Maybe it’s just me, but I’m seeing a lot of extinction narratives these days. This one, by Irish author Walls, features the demise of the Great Auk. It also features the demise of a great many Irish during the potato famine in the mid-19th C. An unusual, tormented, funny, & often touching novel. 🖋️📚💙

It’s really frightening.

Terry Pratchett, one of England’s funniest writers, is in danger of being lost to history, Helen Lewis writes:

Every time I picked up Jo Bell’s memoir about life on her boat Tinker, traveling up & down England’s historic canal system, it felt like a refreshing litte getaway, a glimpse into a life of freedom & natural beauty in a part of England many people never get to experience. Wonderful. 💡📚💙

Ukrainian author Kurkov’s funny yet profoundly sad novel Grey Bees is about a simple bee keeper, who would like to go about his daily life, caring for his bees, but finds himself subject to the vagaries of a war he doesn’t understand being fought on either side of his mostly deserted village. 🖋️📚💙

Wharton’s 1927 novel Twilight Sleep feels surprisingly modern. Members of a wealthy NYC family use frantic social activity, quack spiritual healing, drugs, sex, & plain old denial to distract themselves from the unhappiness & meaninglessness of their lives. 🖋️📚💙

Pratchett is one of my favourite authors; I am happy to see that Night Watch has been honoured by Penguin as a Modern Classic. Here he (hilariously) tackles time travel, authoritarianism, & the importance of doing the right thing in the face of violence & futility. Highly recommended, always. 🖋️📚💙📚🪐

A gothic-scented novel about the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the rise of the communist takeover of Hungary through the eyes and experiences of several generations of one land-owning Hungarian family of nobility. It doesn’t go so well for them. 🖋️📚💙

"I, now thirty-seven years old and in perfect health, maintain a group text with my allergist, internist, and energy coach."

Camille de Peretti imagines the story behind the astonishing real-life anonymous purchase, over-painting, theft, & subsequent return of Klimt’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’ painting. She creates a tale of love, betrayal, obsession, & mystery, all beautifully translated by Hildegarde Serle. 🖋️📚💙

Pocock’s account of 2 Greyhound bus trips across the USA, 17 years apart, is one of the more bleak things I’ve read lately: poverty, the consequences of rapacious corporate greed, environmental devastation, technology-driven isolationism. But she also finds solace, friendship, beauty, & hope.💡📚💙

Not just the tragic story of a teenager mixed up with very bad people, Keefe’s brilliant London Falling explains & exposes the corrupt, often violent world of a burgeoning London-centred oligarchy, police (wilful?) incompetence, & government (collusion?) indifference.💡📚💙

The decision Gisele Pelicot made to open up her most private life to the world in order to refuse to carry the shame her rapists tried to force upon her required extraordinary courage, wisdom, & self-respect. She is a beacon of hope & an example of strength & integrity to me & millions of others.💡📚💙

I am loving this 2026 page-a-day calendar published by Hachette. It’s called A Book Lover’s Year. Today’s page is a shelfie from the library in the Nova Scotia Provincial Legislature in Halifax. Wonderful. 📚💙

The Palm House offers exquisitely written vignettes of ordinary life, its tragedies & disappointments, delivered with poignancy & wonderfully dry humour. The story focuses on Laura & Putnam who, despite being of different generations & experiences, find solace & friendship with one another. 🖋️📚💙

Finnish author Turpeinen’s prize-winning first novel is a devastating look at humanity’s relentless, greedy push toward “progress” & scientific understanding at the expense of the very wonders of nature we obsessively exploit & examine. The extent of our destruction is staggering. 🖋️📚💙

In The Lost City of Z, Grann deftly spins the story of Victorian explorer Percy Fawcett‘s ultimately doomed search for a fabled Amazonian city. Full of arrogant imperialist adventures, harrowing tests of endurance through impenetrable jungle, SO MANY INSECTS, & the dangers of mad obsession. 💡📚💙

The 3rd (& last) in Tana French’s Cal Hooper series, The Keeper explores environmental crime, greed, & the secret alliances & rivalries that guide & propel (& sometimes end) life in a small Irish village. As always, the characters she creates are half the fun. Highly recommended, always. ⚡️📚💙

Extremophile (an organism that thrives in extreme environments) is a gritty dystopian biopunk novel about a violent, miserable future on a planet that continues to be gutted by billionaires & corporations, but on which the hope for something better still survives & continues to fight back. 🪐📚💙

I often wonder about the virulent misogyny I am seeing & experiencing more & more often. Gilbert’s examination of cultural misogyny is eye-opening: I had no idea violent hardcore porn was so insidiously central to so much of North American pop culture. Gilbert makes it horrifyingly obvious. 💡📚💙

Take, for instance, fields long dominated by women —gender studies & the humanities & social sciences, the disciplines most frequently written off as ‘useless’, or of ‘no value to society’. Unsurprisingly,these are now among the most aggressively targeted. thenoosphere.substack.com/p/anti-intel...

I loved this giant novel. The plot is delightfully winding & digressive, thrilling in spots, & the characters feel like real, complex people. Agnes learns that her deceased aunt seems to have just died again, & she needs to identify the body. Family secrets are exposed, loves are lost & found. 🖋️📚💙

Sarah Crossan manages, in her recently published young adult novel to explain the reasons behind the mid-19th century Irish famine, show what it was like to live through it, & give the reader a charming love story. All at the same time. And she does it in (non-rhyming) verse, for heaven’s sake. 🖋️📚💙🍀

Stolen is a compelling, thriller-type novel about the discrimination & oppression faced by the Sami people in rural Sweden. Like our indigenous peoples in Canada, the Sami face a myriad of challenges: racism, violence, cultural genocide, encroaching climate change, & a disappearing way of life. 🖋️📚💙

Prescient in its day, Boschwitz’s rediscovered & newly translated 1937 novel about beggars, veterans, & prostitutes hustling to survive in Weimar Berlin continues to be relevant: desperate citizens with nothing left to lose will cling to any hope they can find, even a cruel & destructive one. 🖋️📚💙

In the stories of 12 “Great Man” statues, from erection to destruction, Von Tunzelmann gives us an entertaining & well-researched argument for putting an end to this misguided, even silly custom of commemoration. Highly recommended. 💡📚💙

Greetings, new friends! You may know me as an author, a prolific Bluesky poster and 4th place finisher on So You Call That Dancing? But you might not know that my partner Judith (@mzpress) and I have an online arts bookstore that's growing every day. Full inventory here: mzs.press/EVERYTHING-W...

French-Korean author Dusapin packs so much into this slim, deftly-translated novel: how to live with family you love but don’t like; coming to terms with childhood memories that might not be accurate; filling silences; going home again; finding your voice at the possible expense of others. 🖋️📚💙

Mark Haddon’s memoir left me heartbroken-but-laughing, aghast with recognition but grateful that my childhood wasn’t THAT bad, & deeply envious of the author’s awesome multi-disciplinary talent. His artwork is as clever, compassionate, & sometimes as wryly funny as his writing.💡📚💙

As the caregiver for my elderly parents, Sarah Perry’s memoir about her father-in-law’s rapid decline & death after an unexpected cancer diagnosis felt familiar & reassuring. With striking candour & compassion, she reveals the extraordinary that exists within the ordinary, for all of us.💡📚💙

Cash’s debut novel Lost Lambs is absolutely (absurdly) infested with hilarious family dysfunction, teenage angst, midlife crises, & characters who are not (or, sometimes, who really, really are) what they seem. And gnats. A funny, light read that felt like a good antidote for current events. 🖋️📚💙

Poppick’s very readable book about the history of the Earth, learned from studying strata formations, is a nice reprieve from the current timeline, although this branch of geology also serves to teach us about the importance of larger earth systems, & warn us that we disrupt them at our peril. 💡📚💙

There’s nothing new to say about an anti-war classic like All Quiet on the Western Front. Banned & burned by the Nazis in 1933, it remains vital, enraging, tragic, &, sadly, relevant; a generation of hopeful & promising youth lost to the hubris & ignorance of old men. 🖋️📚💙📚🇩🇪

Naughty nuns, medieval peasants, ancient (evil?) gods, exiled healers: what’s not to love? Mere is folk horror set in a convent in the midst of the liminal fenlands of 990 AD Norfolk. It is beautifully written, feels authentically terrifying, & brings compelling, flawed characters to vivid life.⏳📚💙

Short stories aren’t my jam, I prefer a big novel, but Bordas’ newest collection kept me enthralled. Her characters are people you know or have been; their lives & conflicts are relatable but unique; & their reactions are sometimes hilarious, often poignant & raw, sometimes all at the same time. 🖋️📚💙

Given how little can be known about the life of Vermeer, Graham-Dixon’s new work is something of a speculative biography. However, the research & history surrounding the painter is so beautifully told, the paintings so beautifully described, it’s thought-provoking & well worth reading. 💡📚💙

Funny, endearing, & fierce, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s new novel tells the story of a family of women in Lagos, Nigeria struggling through superstition, generational trauma, tradition, tribalism, & some strong personalities to live their lives under a multi-generational curse. 🖋️📚💙

Muriel Spark was an eccentric & greatly admired writer of fiction & biography. She was also ornery, self-absorbed, & paranoid. Wilson’s new biography does a thrilling job of winkling out the personal information Spark went to great lengths to alter & obscure during her lifetime.💡📚💙

Susan Orlean is always worth reading. Her curiosity, exuberance, & sense of humour make whatever subject she chooses relatable & fascinating. Her recently published memoir is both delightful & instructive: prospective writers will find lots of excellent advice & encouragement. 💡📚💙

I always enjoy reading Spufford’s novels, & his latest is no exception: the blitz is hammering London & two women are central to the future of civilisation. One wants a fascist state, the other wants rights & freedoms. Heavy on magical realism. Coming to an indie bookshop near you this spring. 🖋️📚💙📚🪐

The Radetzky March (1932) is a novel about an old, corrupt, increasingly ineffectual monarchy mired in discontent & revolt, losing touch with the present while clinging desperately to past glory. Its death throes culminate in the Great War, upending & destroying the lives of millions. 🖋️📚💙

This is a completely delightful collection of gothic Christmas ghost stories, all centred around the witching hour. It’s the 3rd in a series of creepy 🎄 anthologies published by Hachette UK, & includes a bunch of my favourite authors, including Natasha Pulley, Jess Kidd, & Andrew Michael Hurley. 🩸📚💙

Clint Smith’s examination of the way slavery in the USA is (or is not) commemorated is thoughtful, poetic, profound, personal-yet-universal in scope, & thoroughly researched. That he is a compassionate person of integrity & conviction really comes through in his writing. Highly recommended. 💡📚💙

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is an environmental disaster thriller (is that a genre? I feel like that’s a genre). It’s well-plotted with lots of suspense, twists, & likeable, flawed characters. The setting is a fictional island between Tasmania & Antarctica, but it feels real. 🖋️📚💙

Albanian LSE philosophy prof Lea Ypi investigates her beloved grandmother’s story in this remarkable genre-bending biography. She uses the disconnect between her memories, the memories of others, & the gaps in the official records to consider the meaning of dignity: personal, public, & political.💡📚💙

A novel with a fabulous premise in which a young, smart, neurodivergent present-day anthropologist investigates the circumstances surrounding the death of a young, smart, neurodivergent iron-age druid; their stories are told side-by-side, with some environmental fight thrown in for good measure. ⏳📚💙

A collection of folk horror short stories set over a number of centuries in the grim, cursed ancient village Barrowbeck. Less chilling than some of Hurley’s earlier novels, Barrowbeck is nevertheless full of sinister foreboding, unfriendly environments, & neighbours who are just a bit … off.🩸📚💙

Encampment describes the crisis of homelessness across North America & Europe. Helwig practices a Christianity of radical love & compassion at her parish in Toronto; the byzantine bylaws & rules to which our most vulnerable citizens are subject are as enraging as her activism & care are admirable💡📚💙

A name scratched on the wall of an historic house in France leads Le Tellier to research the life of a young man killed in a WWII skirmish, filling in details where necessary from imagination & history. It is also a clarion call from the past, a reminder of the sacrifices made to defeat fascism. 🖋️📚💙