Bookmarks
Editor's picks
The books of my life / Gabriel Byrne: ‘I’ve never played Hamlet, but in many ways I am him’
Gabriel Byrne: ‘I’ve never played Hamlet, but in many ways I am him’
Audiobook of the week / Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones review – delighting in peculiar details
Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones review – delighting in peculiar details
Rebecca Solnit / Every time you commit an antisocial act, push an acorn into the ground
Every time you commit an antisocial act, push an acorn into the ground
The big idea / Should we work less?
Should we work less?
Penelope Lively / I was a traumatised teenager
I was a traumatised teenager
Final Inspector Montalbano novel, finished years ago, is published in UK
Final Inspector Montalbano novel, finished years ago, is published in UK
Books of the week
A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris review – gross, moving, hilarious
A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris review – gross, moving, hilarious
The second instalment of the flâneur’s diaries takes in family relationships, book signings, shopping and monkeys
Oldladyvoice by Elisa Victoria review – a wise, warped jewel of a novel
This effervescent story about a strange little girl in 1990s Spain paints a vivid, unsettling picture of the millennium’s end
Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet review – unstable identities
This wry look at 1960s counterculture focuses on an enfant terrible of the anti-psychiatry movement to explore the gaps between appearance and reality
Manifesto by Bernardine Evaristo review – a rallying cry
A memoir and manual of careers advice for creatives
Silverview by John le Carré review – the last complete masterwork?
The great spy novelist’s final full-length book is a precision-tooled cat and mouse chase from a bookshop in East Anglia to the old eastern bloc
Spotlight
The 20-page rule: how much time should you give a devastatingly boring book?
Pass notes / The 20-page rule: how much time should you give a devastatingly boring book?
Novelist Mark Billingham advises readers to angrily launch a book across the room after 20 non-gripping pages – but almost 40% of people will keep going right to the end
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Talking points and news
Baillie Gifford prize reveals ‘outstanding storytelling’ on 2021 shortlist
Baillie Gifford prize reveals ‘outstanding storytelling’ on 2021 shortlist
With subjects ranging from postwar Germany to the fall of Robert Maxwell and the Sackler family, judges praise ‘exciting and invigorating’ finalists
Sally Rooney turns down an Israeli translation on political grounds
The writer has refused to sell Hebrew translation rights to her latest novel Beautiful World, Where Are You due to her stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict
Hanif Abdurraqib wins the Gordon Burn prize for A Little Devil in America
The poet and essayist’s extraordinary collection on Black culture in the US is ‘simultaneously a joyous celebration and a crushing reproach’
Former MasterChef contestant’s book pulled amid plagiarism accusations
Copies of Makan, a collection of Singaporean recipes by Elizabeth Haigh, have been withdrawn after suggestions that she ‘copied or paraphrased’ another author
TS Eliot prize unveils ‘voices of the moment’ in 2021 shortlist
Ten collections in competition for the £25,000 award ‘should enter the stage and be heard in the spotlight’, say judges
Enniskillen mounts Oscar Wilde tribute with flight of gold-leaf swallows
Installation inspired by The Happy Prince will be accompanied by similar celebration of Samuel Beckett, who like Wilde was educated in the town
From the archive
Dune, 50 years on: how a science fiction novel changed the world
Dune, 50 years on: how a science fiction novel changed the world
It has sold millions of copies, is perhaps the greatest novel in the science-fiction canon and Star Wars wouldn’t have existed without it. Frank Herbert’s Dune should endure as a politically relevant fantasy from the Age of Aquarius
Charlotte Higgins in conversation with Mary Beard
Wednesday 3 November, 8pm–9pm
Join us for an evening with author and journalist Charlotte Higgins and classicist Mary Beard, as they discuss Higgins’s reworking of powerful stories of Roman and Greek civilisations: unpredictable gods, epic wars, and families turned murderously against each other.
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