2 h. ago Celebrating literature is good – but I’m running out of patience with celebrity book clubs | Emma Brockes

Sarah Jessica Parker swept all before her at the Booker prize ceremony, but is fame the best way to encourage reading?In these turbulent times, we take small joys where we can find them. And this week we’ll take this: the spectacle of various literary people at the Booker prize award ceremony jamming themselves into photos alongside Sarah Jessica Parker. The actor – if you missed the long piece about it in the New York Times, or the many social media posts promoting Parker’s involvement – served as a judge for the Booker this year, a process that required her to read 153 books, some of them on the New York subway while being followed by a film crew. “Oh let me try!!!!” Parker had posted to Booker organisers last year, and for reasons that became obvious this week, they did.I know what you are going to say; that anything short of full-throated support for Parker’s adorable engagement with books in general and the Booker prize in particular is just unacceptable snobbery. There is noth...

Culture

51 h. ago ‘Most horrific death you could imagine’: the truth behind Netflix’s Death by Lightning

The streamer’s new historical drama looks back on the often forgotten story of US president James Garfield whose progressive political career was cut horribly shortThe descendants of James Garfield, the 20th US president, were proud of his life but rarely spoke of his death. “We knew what had happened, that he was shot in a train station,” says James Garfield III, his great-great-great grandson. “We read about the story in books but, in one way or another, we just glanced over it.”That changed in 2011 with the publication of Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, a book by Candice Millard that revived interest in Garfield’s unfinished life. Her work has now inspired a Netflix drama, Death by Lightning, starring Michael Shannon as the president and Matthew Macfadyen as the drifter who gunned him down. Continue reading...

Events

57 h. ago Best bookish Christmas present ideas from someone who's read over 200 in 2025

With Christmas getting ever-closer, many family members and friends of book lovers will be wondering what to get them. This handy bookish gift guide should be able to help...

Politics

6 d. ago This is the one weapon that can save women from the violent monsters that prowl our streets. We must be allowed to carry it

Don't read a book. Don't listen to music or a podcast on headphones. Don't look a stranger in the eye or even close your eyes to rest. It could cost you your life...

Events

7 d. ago ‘I’m never surprised when I read about a woman murdering a man’: Helen Garner on her Baillie Gifford prize

Her first book outraged Australian critics – but now she’s scooped the UK’s top nonfiction prize. She talks about female anger, becoming cool at 82 – and why winning made her feel like a stunned mulletWhen Helen Garner was announced as the winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction in London on Tuesday night, the 82-year-old Australian author was 16,000km away in Melbourne, watching the ceremony on a live stream at home on what was for her Wednesday morning. When the big moment came, she heard “the winner is ” – and then the feed froze. “We were going, ‘Oh God!’ Running around. We didn’t know what to do. The timing was like something in a comedy.” Congratulations immediately rushed in, which is how she knew she’d won the £50,000 (A$100,000) prize for How to End a Story, an 800-page collection of her astoundingly frank diaries, kept between 1978 and 1998.Garner is still grappling with her win when we speak a few hours later. “I’m a stunned mullet,” she says, sitting in her st...

Events

8 d. ago Best Betting Sites UK: Top Online Bookmakers for November 2025

Compare over 60 licensed and regulated betting sites in the UK and read our reviews of the best online bookmakers for November 2025

Politics

8 d. ago Debenhams drops £110 electric blanket to £32 that 'costs next to nothing' to run

'Ideal for winter nights or rainy miserable days when you just want to snuggle up and watch TV or read a book.'

Economics

1 week ago Lynne Ramsay on pushing Jennifer Lawrence to the brink in her twisted motherhood drama: ‘I make films my way’

She burst on to the scene with Ratcatcher and terrified audiences with We Need to Talk About Kevin. The Scottish film-maker’s latest stars Hollywood darling Lawrence, but it doesn’t flinch from the dark side of family lifeSeveral years ago, Martin Scorsese read Die, My Love in his book club. The novel, by Argentinian author Ariana Harwicz, follows an unnamed woman who moves with her husband to the middle of nowhere in France. Isolated and frustrated, she battles the confines of marriage and motherhood. She introduces herself to the reader as “a nutcase”, as “someone beyond repair”. She sets fire to ants, swears at her child, complains of its “constant clucking and grousing”. She speaks the unspeakable: “I’m a mother, full stop. And I regret it, but I can’t even say that.”Scorsese subsequently sent the novel to Jennifer Lawrence’s production company. He was convinced that Lawrence could – should, must – play the mother. In turn, Lawrence and her producing partner, Justine Ciarrocchi,...

Events

1 week ago Seven viral BookTok reads that are worth the hype all year round

Stuck with what to read now that National Book Month is over? Here are seven suggestions for your next read as the darker nights set in...

Politics

1 week ago Virginia Giuffre's memoir is one of the saddest books I have ever read

Nobody's Girl - A Memoir Of Surviving Abuse And Fighting For Justice by Virginia Giuffre was published posthumously two weeks ago.

Politics

1 week ago Best Betting Sites UK: Top Online Bookmakers for October 2025

Compare over 60 licensed and regulated betting sites in the UK and read our reviews of the best online bookmakers for October 2025

Politics

1 week ago Arsenal fans say ‘Raya could read a book all month’ as Premier League reveals only shot he faced in October

ARSENAL fans have certainly been vocal after the Prem revealed the only accurate shot on goal that David Raya faced in October. The Spanish stopper has had a relaxing month in the league this season as his defence continue to dominate matches. The Gunners cruised to wins and clean sheets against West Ham, Fulham and...

Sport

2 w. ago These are my 6 favourite books that can be read in less than a day

From Claire Keegan's ‘Small Things Like These’ to Vincenzo Latronico's ‘Perfection’, these novellas are less than 200 pages

Politics

2 w. ago The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie – a haunting coda to a groundbreaking career

From an afterlife fantasy to a tale of loss in Mumbai, death is a recurring theme in this story collection – an echo of the novelist at his peakTowards the end of Knife, his 2024 book about the assault at a public event in upstate New York that blinded him in his right eye, Salman Rushdie offers a thought experiment:Imagine that you knew nothing about me, that you had arrived from another planet, perhaps, and had been given my books to read, and you had never heard my name or been told anything about my life or about the attack on The Satanic Verses in 1989. Then, if you read my books in chronological order, I don’t believe you would find yourself thinking, Something calamitous happened to this writer’s life in 1989. The books are their own journey. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Everything we know about Rebecca Yarros’s fourth Empyrean series book

Plus the best “romantasy” books to read next

Culture

2 w. ago Publishing boss claims AI can help authors beat writer’s block

Nigel Newton noted that readers want to read books penned by well-known writers

Culture

3 w. ago 'I love horror books and here are 6 of the best to read this Halloween'

With Halloween right around the corner, there's nothing more cosy than getting under a blanket with a hot drink and scarily good book. Here are six which are great for this season...

Events

3 w. ago ‘Avid bookworm’ who lost vision ‘optimistic’ after implant helps her read again

Sheila Irvine, from Wiltshire, was one of the UK patients included in a groundbreaking clinical trial.

Economics

3 w. ago Joelle Taylor: ‘I picked up The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in a swoon of nine

The poet and playwright on queer classics, cinematic TS Eliot and the comforts of a ghost storyMy earliest reading memoryI was around five when my mum first pulled out Clement C Moore’s The Night Before Christmas, a bumper blue book with vivid illustrations. There was such suspense in the poem, such inexorable music, the sonic possibilities matching the mystery.My favourite book growing upThe Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. I used to spend every spare moment in Bacup library, Lancashire, bag of sweets to the right and a book open before me. I had read all of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books, thought Famous Five were all a bit dry, and picked up Weirdstone in a swoon of nine-year-old despair. The darkness was delicious, exciting because many of the landmarks in the story were from my local area. Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago 19 best new books to read, from Taylor Jenkins Reid to David Szalay

Discover debut novelists and immersive page-turners from acclaimed authors

Politics