books
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A candid guide to 21st-century sexual politicsPart self-help book and part memoir, Action: A Book About Sex sees the former Rookie editor break down sexual barriers and do away with outmoded ‘taboos’ -
Lionel Shriver on writing The MandiblesThe Orange Prize-winning novelist talks about her dystopian vision of economic collapse in the US at a Guardian live event recorded in London
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Judy Blume on why US indie booksellers are thrivingAt 78, the multimillion-selling author has begun a new career, opening her own bookshop – and joining a business sector that’s flourishing again in the US -
What makes bad writing bad?The biggest mistake most writers make is thinking they have nothing left to learn
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Napoleon’s Last Island by Thomas Keneally – a diary of exileBonaparte’s time on St Helena, as seen through the eyes of the young girl who befriended him
news
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Magda Szubanski may leave Australia if changes to book industry go aheadThe Australian book industry awards night heard proposals would reduce authors’ control of copyright and flood market with cheap overseas editions
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JK Rowling is wrong to defend Donald TrumpThe Harry Potter author supports Trump’s right to free speech – but what about my freedom to protest against him safely?
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Kafkaesque: a word so overused it has lost all meaning?Han Kang’s Man Booker International winner has prompted much use of the word – but do we really understand what it means?
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regulars
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Top 10sTop 10sTop 10 refugees' storiesThe current trauma of displaced people on the move in Europe is nothing new, and accounts of forced migration have been told since the earliest times. These are some of the best
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Reading groupReading groupWhite Noise is an outsider's look inside small-town AmericanaBoth Don DeLillo and his novel’s characters see their attachment to a culture of consumption at an ironical distance
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100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time100 Best Nonfiction Books of All TimeThe 100 best nonfiction books: No 16 – Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag (1966)The novelist’s early essays provide the quintessential commentary on the 60s
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PodcastPodcastLionel Shriver on writing The Mandibles – books podcastThe Orange Prize-winning novelist talks about her dystopian vision of economic collapse in the US at a Guardian live event recorded in London
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No Need for Geniuses by Steve Jones – astonishing scientific advancesFrom melting down the Eiffel Tower to the Tour de France to black holes ... a richly rewarding if factually unreliable history of revolutionary science
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Expecting by Chitra RamaswamyThis beautifully rendered account by a gay woman updates the standard narrative of pregnancy and lifts it to another sphere, full of poetic language and references from Voltaire to Almodóvar
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The dark side of Brazil’s ‘Marvellous City’With Brazil in crisis and Rio about to host the Olympics, this is a timely book that gets behind the cliches, from Luiz Eduardo Soares whose own political career was recently destroyed
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On Augustine by Rowan Williams, Augustine by Robin Lane FoxThe former archbishop has no time for feminist or ecocriticism of Augustine of Hippo and presents him as a cerebral Anglican. Lane Fox’s account is of the man, fornication and all
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Following On by Emma John – how can English cricket in the 1990s be so funny?Michael Atherton meets Bridget Jones in this sports journalist’s delightful memoir of teenage obsession and terrible cricket
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The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner – how success triggers self-absorptionPowerful people believe it’s fine for them to break rules others should follow. The psychologist whose work informed the movie Inside Out discovers how to get to the top
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Iron Towns by Anthony Cartwright – football comes home to the peopleThis accomplished novel creates a powerful lament for England’s diminished regions
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From SJ Parris to Peter HaningtonDying Breed by Peter Hanington; Conspiracy by SJ Parris; All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage; Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt; Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz
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The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam – love and loss in BangladeshA paleontologist excavates the mysteries of her past after returning to her homeland
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The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver – a vibrant vision of America in declineA super-rich Manhattan family shows its will to survive as the dollar collapses
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This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell – technically dazzlingO’Farrell’s complex portrait of a marriage, told from various viewpoints, is her finest novel yet
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Zero K by Don DeLillo – profound and beautifulMortality is at the heart of this powerful new novel set in a cryonics lab – Don DeLillo’s best work since Underworld
people
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They’ve given up on prisonsThe convicted murderer set the standard for prison writing with A Sense of Freedom in 1977. As it is republished, he talks about honour, violence and redemption as a novelist and sculptor
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An abridged Da Vinci Code implies teens need simple books – they don'tPenguin’s plans to release an abridged version of Dan Brown’s bestseller seems both pointless and patronising
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Finding something funny in the bedroom tax was a challengeThe books interview: the bestselling author on dark humour, struggling to write villains and why she can’t wait to be old and bolshie
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Dinosaur porn or Rabid Puppy pastiche?The explicit erotica parody arrived on a Hugo award shortlist after Vox Day’s endorsement – but who the author is and how he got nominated remains mysterious
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Stephen King's The Body made me feel like I was 11 againWhen Stewart Foster read The Body, the book later made into the movie Stand by Me, it triggered memories of his own happy school days to come back to life – and inspired him to become a writer
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10 songs you didn't know were inspired by literatureFrom David Bowie’s 1984 to Firework by Katy Perry, art imitates art in this selection of literature-inspired songs
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Fictional houses with personalityFrom Manderley and Castle Dracula to The House at Pooh Corner and Villa Villekulla, fictional homes can be powerful characters in their own right. Author Tom Easton picks his favourites
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Happy ever after? The highs and lows of book endingsBrought up on Enid Blyton, teen site member pinkbookworm experienced heartbreak on learning that not all books end happily ever after. But after more research they realised that every shock, twist and tragedy has its purpose – and we readers don’t always know what we actually want anyway…
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Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize shortlist 2016 - in picturesAn ingenious sloth, rebel scientists who changed the world and a guide for the next Tim Peake are just some of the topics on offer in the six inspiring science books shortlisted for this year’s Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize
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Do teens really need a special YA version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code?Dan Brown is writing a YA edition of his first bestselling novel. Do teens feel pleased or patronised by the news?
A selection of our favourite literary content from around the world
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The Little Library CaféThe Little Library CaféFood in books: the treacle tart in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s StoneKate Young blogs about what inspired her to cook meals from books – and why, since that first tart, she has never looked back. The answer lies in Harry Potter
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Interview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore by Literary HubInterview with a Bookstore: Kramerbooks & Afterwords, a Washington DC stapleKramerbooks & Afterwords was the first hybrid of bookstore and cafe to ever open in Washington DC, back in the 70s. Here, its booksellers compare the store to a hyena and talk visits by presidents and accidentally breaking clients’ noses
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pictures, video & audio
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Literary festivals around the worldWe drop in on Lahore, track Jean Rhys back to the Caribbean and tackle the troubling issue of payments to authors appearing at the UK’s 350 literary jamborees
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A rogue bibliophile in 2500ADAfter Edna O’Brien posed the question ‘Is literature a dying animal?’, Tom imagines a future for book lovers
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William Grill's wolves of New MexicoKate Greenaway-winning illustrator William Grill shares sketches he made drawing the wolves at Wild Spirit Wolf sanctuary in New Mexico to research his breath-takingly beautiful new book The Wolves Of Currumpaw
you may have missed
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Lucia Berlin's stories of hardscrabble livesSketching lives very similar to her own, Berlin’s stories of hardscrabble lives resemble Raymond Carver’s – while also invoking some of Proust’s spirit
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I Love Dick happened in real life, but it's not a memoirThe writer explains how what is now a bestselling book began as a series of letters she and her partner wrote to a relative stranger but didn’t plan to send
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The messy limbo that is neither town nor countryWoodland, parkland, marsh and mountain all have their protectors. But who will stand up for our unloved, wildlife-rich in-between spaces?
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What happened to Alan Bennett in Nick Hornby’s Love, Nina?He is one of Britain’s most famous authors, depicted in films, plays and books – including Nina Stibbe’s hit memoir. So why doesn’t Bennett appear in its new TV adaptation?
Love & Friendship Does the new film improve Jane Austen’s ending?