books
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Review Stars, Cars and Crystal Meth by Jack Sutherland – a father retells a life of Hollywood excess
Sam LeithSutherland has plenty of stories of sex, drugs and celebrity. But his ghostwriter is his father -
Some cultures do not distinguish between fiction and nonfiction – and instead talk of ‘stories’. Is that a barrier to English-language writers and publishers? Or should they just learn to enjoy telling tales?
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Review What do Islamist extremists believe?
Patrick FrenchIslamist extremism is now so entrenched that it’s easy to forget how recent it is. Two books explore the history behind its ideologies -
A luminary of the publishing world and a leading light in SF fandom, Malcolm Edwards has worked with many of the greats. Join him for a live webchat at 12noon on Friday 25 March, or leave your questions here
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Julian Gough’s poo-eating rabbit book, Rabbit’s Bad Habits, was a rebellion against reading ‘the most boring picture book on earth’ to his daughter one night. He explains the unusual creative process and illustrator Jim Field shows how the characters evolved
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Two great world classics published 200 years apart have anniversaries in April, so we’re opening the celebrations with a choice: should we read Cervantes or Charlotte Brontë?
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Series of reimagined fairytales have been published on the gun advocacy group’s family website, which see Hansel, Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood sport rifles
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Life as a professional writer is financially depressing, and I’ve often been advised to self-publish. Here’s why I won’t do it
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This week’s poem has a Christian resurrection theme as it brings to life William Blake’s painting of angels rolling away the stone from Christ’s tomb
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regulars
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Top 10sTop 10sAlexei Sayle's top 10 books about revolutionariesThe influential comedian, who grew up in a communist-supporting family in Liverpool, selects works with radical clout – from manifestos to life-changing guies, and tales of enemies within
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Reading groupReading groupDon Quixote or Jane Eyre – this month's reading group choice is yoursTwo great world classics published 200 years apart have anniversaries in April, so we’re opening the celebrations with a choice: should we read Cervantes or Charlotte Brontë?
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100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time100 Best Nonfiction Books of All TimeThe 100 best nonfiction books: No 8 – Orientalism by Edward Said (1978)This polemical masterpiece challenging western attitudes to the east is as topical today as it was on publication
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PodcastPodcastWriting about art, music and loneliness – books podcastRobin Ince and Green Gartside explain why the music world needs a book prize and Olivia Laing follows Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol down lonely street
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A guided tour of wet English landscapes offers extraordinary insights of the natural world
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Ian Buruma’s account of his Jewish grandparents’ experiences speaks volumes about modern Britain and asylum
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Alan Light’s biography gets up close and personal with the tempestuous Nina Simone
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Workers suffer more stress than their bosses and wealthy children do better at school – the deep social truths uncovered by cradle-to-grave studies
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With Radovan Karadžić’s verdict due next week, this powerful, pacy account details the tortuous journey to track down the warlords and bring them to justice
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Book of the day Every Song Ever by Ben Ratliff – embrace the pleasures of streaming
Richard WilliamsA music lovers guide to the compensations of digital listening, from shuffle settings to Spotify
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Roll up, roll up for a charmingly surreal literary festival on a remote Scottish island where even the alpacas are aspiring writers
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Melodrama, tragedy and myth illuminate the relationship between individual and state in a fine novel from the Albanian writer
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Escape and survival prove fruitful themes in settings from Tennessee, Alaska and Australia to Nazi-occupied Poland
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Alexander McCall Smith gives us a lion tamer, Sophie Thompson a zoo keeper, and Lucy Worsley medieval sex and violence…
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A classical translation and a moving new collection make for a double achievement
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An extraordinary portrait of two lives that moves between Norwich and smalltown India poses fundamental questions about existence
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Gijsemans captures the isolation of city life in this debut graphic novel about a solitary middle-aged man
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Last week, the Glaswegian was named as her country’s new poet laureate. Fans point to her rare combination of literary merit with great accessibility, making her a popular choice to reframe Scottishness
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Anita Brookner was too easily mistaken for her unhappy spinster heroines, but the Booker winner was a novelist of peerless wit and insight, and one of the most distinguished art historians of recent times
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Novelist and screenwriter whose most famous book, A Kestrel for a Knave, was turned into the 1969 film Kes
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The Diary of a London Call Girl blogger has swapped sex for mortuary scenes and Scottish politics in her first novel published under her real name
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The creator of Hiccup and Toothless spoke to site member Krazy Kesh at the Imagine Children’s Festival 2016 to talk about the end of How to Train Your Dragon, what inspired the series and how it changed over a decade of writing
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From Mrs Weasley sending Ron a howler in front of his friends to Georgia Nicholson’s impatience with both her parents, fictional mums and dads can be excruciatingly embarrassing to their children. Here are some of the best examples
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Christopher Edge has some great advice for those who like to listen to music while they read - and match the music to their book
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From improving your vision to preventing memory decline, chocolate has incredible powers. Plus, of course, it tastes amazing! Here are 10 great reasons to make sure your favourite read is always paired with a bar of the dark stuff
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Secrets have the power to knock you off your feet, to utterly fascinate you or chill you to your very bones. Don’t you just want to know everyone’s secrets?
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The comedian and author behind Billionaire Boy announces the surprise publication of a collection of advisory tales for children, hitting the shelves in May of this year
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The author of YA fantasy debut Rebel of the Sands talks to Guardian children’s books site member The Book Thief about her inspirations for the trilogy, how she set about getting published and what we can expect from book two (which doesn’t have a title yet but does have 80,000 other words!)
A selection of our favourite literary content from around the world
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The Little Library CaféThe Little Library CaféFood in books: sponge cake from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson BurnettKate Young riffs on a recipe from one of her favourite childhood books and muses on the magic of stories, the pleasures of reading out loud – and how literature has the ability to offer us what we need
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Translation Tuesdays by AsymptoteTranslation Tuesdays by AsymptoteTranslation Tuesday: seven micro stories by Alex EpsteinAn intelligent mouse, a broken umbrella and Franz Kafka feature in tiny stories of love and hope translated from Hebrew
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pictures, video & audio
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Robin Ince and Green Gartside explain why the music world needs a book prize and Olivia Laing follows Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol down lonely street
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Exotic animals have been kept in Britain for more than eight centuries, inspiring wonder and terror in those who saw them – despite the cruelties of their captivity. The zoologist Caroline Grigson takes us on a tour of the UK’s historic animal visitors, from agouti to zebra
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We look ahead to a dystopian California and a world where the wealth brought by oil no longer fuels autocrats and extremists
you may have missed
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Sigmund Freud refused painkillers so he could choose the moment of his death, Susan Sontag fought it until the very end, Maurice Sendak drew it obsessively and John Updike wrote poems about it. Katie Roiphe finds beauty and comfort in the way great writers confronted their mortality
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My mother, before I knew her
Jeanette Winterson, Julia Donaldson, Julian Barnes, David Hare and othersInspired by Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Before You Were Mine, writers reflect on photographs of their mothers before they were born -
The performance poet and mother Hollie McNish considers the best literature that ‘these ingenious areas on a woman’s body’ have inspired
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From Joan Didion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, our readers have been sharing their favourite books by female authors. Ahead of International Women’s Day, here’s our celebration of life-changing, beautiful and inspiring stories by women
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The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list
This article is 12 years old
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Food in books Sponge cake from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett