Steven Vaughan

You can purchase my new novel here: The Loneliness That Others Call Freedom

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

The Loneliness That Others Call Freedom https://t.co/LzdmXzV9Fj

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham. Hard to believe this was originally published in 1946, it must’ve been way ahead of its time. I like a novel that gets darker the deeper you delve into it and this really grew on me.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen. Not my favourite literary effort from my favourite author but I learned a lot about seismology and the geography of Boston. Reminded me a little of Fizgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

@Michael53554615 I haven’t no but will seek this out a little later. Thanks.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Ambition, paranoia and manipulation ensue once Caesar is brutally murdered in cold blood and the battle to lead in his wake commences. I would love to see this play performed live.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It’s one of those ‘must reads’ if you love American fiction like I do. Without this book, I suspect that many Dylan, Springsteen and Eagles songs would never have happened and certainly not Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

American Pastoral by Philip Roth. An innovative form of narrative is used to describe the seemingly enviable life of Seymour Levov whose idyllic life comes crashing down when his daughter Merry commits a deadly act of terrorism. Nothing is really ever quite as it seems.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Bournville by Jonathan Coe. There’s something incredibly unique in reading a work of fiction where the characters walk streets that I do (and even drink in pubs that I sometimes frequent) but this novel is wonderful. The ending was upsetting but the journey was epic.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Adolphe by Benjamin Constant. I enjoyed this more than I assumed I would. A story based on events experienced by the writer, the vain protagonist pursues an affair with an older mistress in the search of a sense of fulfilment he cannot exactly define. You know how it will end.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

This novel, the first I think I’ve read by a Chinese writer and recommended (not personally) by Ian McEwan. Zhang Yueran is a gifted writer and the translation by Jeremy Tiang was fluent. I stepped into another world for 323 pages and feel better for it.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

There is very little more satisfying than knowing you will be enthralled by a novel after reading just one chapter of it.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

The Girls by Emma Cline. My first completed read of 2024. Heavily inspired by the real life horror story that was the Manson Family, a 14 yr old Evie is dazzled and drawn to a free-living cult feeding on leftovers, love, drugs and idolatry. The horror will naturally follow.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo. And so it is, the last completed novel of my literary 2023. A free flowing, easy read detailing the complexity of relationships both familial and coital over a significant number of years. I enjoyed this.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Lessons by Ian McEwan. A compelling tale in a Dickensian like autobiographical style. Mirroring events from the writer’s personal journey, Roland Baines navigates his way through marital woes, loss and longstanding personal trauma against an ever evolving political backdrop.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Finally got round to reading some Kafka, namely, The Trial and Metamorphosis. The former being a tale of a dark and seemingly endless episode of secretive bureaucracy. I can now use the term ‘Kafkaesque’ from an informed standing at least.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

If Catcher in the Rye were to be written in the 21st century then this would be it. Enjoyed this but I’m sad about Reva.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Jonathan Franzen’s debut novel published in 1988. Power, politics, espionage and adultery, the signs of Franzen’s writing talent must’ve been abundant to most who read this. There’s an intimacy to his work which, at least to me, is unmatched.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Keep Right On. RIP Trev and thanks for everything.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

Gave up after 80 pages. Paragraph long sentences, verbose dialogue, I went on a journey from bar to garden with really nothing in between. Disappointing. Off to the charity shop you go and on to the next I go.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

I also finished E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View on the train this morning. A tale of love against social convention, I thought I would find it a little trite but it really wasn’t. It made me want to visit Italy too.

[Steven Vaughan @SteventheScribe]

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Horace McCoy’s most critically acclaimed work of fiction set in the west coast of America during the Great Depression. Living in the era of Only Fans, reality tv and social media influencers, this novel a work of undeniable prescience.