A Few Bookish Questions With Simon Haisell
I chatted with the founder of Footnotes and Tangents
When I started The Big Read, my initial impulse was pretty simple: During the 2020 stay-at-home orders, I finished my first read of War and Peace, loved it, and knew I wanted to read it again — preferably with some other people that I could talk with about it. What led to your creation of Footnotes and Tangents?
I began on Instagram around five years ago. Something about the way we talk about books online didn’t correspond with my experience of reading. We emphasise quantity over quality, and star ratings over a slow and shifting relationship with a novel. But books consume us, transform us, inspire us. I wanted to write about that.
So instead of reviewing books, I wrote tangents inspired by my reading. Footnotes and Tangents began as a hodgepodge of flash fiction, gentle pastiche, the odd poem or imaginary footnote. The novel is always being reinvented, so why not rethink how we read and how we write about books?
In 2022, I came across someone reading my favourite novel, War and Peace, a chapter a day. I put up a post on Instagram to see if anyone wanted to join me. I expected maybe a dozen would get involved. By New Year’s Day, we were over a thousand readers ready to start.
I’d never been part of a book club before. Accidentally, I was now running a huge group and having a lot of fun doing it. This year, I moved the group to Substack and started the newsletter, re-running War and Peace alongside Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy.
Why do you think reading in groups is so powerful? Even when it happens online, there seems to be particular magic in reading something with other people. Which aspects have stood out to you while running Footnotes and Tangents?
There is something beautiful about everyone being on the same page. And there is a sense of wonder that all over the world, in all kinds of places, people are running their fingers over the same words and taking the characters through their day and into their dreams.
The magic starts when we come together and discover that we've all brought something different to the reading. We read differently and we take something unique away. A community forms around the book and we get to know each other as we live through the ups and downs of the story.
If you are confused by the text, other readers can help. And if you are convinced about something, they will challenge you too. With all those eyes on the page, you notice more and think more about what you read. The result is something bigger, broader, and richer that lasts longer than if you were reading alone.
Like me, you were drawn to War and Peace. What is it about that big, beautiful book that captivated you enough to lead others on that particular reading journey?
I first read War and Peace in my twenties. I went backpacking in South America and took the biggest book I could find. People mistook it for a bible, which is ironic because I discovered that War and Peace is not just a great book. It is a good book. A deeply humane novel about our struggle to find peace amid war, internal and external.
Tolstoy drops you in the middle of a soirée in nineteenth-century St Petersburg, a party packed with truly awful people. You think to yourself: Surely I have nothing in common with these rich Russian aristocrats from another era. There’s no way I will want to spend a year in their company!
But then Tolstoy does something remarkable. This strange world starts to feel very familiar. We recognise the characters in ourselves and in people we know. Our first impressions give way to a greater understanding and we start to care about these people, as though they were friends and family.
People expect this book to be difficult. And it can be a challenge. But it is also a joy, and reading it can be an empowering experience. Readers have told me the slow read helped them through hard times, changed their lives, gave them the confidence to do things they had thought impossible. The daily habit, the mindful reading, the sense of community and the engrossing story has a profound effect on people’s lives.
This response to the read-along compelled me to run it for a second year. And in 2025, I’ll put it on again for one last time. As you say, it is a big and beautiful book, and I think everyone should give it a go.
I’ve DNFed Wolf Hall a couple of times. I don’t exactly know why, other than that it just hasn’t clicked with me yet. Make the case for Hilary Mantel and why I need to give her another shot.
The Cromwell books can be a challenge: the unusual narrative voice (“He, Cromwell”), the 14 Thomases, the slow pace and the historical context. I designed my Wolf Crawl read-along to help readers overcome these initial obstacles with historical background and character summaries.
And it is worth it. These are astonishing books, written by one of the greatest writers of a generation. Hilary Mantel combined meticulous attention to historical detail with an eerie ability to pin down on the page our phantom selves.
With the Cromwell books, you embody a historical character in a way that feels immediate and uncomfortably intimate. Through some slippery use of pronouns, we become Henry VIII’s chief minister. We forget ourselves and take up residence behind his eyes, under his skin, stuck in his stomach.
Each book in the trilogy has its own texture. Wolf Hall is about public masks and private selves, power and ambition. Bring Up the Bodies is a psychological thriller, a lethal contest between Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn. The Mirror and the Light is a monster story, where Cromwell is trapped between his beastly memories and his murderous king.
Ben Miles brilliantly narrates the audiobooks and performed as Thomas Cromwell in the stage adaptation. I always recommend his narration to anyone struggling to get into the story. Miles said these books made him understand his own Englishness. We live on a haunted island, and Mantel knew how to summon its ghosts and make them speak.
Next year, I’ll take another group through the trilogy, from Putney cobblestones to Tower Hill scaffold. I cannot recommend it enough. Just hold on to your head.
Besides the titles we’ve already talked about, do you have other all-time favorites that you’d love to someday guide readers through?
Alan Garner's magnificent book Treacle Walker was shortlisted for the Booker Prize a few years ago. It was the first novel I purposefully slow read and I'd love to go back and explore more of his books. He turned 90 this year and takes years to finish slim and wise novellas that deserve careful attention.
Kazuo Ishiguro. His eight novels are all variations on the same theme: what makes us human? They are each written in a different genre, but are tonally so similar and speak to each other in interesting ways. I’d like to read them chronologically and let them talk.
And I'm itching to re-visit Mervyn Peake's fantasy series, Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone. Peake did something startling with words to make a beautiful world that was also ridiculous and grotesque. They are the finest fantasy books I've ever read, and I'd love to introduce them to more readers.
But right now I'm sticking to historical fiction. More Mantel next year with another of my favourites, A Place of Greater Safety, sandwiched between three books she admired: The Siege of Krishnapur, Things Fall Apart, and The Blue Flower. That should keep me busy!
Thanks so much, Simon!
Enjoyed this post. Very much appreciated these slow reads this year.
Thank you Jeremy for the questions! It is a pleasure meeting others with this shared passion, and the Big Read is inspirational!