“How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep that a secret? This book is how.”
“I was a man, that much was clear. But, years after I became one, I still wondered what, exactly, that meant.”
“So there I lie on the plateau, under me the central core of fire from which was thrust this grumbling grinding mass of plutonic rock”
“The only difference between a medicine and a poison is the dosage.”
“Twelve. That was the year that I learned that being Black and poor defined me more than being bright and hopeful and ready.”
Matt Haig was interviewed in the Observer about his new book Notes on a Nervous Planet.
“Platforms like Twitter and Instagram try to get us as emotionally and psychologically invested in them as possible. And sometimes, if you just go on Twitter and passively scroll down your feed, it depends who you follow of course, it just seems like a fireball of anger. Wherever you are on the political spectrum, you can find something within five minutes to be really, really cross or anxious about. And there’s a psychological fall-out from all that.”
Observer
David Lynch & Kristine McKenna
“This wonderful new book is the most comprehensive overview of the filmmaker’s life and career to date.”
Little White Lies
David Lynch & Kristine McKenna
“Everybody has theories about what the show is about, which is great, and it wouldn’t matter if I explained my theory. Things have harmonics, and if you’re true to an idea as much as you can be, then the harmonics will be there and they’ll be truthful even though they may be abstract.” David Lynch in the New York Times on his new book, Room to Dream.
Sara Hirakawa
New York Times
“It’s not often that an author described on his own Wikipedia page as ‘disgracefully neglected’ is awarded a €100,000 literary prize. But this is where the Irish author Mike McCormack finds himself, with Wednesday’s announcement that he has won the International Dublin literary award for his novel, Solar Bones. As someone who has hovered close to mainstream success without ever shaking off the slightly damning label of ‘writer’s writer’, he is unsurprisingly delighted.”
Sian Cain
Guardian
Here’s Oriol Miró hand-foiling a single letter of his cover type for the remarkable debut novel He Is Mine and I Have No Other by Rebecca O’Connor, out now.
“A Note on Wanting”: enjoy this early preview of Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet, the follow-up to number one bestseller Reasons to Stay Alive. From the audiobook, read by the author.
‘An immense and moving jazz riff… The acutely immersive world of American Histories is irresistible, and these profoundly moving stories will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading.’
Colin Grant
The Guardian
Watch Robert Webb read from his bestselling memoir How Not to be a Boy at the Hay Festival: ‘I thought only wimps needed manners, and only tough guys were brave.’
Robert Webb
The Hay Festival
“Wideman is a writer who excels at dramatising African American sensibilities and this collection typically addresses issues of race, injustice and inequality with power and potency. Crystallised moments of experience carry entire worlds in stories … from the whimsical to the political. This is published alongside Wideman’s earlier novels and is a gem for anyone yet to discover his work.”
Observer
“Laidlaw brought Glasgow to life more viscerally than any book I had read before: the good and the bad, the language and the humour, the violence and the drinking … This book made me realise that pacey, streetwise thrillers didn’t have to be American: we had mean streets enough of our own.”
The Guardian asked great crime writers to pick their favourite crime novels, and Christopher Brookmyre thinks you should be reading William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw.
“An excellent new book is imminent: Fully Coherent Plan for a New and Better Society features 254 new illustrations, all drawn in his distinctive thick black pen on stark white paper, the naivety of the image offset by the scabrous, surreal or darkly comic text.”
David Shrigley interviewed in the Observer.
Observer