Matt Haig

We are opening a bookshop and coffee place. It will be called GOLDEN. It will be in Brighton. It will be for everyone because even if not everyone is a coffee drinker everyone, deep down, is a reader. Even if they don’t know it. We have the place. It was possibly going to be an extension of a supermarket chain but now it will be a bookshop in a part of Brighton - Seven Dials - that currently doesn’t have a bookshop. My belief, as someone who grew up in a town without a bookshop, is that all communities should have a bookshop because bookshops save civilisation and make life interesting. This bookshop will be about freedom. We won’t be pushing things we don’t want to push. Just good books. Curated by me and people I trust. Mind-bending books. Tearful books. Banned books. Fun books. Graphic novels. Kids books. Grownup books. Really cool music and art books. Books with words. Books that have no words but are really gorgeous to flick through. Books that are actually vinyl records. The best dead and living writers. It will also have some comfy places to sit and drink some really good coffee. The occasional evening event. No stuffy vibes. No genre snobbery. No high/low book classism. You are welcome here. And so is your dog. We are aiming to open by Christmas. Follow @thegoldenbookshop for updates. Stay gold.

I am grateful for Andrea and my family. I am grateful to be surrounded by care. I am grateful for so much actually. I am happy more than I ever am. But this year has been intense in my head. Yet as Lewis Capaldi said I will survive even if it kills me. And I love being honest about it because that means I am not scared of it. Meet it in the eye when it comes into view. Autistic burnout is real.

Maybe some people love AI because they want to be free from all emotion and never feel a thing

I like meeting people you know from the internet who turn out to be as great as you want them to be. This is NOT ALWAYS THE CASE. So it was A JOY to meet the wonderful in real life too @donnaashworthwords at the @happyplacefestival ‘Follow the flawed, they will teach you how to be, just as you are, and like it too’ - Donna Ashworth

The UK is about to have a new bookshop. The place in Brighton is going to be ours.

“I researched it on Joe Rogan that Britain is being destroyed by desperate people at the bottom of society and vaguely described elites rather than the very specific elites that the person on Joe Rogan speaks for” etc