LRB Diary for 2027: What was reading?

Next year’s diary includes, 54 excerpts from 54 different pieces by 54 contributors, which investigate the origins of reading, its practices, perversions, pioneers, technologies and effects, and the writers and writing that inspired them, from Enheduanna, the earliest named author, all the way through to ChatGPT.

Spend 2027 in the company of these eloquent fragments from contributors including Alan Bennett, Brigid Brophy, Anne Enright, Seamus Heaney, Frank Kermode, Doris Lessing, Patricia Lockwood, Hilary Mantel, Tom McCarthy, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie and Marina Warner. Jon McNaught’s accompanying illustrations present textual fragments and artefacts from closer to home, as a different kind of answer to the subtitle’s timely question.

About the LRB Diary

Reinventing itself with a completely new theme and original artwork each year, and charged with the same elegance and irreverence as the magazine, the LRB Diary (not to be confused with the piece that concludes each issue) is a weekly planner possessed by the spirit of literary genius, as well as basic usefulness. The LRB Diary for 2027 follows on from the Alan Bennett, Kafka and London-themed editions of 2023, 2024 and 2025 respectively, and this year’s tribute to John Aubrey’s Brief Lives.