. #Books tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Feb 27

The setting as a character, and why the places in some novels stay with you tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...

The cover of the bonfire of the vanities by tom wolfe in a blog post about how places in some novels become characters in their own right.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Feb 19

I keep thinking Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and A God in Ruins should be talked about far more than they are. Not because they’re obscure, but because they’re quietly radical. Time, war, memory, the routes our lives take. #booksky tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...

Two Kate Atkinson novels, Life After Life and A God in Ruins, rest on a table beneath old photographs, a quiet still life of memory, war, and second chances.

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Feb 18

We pretend we don’t judge books by their covers. We do. We just call it intuition. What covers really do, how design trends shift, and five books I’m eyeing purely on cover energy. What was your last cover-led preorder? #booksky tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/02/what...

Gordon MacMillan@gordonmacmillan· Feb 7

What do you read after Lonesome Dove? Not the sequels. Not the prequels. Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy is the better answer. Three novels, one sustained reckoning with land, loss, and the end of the West. #booksky tangledprosewritingthroughit.blogspot.com/2026/02/afte...