Life after Dante
a.k.a. the newsletter where I overshare
It’s hardly been three weeks since the last Dante book club newsletter but I already miss it. And judging by the number of questions and suggestions for the next book club, I’m not the only one.
The initial idea for the Dante book club came to me over the winter holiday in 2021. I’d tested positive for COVID-19 three days before my flight home to see my family and spent the following week in my room, feeling sorry for myself and trying to come up with exciting things I could look forward to get me through. One of them was the book club.
A part of me wants to indulge in a bit of amateur psychoanalysis and say that it was my way of coping with being isolated at a time when everyone I knew was with their loved ones. It would be very satisfying to collapse the whole thing into a neat sort of aphorism, something about how in my loneliest hour I decided to start a community, etc, etc.
But the truth is when I first posted about it, it was with the expectation that 30, maybe 50 people would follow along - a respectable number, but not exactly the biggest community out there - so that couldn’t have been it.
It all just kind of happened by accident, really, me writing my thoughts about one of my favourite books into the void, and you - all 1,263 of you - reading, commenting, sending me your thoughts and your questions, and the occasional meme. Before I knew it, I found myself feeling there was nothing else I would rather be doing with my Sunday afternoons.
This is why, although the Dante book club is over (at least until the end of this year), I feel a deep desire to keep writing to you, any and all of you who might be on the other side, still wanting that Sunday evening email from me.
As for the contents of this newsletter, I don’t have a rigid shape or structure in mind. There will be round-ups of things I loved that week: articles, books, movies, music, paintings, podcasts, and plays. Things that made me laugh or cry or think differently about something or about something new entirely. There will also be personal essays about my life, things I’ve seen and heard, and things I never told anyone about. Expect to hear about my many dating nightmares, Oxford, life in London, and Siggy. Of course.
My hope is that there will be a lot of free content, but I will put as much effort as possible into fun bits for those wonderful people who have bought a paid subscription. I’m experimenting with sharing more personal writing, so I suspect this will be where I post stories that I’m not quite ready for everyone to see.
So if you were thinking about supporting me in that way please do - it will be fun! (and it’s still £3.50 a month, the lowest amount substack will let me charge).
Lastly, if personal essays and recommendations are not the type of content you like and you’re only here for the Dante stuff, it’s okay to unsubscribe from this newsletter. I promise it’ll only hurt my feelings for like a second and you’ll still have full access to the Dante ones!
And if you’re dying for more Dante content, check out this video I made recently (maybe even subscribe to my youtube thank you, love you).
To those who are here for all my thoughts, welcome and thank you, and see you Sunday xx.