Jonathan Gibbs
@jonathangibbs.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at City St George's, Uni of London. I curate the short story project apersonalanthology.com. Novels are Randall or The Painted Grape, and The Large Door. Poetry is Spring Journal. https://linktr.ee/jonathangibbs
Pinned
2025 Reading 1: Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton. A fascinating use of format for a memoir/linguistic commentary: Barton picks fifty onomatopoeic or more broadly 'mimetic' Japanese phrases and explores their meaning to her, using the form to narrate her experience of working in Japan as a teacher.
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
people are worried about the continuity in bond movies when every bond movie opens with you, the viewer, getting shot by james bond
Wait… do the writers think that we think that the Daniel Craig bond and the Sean Connery bond are… the exact same person?
James Bond’s death in No Time to Die is causing a nightmare for the next film. Writers are stuck because Bond “was blown to pieces.”
Anthony Horowitz, author of three 007 novels, says:
“You can't have him wake up in shower and saying it was all a dream."
radaronline.com/p/james-bond...
Anthony Horowitz, author of three 007 novels, says:
“You can't have him wake up in shower and saying it was all a dream."
radaronline.com/p/james-bond...
November 11, 2025 at 12:23 PM
people are worried about the continuity in bond movies when every bond movie opens with you, the viewer, getting shot by james bond
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
A great band is a collective of talented musicians. A great group is everything else.
November 9, 2025 at 6:21 PM
A great band is a collective of talented musicians. A great group is everything else.
If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.
November 8, 2025 at 10:40 PM
If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.
I've updated the apersonalanthology.com website with @junec.bsky.social June Caldwell's selection of a dozen favourite short stories.
Check them out!
Check them out!
A Personal Anthology
Writers, critics and others dream-edit a personal anthology of their favourite short stories
apersonalanthology.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:56 PM
I've updated the apersonalanthology.com website with @junec.bsky.social June Caldwell's selection of a dozen favourite short stories.
Check them out!
Check them out!
There's still time to sign up for @pippagoldschmidt.bsky.social's A Personal Anthology, her pick of and introduction to a dozen favourite short stories.
Hitting inboxes at 2pm. Sign up here:
apersonalanthology.substack.com/about
Hitting inboxes at 2pm. Sign up here:
apersonalanthology.substack.com/about
apersonalanthology.substack.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:11 PM
There's still time to sign up for @pippagoldschmidt.bsky.social's A Personal Anthology, her pick of and introduction to a dozen favourite short stories.
Hitting inboxes at 2pm. Sign up here:
apersonalanthology.substack.com/about
Hitting inboxes at 2pm. Sign up here:
apersonalanthology.substack.com/about
The utter pleasure at rereading a Tessa Hadley short story, in anticipation of teaching it to MA students, and seeing some of the mechanics surface, and sensing too how much remains submerged.
She’s just so good. And she works in layers.
She’s just so good. And she works in layers.
Two brilliant uses of comma splice in Tessa Hadley’s short story Funny Little Snake, showing in its slapdash punctuation narrator Valerie’s instructive dismissal of her awful professor husband Gil’s self-serving tales.
November 6, 2025 at 7:08 PM
The utter pleasure at rereading a Tessa Hadley short story, in anticipation of teaching it to MA students, and seeing some of the mechanics surface, and sensing too how much remains submerged.
She’s just so good. And she works in layers.
She’s just so good. And she works in layers.
Two brilliant uses of comma splice in Tessa Hadley’s short story Funny Little Snake, showing in its slapdash punctuation narrator Valerie’s instructive dismissal of her awful professor husband Gil’s self-serving tales.
November 6, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Two brilliant uses of comma splice in Tessa Hadley’s short story Funny Little Snake, showing in its slapdash punctuation narrator Valerie’s instructive dismissal of her awful professor husband Gil’s self-serving tales.
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
Taking a moment to think fondly of my many male colleagues who have definitely contributed to ruining the workplace. Gentlemen, I did not appreciate the depths of your solidarity.
November 6, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Taking a moment to think fondly of my many male colleagues who have definitely contributed to ruining the workplace. Gentlemen, I did not appreciate the depths of your solidarity.
Congratulations to @cdrose.bsky.social for his @goldsmithsprize.bsky.social win with We Live Here Now!
You can read his Personal Anthology picks, here - couple of seasonal specials and then a typically idiosyncratic Anthology of his own!
apersonalanthology.com/category/cd-...
You can read his Personal Anthology picks, here - couple of seasonal specials and then a typically idiosyncratic Anthology of his own!
apersonalanthology.com/category/cd-...
CD Rose – A Personal Anthology
C.D. Rose is the author of Who's Who When Everyone Is Someone Else: Ten Lectures on Great Lost Books and the editor of The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure (both published by Melville Ho…
apersonalanthology.com
November 6, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Congratulations to @cdrose.bsky.social for his @goldsmithsprize.bsky.social win with We Live Here Now!
You can read his Personal Anthology picks, here - couple of seasonal specials and then a typically idiosyncratic Anthology of his own!
apersonalanthology.com/category/cd-...
You can read his Personal Anthology picks, here - couple of seasonal specials and then a typically idiosyncratic Anthology of his own!
apersonalanthology.com/category/cd-...
automatomnal.
how a robot feels when the leaves start to fall from the trees.
how a robot feels when the leaves start to fall from the trees.
November 5, 2025 at 10:12 PM
automatomnal.
how a robot feels when the leaves start to fall from the trees.
how a robot feels when the leaves start to fall from the trees.
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
Congratulations to @cdrose.bsky.social, winer of this year's Goldsmith Prize for 'We Live Here Now' publsighed by Melville House Press. Good work Chris!
November 5, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Congratulations to @cdrose.bsky.social, winer of this year's Goldsmith Prize for 'We Live Here Now' publsighed by Melville House Press. Good work Chris!
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
It's Wednesday afternoon, and so officially nearly the weekend – and A Personal Anthology! This week's guest editor, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, is @pippagoldschmidt.bsky.social, author of the collection Schrödinger’s Wife (and other possibilities).
Sign up here:
Sign up here:
About - A Personal Anthology
A weekly guest-editor picks and introduces a personal anthology of twelve favourite short stories. Click to read A Personal Anthology, by Jonathan Gibbs, a Substack publication with thousands of subsc...
apersonalanthology.substack.com
November 5, 2025 at 5:34 PM
It's Wednesday afternoon, and so officially nearly the weekend – and A Personal Anthology! This week's guest editor, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, is @pippagoldschmidt.bsky.social, author of the collection Schrödinger’s Wife (and other possibilities).
Sign up here:
Sign up here:
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
November 5, 2025 at 5:03 PM
My first response to this image was the brief thought that Reeves was standing in front of a huge wooden Robocop-style automaton with the royal crest worn as a badge on its chest, the automaton itself standing in front of Union Jack wallpaper.
Expect Reeves’s speech to reignite debate over Labour’s original tax pledge.
One former No 10 aide describes it as the party’s “original sin”. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
One former No 10 aide describes it as the party’s “original sin”. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
Rachel Reeves’s great gamble
Can the Chancellor avoid paying the price for tax rises?
www.newstatesman.com
November 4, 2025 at 11:13 AM
My first response to this image was the brief thought that Reeves was standing in front of a huge wooden Robocop-style automaton with the royal crest worn as a badge on its chest, the automaton itself standing in front of Union Jack wallpaper.
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
My favourite movie with my name in?
Dave The Jackal.
Dave The Jackal.
November 4, 2025 at 10:30 AM
My favourite movie with my name in?
Dave The Jackal.
Dave The Jackal.
I've updated the apersonalanthology.com website with @elfodongo.bsky.social's pick of a dozen favourite short stories.
Check them out here!
Check them out here!
A Personal Anthology
Writers, critics and others dream-edit a personal anthology of their favourite short stories
apersonalanthology.com
November 3, 2025 at 8:49 PM
I've updated the apersonalanthology.com website with @elfodongo.bsky.social's pick of a dozen favourite short stories.
Check them out here!
Check them out here!
Long month. Long week. Went for a walk on the beach. Had a late afternoon snooze. Now gearing up to go see The Bug Club live, which I fear will involve a fair bit of jumping up and down. Though the option is also there to just pull on my Lonsdale slip-ons and sway.
November 1, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Long month. Long week. Went for a walk on the beach. Had a late afternoon snooze. Now gearing up to go see The Bug Club live, which I fear will involve a fair bit of jumping up and down. Though the option is also there to just pull on my Lonsdale slip-ons and sway.
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
Laurence Fox wrote a song about Charlie Kirk, and this is the only comment on it.
October 30, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Laurence Fox wrote a song about Charlie Kirk, and this is the only comment on it.
The way the final small rippling fringe of a wave moves over the flat sand, tumbling over itself, like the fingers of a hand playing a creeping, tickling game with a baby.
November 1, 2025 at 3:25 PM
The way the final small rippling fringe of a wave moves over the flat sand, tumbling over itself, like the fingers of a hand playing a creeping, tickling game with a baby.
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
I've now read two books by Haldór Laxness (SALKA VALKA and INDEPENDENT PEOPLE) and both were brilliant, immersive reading experiences. What do you recommend I read next by him?
November 1, 2025 at 3:08 PM
I've now read two books by Haldór Laxness (SALKA VALKA and INDEPENDENT PEOPLE) and both were brilliant, immersive reading experiences. What do you recommend I read next by him?
The invention of cuneiform
November 1, 2025 at 3:08 PM
The invention of cuneiform
It’s taken me a while, but I’ve cracked open Adrian Duncan’s story collection Midfield Dynamo, and the footballing story ‘Prosinečki’ is as heart-stoppingly, heart-startlingly good as two Personal Anthologists have suggested: apersonalanthology.com/tag/adrian-d...
Adrian Duncan – A Personal Anthology
Posts about Adrian Duncan written by Jonathan Gibbs
apersonalanthology.com
November 1, 2025 at 11:04 AM
It’s taken me a while, but I’ve cracked open Adrian Duncan’s story collection Midfield Dynamo, and the footballing story ‘Prosinečki’ is as heart-stoppingly, heart-startlingly good as two Personal Anthologists have suggested: apersonalanthology.com/tag/adrian-d...
Realisation that it’s the size of the windows that makes train travel so special. Some train carriages seem to be squeezing window space to more like airplane size. It’s the expanse of the view as you speed through the countryside, and the constant shifting of perspective lines, that I love.
November 1, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Realisation that it’s the size of the windows that makes train travel so special. Some train carriages seem to be squeezing window space to more like airplane size. It’s the expanse of the view as you speed through the countryside, and the constant shifting of perspective lines, that I love.
Reposted by Jonathan Gibbs
94. BOOKS DO FURNISH A ROOM by Anthony Powell
The narrator gets a job as literary editor for a post-war left-wing mag; hijinks ensue. The central story of broke novelist X Trapnel’s affair with Widmerpool’s demonic wife is one of the sequence’s best
The narrator gets a job as literary editor for a post-war left-wing mag; hijinks ensue. The central story of broke novelist X Trapnel’s affair with Widmerpool’s demonic wife is one of the sequence’s best
November 1, 2025 at 8:40 AM
94. BOOKS DO FURNISH A ROOM by Anthony Powell
The narrator gets a job as literary editor for a post-war left-wing mag; hijinks ensue. The central story of broke novelist X Trapnel’s affair with Widmerpool’s demonic wife is one of the sequence’s best
The narrator gets a job as literary editor for a post-war left-wing mag; hijinks ensue. The central story of broke novelist X Trapnel’s affair with Widmerpool’s demonic wife is one of the sequence’s best