Weekly notes on a reader observed in the wild, including his literary diet, bookish terrain, and unusual reading habits.
Here at Volumes, I write about the places where books and life overlap. These are the field notes of a reader and the stuff I read in the physical pages of books and the digital pages of the online world.
I might ask: Is making art worth sacrificing a life for?
Or I’ll tell you about getting happy-sad at the sound of a dial-up modem.
Or I’ll share my notes on giving books as gifts.
Paid Subscriptions
Most of my writing is available for free to all readers, but I’m working on making this my full-time occupation. That’s made possible by readers who pay for a subscription.
If you value these essays and want to support Volumes, please consider a paid subscription. It only costs £5 a month.
Who am I?
The short answer:
I’m Matthew Morgan, an omnivorous reader obsessed with books.
The longer answer:
There’s a conventional route to becoming a writer that starts with an impressive university and finishes with being published by a prestigious publisher or news outlet. I took a different route.
I dropped out of college to write a terrible first novel. (I didn’t intend for it to be terrible, it just happened that way.) I worked as a carpenter, a kitchen assistant, a cleaner, and a handyman. While I did those things, I read all the books I could — everything from The Divine Comedy to The Human Stain, from Austen to Zola.
I eventually studied for a degree in English Literature while working as a bookseller. The job meant I read even more, and my studies made me a better writer. I wrote a second book, slightly less terrible though still unpublishable.
I loved having conversations about books with other readers, so I swerved again, turning my attention to writing the essays that became Volumes. Now, each week, I wax ecstatic about a new novel, gush about a rediscovered classic, or wonder about absurdity #481,516 in the growing list of strangeness that defines the modern world.
My AI Policy
The landscape of Artificial Intelligence is contoured with many hills and valleys where nuances hide out from the casual observer; an informal glance leaves the impression that the land lies flat and clear. What actually constitutes AI is contested.
So, to be as clear and concise as I can:
I don’t use generative AI tools for anything I do here. Every word you read is generated by the organic, temperamental, variously successful and failing brain in my head. I spell out my feelings on AI in some detail here:
