HeyJaredThe Upstairs Window | Blair
A newsletter about books. Reviews, recommendations and round-ups of literary, horror, mystery and speculative fiction.
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- Sep 28, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
Latest issues
Rereading three of my oldest favourite books (opens the original)
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Every year I try to make time to reread a few of my favourite books. In the last few months, I’ve revisited three very old favourites – two I first read around 15 years ago, and one from even further back. These new encounters with old books were not quite what I expected. They made me think a lot about how I might define and separate out my ‘favourites’ as I get older, when some of them are books I read at a much younger age, as a different version of myself.So what is it like rereading a belov
10 recommendations from the archives (opens the original)
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On the 1st of September 2016, I sent the first edition of my first book newsletter, Learn This Phrase, via the now-defunct platform TinyLetter.The books I discussed in that first-ever newsletter were: The Trespasser by Tana French, The Burnaby Experiments by Stephen Gilbert (a weird and brilliant book, still strongly recommend this), Infinite Ground by Martin MacInnes, Dodge and Burn by Seraphina Madsen, and Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.There are so many recommendations from my old
July and August 2026 reading notebook (opens the original)
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Welcome back to The Upstairs Window, and to my reading round-up for July and August. It’s a little early because I can’t seem to stop writing more each time (this newsletter is so long, Substack wouldn’t even let me add any extra photos), and I felt the eight books included here had already given me plenty to talk about. Some were excellent – the first three will be on my best-of-2026 list for sure – and even those I had doubts about were at least thought-provoking.Three (extremely different) bo
May and June 2026 reading notebook (part 2) (opens the original)
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Hello and welcome to the second half of my reading round-up for May and June. This is much later than I intended but, in my defence, I had a lot of books to write about! One of the reasons I got through so many is that I had a short holiday by the sea, so here are some seaside photos for your trouble.I first read about Notice by Heather Lewis in Philippa Snow’s essay collection Snow Business, which contains an essay about Lewis’s work. Her description of </s
The Eden Book Society, and other new books for July (opens the original)
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A few years ago, the indie publisher Dead Ink acquired the backlist of the Eden Book Society, a private publisher of horror fiction maintained by a wealthy family. Never available to the public, only sent out to a club of private subscribers, the Eden novellas had become ultra-rare collectors’ items. Dead Ink republished six novellas from Eden’s 1972 list between 2018 and 2021, and now, they’re doing it again with a set of eight books from the 1993 collection.Well... that’s the lore, anyway. In
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