1 hour ago Looking to read more books in 2026? Here are 27 titles coming out this year

If you’ve made a resolution to read more books in 2026, here are 27 exciting titles worth reading including The Ending Writes Itself.

Politics

32 h. ago I read 51 books last year, but this was my standout favourite

The novel was nominated in the Goodreads Choice Awards

Politics

55 h. ago 19 best new books to read this winter, from Florence Knapp to David Szalay

Discover debut novelists and immersive page-turners from acclaimed authors

Politics

57 h. ago Many schools don’t think students can read full novels any more. That’s a tragedy | Margaret Sullivan

Increasingly, teens are given only parts of books, and they often read not in print but on school-issued laptopsReading fiction has been such a joy for me that my heart broke a little to learn recently that many schools no longer assign full books to high school students.Rather, teens are given excerpts of books, and they often read them not in print but on school-issued laptops, according to a survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents by the New York Times.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

Culture

60 h. ago Five hotel booking red flags in January that could ruin your winter holiday

Booking a holiday in January? There are some potential pitfalls to be wary of while booking a hotel, experts warn. Read on to find out what to look out for.

Politics

7 d. ago I’ve already read some of 2026’s biggest book releases – these are the 4 to look out for

Bookmark these titles for your 2026 reading pile

Politics

7 d. ago I read books every day — these are the 10 books to look out for in January

If you're looking for some good reads to ease you into your New Year's resolution to read more, look no further than this list of the best new releases

Politics

8 d. ago I've read 240 books this year and here are top 5 you need to read in 2026

Senior Social News reporter Danielle Kate Wroe has managed to make her way through a whopping 240 books this year, and she's shared her top five in the hopes of inspiring you in 2026

Politics

8 d. ago The Master of Contradictions by Morten Høi Jensen review – how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain

A vivid account of the creation of one of literary modernism’s greatest achievementsIn a 1924 letter to André Gide, Thomas Mann said he would soon be sending along a copy of his new novel, The Magic Mountain. “But I assure you that I do not in the least expect you to read it,” he wrote. “It is a highly problematical and ‘German’ work, and of such monstrous dimensions that I know perfectly well it won’t do for the rest of Europe.”Morten Høi Jensen’s approachable and informative study of The Magic Mountain positions Mann as a writer who was contradictory to his core: an artist who dressed and behaved like a businessman; a homosexual in a conventional marriage with six children; an upstanding burgher obsessed with death and corruption. Very much the kind of man who would send someone a book and tell them not to read it. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Inspector Lynley returns to BBC One after 20 years and lead star hasn't seen show

The actor who stars in the reboot of Inspector Lynley had never watched the previous version or read any of the books written in the 1980s

Politics

1 week ago ChatGPT, cooking and Christopher Walken: how parents got their kids to love reading in 2025

Fewer children are reading for fun - but parents are trying everything from AI to dramatic voices to keep them engagedIt’s been a tough year for our brains. Merriam-Webster dictionary editors chose “slop” as 2025’s word of the year. New York Magazine recently dropped its “Stupid Issue”, with a cover story exploring America’s collective “cognitive decline”. There are big problems in the humanities: reading test scores are down for students nationwide, and undergraduates cannot read full books any more.Even storytime – a comfy couch, a cardboard book, a kid’s rapt attention as their parent reads them a story – is an endangered activity. According to an April report from HarperCollins UK, parents have lost the love of reading to their children, with fewer than half of gen Z parents calling the activity “fun for me”. According to the survey of 1,596 parents of children aged zero to 13, almost one in three found reading “more a subject to learn” than an experience to enjoy. Only a third ...

Society

1 week ago Tim Dowling: my 2025 in numbers: not a year to forget, but one of forgetting

From the books I’ve read (and forgotten) this year to the number of times my jokes bombed on stageAs the end of the year looms up like the handle of a rake I’ve just stepped on, I recall the preceding 12 months as a period characterised by a steep erosion of trust and a sinking feeling that nothing is to be taken at face value. We subsist on a steady diet of lies, distortion and AI slop. Everything is getting stupider, including me.That’s why, when it comes to examining the year, I choose to reckon with nothing but cold, hard numbers. Here, then, is how things stand for me, statistically, at the close of 2025. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago The Lowdown review – Ethan Hawke’s new drama is hilariously poignant

The actor plays a ‘truthstorian’ trying to uncover how a powerful man’s death came about. Brace yourself for a hugely funny, all-American wild goose chase!Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) is a “truthstorian”. How to explain that proudly self-applied title? A historian, but also an investigative journalist with an inherent distrust of mainstream narratives? A maker of trouble for trouble’s sake? Or one of those fantasists whose home contains a huge mood board (current mood? Paranoid!) covered with photos of suspects and newspaper clippings and various strands of a conspiracy connected by pieces of string? Raybon actually has one of those. “I’m a very visual thinker,” he says. His scathing former business partner Wendell (Peter Dinklage) sees it differently: “It’s like you read one Oklahoma history book and then made a junior high collage out of it.”This exchange is typical of the alacrity with which The Lowdown cheerfully undercuts itself. Sterlin Harjo’s Tulsa noir is brilliantly elusive in...

Events

2 w. ago In 2025 reparations became central to UK ties with the Caribbean and Africa – so how do we move forward? | Kenneth Mohammed

This year was a pivotal one, in which the issue of restorative justice began to frame the UK’s post-imperial relationship with the global southA little while ago, I was interviewed for a forthcoming book about reparations by a black British comedian and his co-writer. I approached it with modest expectations. It is a serious subject for me as a Caribbean man, and I wondered whether the complexity might be flattened or trivialised in the process.I got to read the book this week. In The Big Payback, Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder take a complex, controversial and deeply contested subject and do something both rare and necessary: they break it down into its constituent parts and explain – debunking and demystifying along the way – why so many of the stock objections to reparations are intellectually incoherent, historically illiterate or politically evasive. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago What to read in 2026: recommendations from booksellers and publishers in Abuja, Nairobi and Brighton

A selection of the best Kenyan, Nigerian and black diaspora writing from 2025 – and some to look out for next yearFrom the richness of Nigeria’s modern literary scene, to the thriving publishing ecosystem of Kenya and the booming creativity coming from black British and African American writers, we asked an African publishing house, a UK bookshop dedicated to black authors and Nairobi’s oldest bookshop for some recommendations on what to read in the coming year. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Stuart Kelly on the year in books: 'It’s always telling which books I keep to re

Stuart Kelly runs through his favourite books of the year, and reflects on the outcomes of this year’s major literary awards

Politics

2 w. ago Yael van der Wouden : ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy cured my fear of aliens’

The Safekeep author on her secret childhood reading, falling in love with Elizabeth Strout and why she keeps coming back to Zadie SmithMy earliest reading memory I had a children’s encyclopedia on the shelf above my bed – orange and brown, the cover old flaking plastic – but I retain nothing of what I read. I do remember a book of dirty jokes I was obsessed with at the age of eight. I was convinced it was off limits to me (it wasn’t) and so I waited until my parents were at work to shamefully steal it from the bookshelf. One time, my mother found it under my pillow and I was mortified. I recall her being confused and putting it back with a mumbled “I don’t judge” as she left the room.My favourite book growing up hat must have been one of Thea Beckman’s novels, most likely Hasse Simonsdochter. Beckman was the author for young adults in 80s and 90s Netherlands. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago This book was the most read on Kindle in 2025 – and you can read it for free

This gripping thriller has topped bestseller charts all year

Politics

3 w. ago 14 best Christmas books for kids, read by parents and children

From heartwarming winter tales to festive audiobooks, these are the titles for little ones to read this December

Society

3 w. ago ‘This extraordinary story never goes out of fashion’: 30 authors on the books they give to everyone

Colm Tóibín, Robert Macfarlane, Elif Shafak, Michael Rosen and more share the novels, poetry and memoirs that make the perfect giftI love giving books as presents. I rarely give anything else. I strongly approve of the Icelandic tradition of the Jólabókaflóðið (Yule book flood), whereby books are given (and, crucially, read) on Christmas Eve. Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is the one I’ve given more often than any other; so much so that I keep a stack of four or five to hand, ready to give at Christmas or any other time of the year. It’s a slender masterpiece – a meditation on Shepherd’s lifelong relationship with the Cairngorm mountains, which was written in the 1940s but not published until 1977. It’s “about the Cairngorms” in the sense that Mrs Dalloway is “about London”; which is to say, it is both intensely engaged with its specific setting, and gyring outwards to vaster questions of knowledge, existence and – a word Shepherd uses sparingly but tellingly – love. Contin...

Culture