Books

By The Guardian

Books
Philip Smith obituary
The Guardian - Jason Smith
My father, the bookbinder Philip Smith, who has died aged 90, was innovative in book structure and visual design, and added new terms to the vocabulary of bookbinding. He developed techniques that allowed
Books
'Screw the snobbish literati': was Kurt Vonnegut a science-fiction writer?
The Guardian - Sam Jordison
“Screw the snobbish literati,” writes Richard Herring in my anniversary edition of Slaughterhouse-Five. “There is a deal of literary snobbishness when it comes to Kurt Vonnegut.” My first thought was Herring
Books
Waterstones says it can't pay living wage, as 1,300 authors support staff appeal
The Guardian - Alison Flood
More than 1,300 writers including Kerry Hudson, David Nicholls, Sally Rooney, Michael Rosen and Val McDermid have backed a campaign for Waterstones booksellers to be paid the living wage. The support a
Books
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World – review
The Guardian - Andrew Anthony
If you happened to see the video of the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman confronting a Davos audience with the elephant in the room that is tax avoidance (“It feels like I’m at a firefighters’ conference
Books
It’s Not About the Burqa review – bold essays on women and Islam
The Guardian - Burhan Wazir
No other item of religious clothing has ignited passions and prejudice among politicians and media commentators as much as the burqa, worn by a minority of Muslim women. In 2006, then leader of the House
Books
WS Merwin obituary
The Guardian - Michael Carlson
WS Merwin, who has died aged 91, was one of the most honoured and prolific poets in the US. He published some 25 books of poetry, two of which won the Pulitzer prize, and 18 volumes of translated poetry,
Books
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
The Guardian - Guardian readers and Sam Jordison
Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup ofyour comments and photosfrom last week. Good news. It’s never too late for the first time, as ID583532 explains after reading The Catcher in the Rye:
Books
Poem of the week: Supplication by AC Jacobs
The Guardian - Carol Rumens
Supplication Lord, from this city I was born in I cry unto you whom I do not believe in: (Spinoza and Freud among others saw to that) Show me in this place in which I started Where I have gone wrong. neither
Books
London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shape-shifting City – review
The Guardian - Alexander Larman
At the beginning of his urban memoir, writer and broadcaster Robert Elms recounts his mother’s dying words: “This is no longer my London.” Over the course of his engaging, if occasionally irritating, Elms
Books
The best recent thrillers – review roundup
The Guardian - Alison Flood
Everyone keeps telling Hen she is experiencing a manic episode, but despite her name, this is no confused, easily herded chicken Artist Henrietta “Hen” Mazur and her husband, Lloyd, are politely enduring
Lifestyle (Canada)
The rise of robot authors: is the writing on the wall for human novelists?
The Guardian - Steven Poole
Writing is not data, it is a means of expression, and a non-sentient computer program has nothing to express Will androids write novels about electric sheep? The dream, or nightmare, of totally machine-generated
Books
'A fantasy of escape': the best books about islands
The Guardian - Madeleine Bunting
The crisis over Brexit has deep roots in a central trope of the English imagination: islands. Trace it back to John of Gaunt’s speech in Richard II – “this little world / This precious stone set in the
Books
Doggerland by Ben Smith – review
The Guardian - Stuart Evers
These claustrophobic, contained lives are reminiscent of Beckett or perhaps Pinter For a landmass subsumed by the North Sea some 8,000 years ago, Doggerland, the area that once connected Great Britain
Books
British Library planning Leeds branch with Boston Spa upgrade
The Guardian - Mark Wilding
The British Library has embarked upon “ambitious” plans to open a branch in Leeds as part of a drive to expand the organisation’s activities in the north of England. Board meeting minutes obtained by Guardian
Books
Life, liberty and the pursuit of poetry
The Guardian - Letters
Simon Jenkins (Being allowed to end one’s life is the ultimate human right, 22 March) confuses a right with a liberty. I am at liberty to take my own life, in the sense that it is not illegal, but it no
Books
In brief: Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor; The King’s Evil; Circe – reviews
The Guardian - Alexander Larman
Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor Anna Pasternak William Collins, £20, pp368 Most biographical accounts of Wallis Simpson have painted her as “the American harlot”, as she was known
Books
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming – archive, 22 March 1959
The Guardian - Maurice Richardson
Maurice Richardson worked as a journalist for both the Observer and the Guardian, and was also a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Goldfinger was the seventh James Bond novel in Ian Fleming’s series. bullion-smuggler
Books
Horizon by Barry Lopez review – nature in the raw
The Guardian - Alex Preston
Reading Barry Lopez is a religious experience, and that’s not meant entirely as a compliment. His great devotional paean to the light and landscape of the far, frozen north, Arctic Dreams (1986), established
Books
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami – review
The Guardian - Anthony Cummins
Laila Lalami’s rich, polyphonic fourth novel The Other Americans, her first to be set in the present-day US, centres on the hit-and-run killing of Driss, a Moroccan grandfather and restaurant owner who,
Books
Nina Stibbe: ‘I really hate anything horror’
The Guardian - Hannah Beckerman
Nina Stibbe shot to literary fame with the publication of Love, Nina, a selection of letters to her sister while working as a nanny for Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Review of Books. Since
Books
The Awfully Big Adventure: Michael Jackson in the Afterlife by Paul Morley – review
The Guardian - Kitty Empire
His book dwells on the cognitive dissonance, pre-Leaving Neverland, of loving the art but being troubled by the man The public definition of Michael Jackson is undergoing a paroxysm of sorts – it’s just
Books
The Language of Birds by Jill Dawson – review
The Guardian - Rachel Cooke
She resists the temptation to make her toffs monsters, and all their employees downtrodden but warm-hearted serfs In recent years, female writers have done brisk business reworking ancient myths. In The
Books
Book clinic: which novels will help me find my mixed-race identity?
The Guardian - Oyinkan Braithwaite
Q: I’m mixed-race and I never knew my father. What books can help me find my black identity and self-esteem? Student, 37, Manchester A: Oyinkan Braithwaite is a Nigerian-British author. Her first novel,
Books
Colin Grant: ‘We’re still living with slavery’
The Guardian - Colin Grant
Over the decades it’s been inspiring to see black female protagonists occupy spaces previously denied them Two hundred years ago, slave narratives seemed one of the few routes to publication for black
Books
Tunnel Vision by Kevin Breathnach review – self-lacerating honesty and lies
The Guardian - Blake Morrison
In a recent article for the Irish Times, the editor of the Dublin Review, Brendan Barrington, reflected on the changes he has noticed in Irish writing over the past few years. The nation’s fiction may
Books
Chris Power on Farnborough: ‘I probably grew up surrounded by arms dealers’
The Guardian - Chris Power
Growing up, I always thought my hometown was anonymous, but I didn’t suspect until much later that its anonymity might be a ploy. When people ask me where I grew up and I tell them Farnborough, some of
Books
London Made Us by Robert Elms – a love letter to the capital
The Guardian - Fiona Sturges
A few years ago, Robert Elms was asked by a family friend if he could show two 15-year-old girls from Manchester around London. It was their first trip to the capital, so Elms took them to Waterloo Bridge.
Books
Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff review – post-apocalyptic road trip
The Guardian - Sarah Ditum
The number of post-apocalyptic novels on bookshop shelves right now suggests that the reading public is hungry for the end of the world – hungry like the skrake in Last Ones Left Alive are hungry for bite
Scottish National Party
Ali Smith: ‘This young generation is showing us that we need to change and we can change’
The Guardian - Claire Armitstead
I had to respond to Brexit, but these novels are also coming on their own terms The UK will disunite, and Ireland will reunite. But all of this will be irrelevant in the face of climate change After a