Tag: Rachel Bulman

Project Bookshelf: Rachel Bulman

My bookshelf, alongside being scattered across innumerable shelves and cubbyholes around the house, is characterised by the books most beloved to me (so those are the ones I’m going to cover in this blog post). However, due to the spread of genres and styles my taste tends to encompass, I’ve decided use this time to encourage you to broaden your taste outside your usual genres – read something unfamiliar.

This article is formatted with a top three for each genre, although it brings me great pain to miss out so many wonderful novels and collections. Please enjoy perusing your favourite genres, as well as the genres you avoid or prefer to read around, and I hope you find something worthy of brightening up your 2026.

First, because it’s probably my favourite category (a sentence which feels vaguely like choosing a favourite child), is speculative and science fiction.

1. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The first novel in the Chaos Walking trilogy, each book deals with different themes around coming of age, and what it means to be human (pretty basic stuff, right?). The Knife of Never Letting Go is set in a new, alien world as humans continue to colonise further away from Earth. Todd Hewitt, our young protagonist leads the book’s adventure plot, following a journey of self-discovery and pondering the terrible subject of violence being an inherent characteristic of human nature.

2. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Another young boy suffers from the manipulations of adults, who wield his circumstances against him. Scott Card creates a frighteningly straightforward depiction of nationalised Earth as a meritocracy, and of eight-year-old super-intelligent Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggins. In a practical exploration of how to ruin a child’s life and also make them a god among men, Scott Card shows readers what not to do. It was a true pleasure to be so outwitted by this fictional teenager.

3. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

One of the most surprising and beautiful recollections of the First World War I have ever read. As in most things, Vonnegut breaks from the mould and surprises the reader with a roster of alien abductions, chronological mischief and a bedridden, failing sci-fi author. Slaughterhouse Five is autobiography at its greatest, and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn about the human experience of coping with incalculable loss.

Classics. Any bookshelf would feel intellectually incomplete without some classics. My preference in ‘classic’ literature is slightly unorthodox, however. I tend to steer away from the Brontë sisters and Dickens, instead going for the likes of Waugh, Vonnegut and Márquez.

4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

I finished this book most recently, and I still haven’t quite concluded my book-finishing grieving period. Reading this in English is, I’m sure, nowhere near as rich as reading it in the original Spanish, but that didn’t stop me from finding the entire novel lovable. The most accurate depiction of the simultaneous burden and miracle of family, the story follows 100 years of the Buendía family. As a reader you grow with the children, watch them fall in love, suffer and cause tragedy, argue, and love one another (occasionally too much). This book is perfectly curated mess, and I love it all the more as a result.

5. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

In a novel that is both surreal and reflective, Waugh creates a sprawling narrative with a cast of glittering, esoteric characters (looking at you, Aloysius), and a series of beautiful locations. What begins as a tender, homoerotically charged relationship between two boys at Oxford University in the early 1900s builds into a life-long tangle of hurt and love and Catholic guilt all coming to an abrupt halt as war is declared across Europe.

6. Perfume by Patrick Süskind 

Chilling but wonderfully lyrical, Süskind brings the reader alongside a man with a superpowered sense of smell, set on becoming the world’s greatest perfumier. The novel is far from sweet or satirical however, bringing some of the darkest aspects of the human character together with enormous ambition.

Last but absolutely not least, fantasy. I’ve spent my life surrounded by fantasy books, so it was difficult to choose, but I think the three I’ve gone for represent the variety the genre has to offer the best (while offering credit to the authors that truly made fantasy what it is today).

7. The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula K. Le Guin

It seems a little strange to have Le Guin on this list as a fantasy author, when her sci-fi has been just as much if not more influential over the years. Still, The Earthsea Quartet, with its creeping melancholia and dazzling descriptive passages never fail to inspire me. In 2025, I visited an exhibition of her maps called ‘The Word for World‘ – supposedly, Le Guin began her world building process with map drawing, and in stories like The Tombs of Atuan, second in the Quartet, it shows in the best possible way.

8. Magyk by Angie Sage

A novel intended for children and first installation in a series of seven, Sage’s prose is energetic and alive with humour. Quirky but brilliant world-building surrounds a story of family, loyalty and overcoming darkness in spite of it. I read this book at 20 years of age and would heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in good stories and good fun. The characterful hand illustrations from Mark Zug don’t hurt, either.

9. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

The best book I could think of to round of this list. A prelude to one of the greatest fantasy books of all time, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit is a beautiful fantasy romp through a safer Middle-Earth than in Tolkien’s later books, with an excellent array of dwarves for company on an epic (but comparatively mundane) quest to the Lonely Mountain. The legacy of this novel speaks for itself, and I implore you to read it if you haven’t before.

So there you have it, my bookshelf. As mentioned before, there are a hundred other books I could mention — a good deal of them children’s books (C. S. Lewis, Cressida Cowell, you name it, I’ve read and loved it) — and lots of excellent stories in each. I am an avid supporter of a varied bookshelf so please, if you spotted something here that takes your fancy, go out and find it in a second-hand shop, borrow it from a friend or from a library and read something unusual.

To finish on, my favourite short story of all time — The Dechronization of Sam McGruder by George Gaylord Simpson. A story written by a palaeontologist in the margins of his diaries and published by his daughter, this book is everything literature should be: a person sharing their unabashed passion through the most wonderfully unhinged 170-page sci-fi survivalist novel. Happy reading!

Rachel Bulman looks left over the wide, blue Gard-Vaucluse river on a bright summer afternoon. 

Rachel Bulman (she/her) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing as well as an MA in Publishing from the University of Exeter, specialising in interactive and children’s fiction. Her written work has appeared in The Book of Choices, Velvet Fields, and Exeposé, among others. Find her on Instagram @worm.can.read, through her online portfolio, or ask the bridge troll who taught him his riddles three.

Meet Our New Intern: Rachel Bulman

In violation of the modern educational system, I learned to read before I could talk, apparently finding the written word far more interesting than trivial things like sleeping or learning to walk. I haven’t really stopped since. From Austen to Orwell, I know first-hand the power a good book has on a willing reader. Most importantly, I know the responsibility of publishers to curate and share good books. It’s a power that should be used to build communities and break down barriers. Publishers like Sundress Publications have all of the responsibility and none of the corporate funding – which is why what they do is so essential.

Another introduction for me might begin: ‘Hello, my name is Rachel and I am a writer’, which, though sensible (and a touch dry), seems like a strange thing to say without a novel to my name or a serious book deal, but is true, nonetheless. When I was seven and wrote a story about a tiger making friends with a princess, I was just as much a writer as I am now. It’s something that has taken me a long time to come to terms with, but if you write, that makes you a writer. Simple as that.

Since the story I wrote at seven years old, which I must confess was heavily inspired by Aladdin (1992), I’ve written a lot more. Lots during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and even more when I studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter in the south of England. Writing is something that brings clarity and relief for me, and as far as I have experienced it, brings people together. Although we were no Inklings, I took a great amount of pleasure meeting with friends to plot and panic and write together – a practice we keep up to this day, only now it spans three continents and happens every third month.

Over the last few years, I have discovered I do my best writing when I am also doing lots of reading. Surprising no one, the two complement each other enormously well. As a result, I’ve been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, most significantly in the ENIGMA Literary Journal, where I also served as an editor for a few years while I was at university. It was here I realised how wonderful the impact of an editor can be – seeing a piece growing alongside its writer is enormously rewarding. Similarly, I co-edited and wrote a non-fiction text called UNESCO Cities of Literature during my MA, highlighting just a fraction of all the work UNESCO designated cities have done in recent years to promote literature. Just six months after the publication of the edition, it was wonderful to welcome ten new cities to the global network! Better still to recognise that the new designations reflect a less Eurocentric approach to literature, ushering in a more diverse and brilliant cohort of literary cities.

At the beginning of this year, I started a review page on Instagram as I try to explore other avenues of sharing literature with others. I take a certain enjoyment in reading books I have never heard of before, so please, if you have an obscure book from childhood or that you found in a local library, I would love to hear about it.

For me, interning for Sundress is another step in a lifetime of joyful reading, and I couldn’t be happier to carry this responsibility and share the words of such a talented and diverse cohort of authors. Here’s to a wonderful next six months!

Rachel Bulman looks left over the wide, blue Gard-Vaucluse river on a bright summer afternoon. 

Rachel Bulman (she/her) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing as well as an MA in Publishing from the University of Exeter, specialising in interactive and children’s fiction. Her written work, from non-fiction to poetry, script and prose, has appeared in Wolf Grove Media’s The Book of Choices, Velvet Fields, and Exeposé, among others. Find her eclectic portfolio on Instagram @worm.can.read, through her online portfolio, or ask the bridge troll who taught him his riddles three.

Sundress Reads: Review of That Same Dream

I have never read a collection like Jennifer Overfield’s That Same Dream (Glacial Speed Press 2025). The poems, as beautiful and melancholic as they are, comprise only one aspect of a threefold project. They become deeper and more complex when experienced alongside the woodblock print of the cover, designed by Lucinda Cobley, and the musical accompaniment composed by Bruce Chao. To fully experience the poetry of Jennifer Overfield, a reading of the project, alongside the dynamic sound collage can be found on YouTube, released by DistroKid. However, the written elements of That Same Dream, despite their foundational role in the TSD Collective project, still hold their own quiet mystery.

Reading the text brought to mind many images, which is no doubt a result of Overfield’s own use of metaphor and imagery, alongside the overall evocative nature of her poetry. This montage of pictures compounds an overall sense of comfortable isolation, like a weekend spent hiding from the world with a lover. The collection lacks complex descriptors, as it relies on the reader’s associations with each illustrated fragment. The third poem in particular,: ‘A dream. / A piece of glass.   A dream that blew / my dress.’ allows proximity to the dream. A piece of glass and a dress blur together to create an amorphous and unique reading experience for the reader. One that could be interpreted as comfort, nostalgia, melancholia and beyond. As I read, I found myself reacquainted with an old sense of both loneliness and serenity.

In a way reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage, which combines and juxtaposes shots to produce narrative meaning, impressions, or associations of ideas for the viewer, Overfield’s poetry similarly juxtaposes images to generate meaning for the reader. Each image imprints something on the next, and as the collection circles back around to the beginning again, they all gain in depth. And I do mean this literally—That Same Dream is a wonder of traditional handset type methods, a limited edition: pure white Japanese Kozo and Pulp paper running in one slip and folded for each page. Each hand-bound copy offers a platform for Overfield’s poems, each one soft and almost skeletal—the lines resemble black ink ribs against the fine paper. It is a collection of marked contrast. Each image striking and indicative of the next, each letter a rebellion against the paper it resides upon, each moment of unfolding pages subverts the way we are taught to read.

With mentions of God throughout the collection, Overfield stirs a sensation of divine listlessness onto the page. ‘God is a grown man’, ‘the ocean was a word God kept / repeating’, ‘getting God to forgive me’; the ‘God’ of Overfield’s text is always capitalised, always male. Familiar, in the way that divinity seems to brush against our lives, whether or not it is invited. Yet this God is strange, an aspect of Overfield’s prose that stood out to me compared to the rest. This is not because he exerts influence over the narrator or holds visible authority over the poems, but because his divine presence seems to lack intention or intellect—because he seems lost.

The recording, a melodious, almost insidious experience of the poem, is available on YouTube. At a thirteen-minute runtime, the reading adds a far greater depth to the poems than a reader might understand on their first listen. Compiled audio of a dog barking, fire crackling, radio static and many other distorted sounds accompany the poetry readings. Monotonous and eerie, at times almost extraterrestrial, the reading bleeds through into the divine implications of the collection. Although every image is undoubtedly human and familiar, often simple in its description, they hide a myriad of disguised sensations. For instance, in the tenth poem:

…is either light coming through the open door

or you

  in the bathroom in an open shirt.

These scattered phrases share the intimacy of the narrator with ‘you’. They show the vulnerability of the addressee, with the images creating a montage evocative of ‘light coming through the open door’. A luminescent collation of hope, comfort, openness, and reassurance.

Amidst themes of growth, companionship, dreams and divinity, Overfield’s narrator takes up an introspective murmur, such a soft quiet that I felt I should make my breathing quiet, for fear of disturbing each tender thought as I read. The poet demonstrates a deep understanding of descriptive restraint and lexical precision. And with so few words, That Same Dream depicts so much.

To learn more about the TSD Collective and hear about the project in the words of the creators themselves, visit their website.

A woman looks left over a wide river on a bright afternoon.

Rachel Bulman (she/her) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing as well as an MA in Publishing from the University of Exeter, specialising in interactive and children’s fiction. Her written work has appeared in The Book of Choices, Velvet Fields, and Exeposé, among others. Find her on Instagram @worm.can.read, through her online portfolio, or ask the bridge troll who taught him his riddles three.