The Times Literary Supplement hosts a selection from the print edition’s Books of the Year list.

The Times Literary Supplement has a review by John Mullan of Rónán McDonald’s The Death of the Critic.

Nowadays, there are more critical responses than ever, but critical authority has been devolved from the experts. McDonald surveys the rise of blogs and readers’ reviews, of television and newspaper polls and reading groups, under the heading “We Are All Critics Now”. He argues that the demise of critical expertise brings not a liberating democracy of taste, but conservatism and repetition.

In the Times Literary Supplement, Sophie Ratcliffe examines James Wood’s How Fiction Works.

As a quality of mind and character, Wordsworth’s “egotism” was central to his nature; it is therefore bound to lie at the heart of his greatest verse.

Dan Jacobson revisits Wordsworth in the Times Literary Supplement.

Paul Auster is at it again, writing about writing. The Times Literary Supplement has a review of Travels in the Scriptorium.

Fiction that calls attention to its own artifice, critiquing its own methods as it moves along, congratulating itself on its own success, always risks accusations of narcissism and self-indulgence.

Indeed it does, and Auster remains more susceptible to these accusations than most.