"Shmuel Agnon is the only Israeli writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is still regarded as the best writer in modern Hebrew literature." fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

"Sicilian Food is not just a book of recipes. Simeti writes about food in a very interesting way, explaining the origins of some dishes and the different versions." fivebooks.com/best-books/d...

"Every new novel by Cusk is a major literary event, although her experiments with form—and her unpicking of what she has previously called the “underpinnings” of narrative—are often initially received with bafflement" fivebooks.com/best-books/n...

"Applied ethics is the application of moral theory to the real world." fivebooks.com/best-books/d...

"Oh, she was Russian. You should have heard her voice! So, Atlas Shrugged is the mature, the fullest expression of her rejection of any kind of collectivism."

"People read romance because it’s a genre that is written mainly for women, it’s built on women’s voices and stories, and there is great comfort to be found in a guaranteed happy ending." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"For most self-identifying atheists, it’s not just that they don’t believe in a God or gods, but that they don’t believe in any kind of supernatural realm." fivebooks.com/best-books/j...

"Born digital describes works that are created with a computer and are meant to be read on the computer. They’re not works that you print out." fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

"Xinjiang was subject to the policies of China in the same way that the Turkic-speaking Muslim regions on the other side of the border in the Soviet Union were subject to the dictates of Moscow." fivebooks.com/best-books/u...

"A lot of Brexit is very funny. One of the things the British are world class at is taking the piss." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

“The Egyptians called the hieroglyphs ‘medu netjer’ which means the words of the gods” fivebooks.com/best-books/h...

“Populism has led countries to choose the wrong economic policies that focus mostly on immediate redistribution rather than on sustained economic growth” fivebooks.com/best-books/p...

"There wasn’t an awful lot there: at the time LA was a relatively small town, but it had masses of real estate." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"You’re not going to be cured, but you can overcome some of the difficulties that your insecurities give you and end up in a better place." fivebooks.com/best-books/r...

"There’s a new sense that you mustn’t just lose yourself in a narrative but think about how that narrative is formed and shaped, and who is talking to you." fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

RIP James Watson (1928-2025) "In his book, Watson described what was a very exciting time to have been alive. Anybody who reads The Double Helix is drawn into this world of competition and excitement and academic existence": fivebooks.com/book/double-...

"While I fully admit that there are politicians and handlers who misuse spin, who deceive us, I think that a lot of what we complain about is simply spin by the other side, spin by people we don’t agree with." fivebooks.com/best-books/d...

"History is funny, weird and usually gory. Usually, I like the funny parts and the weird parts like people eating penguin soup to survive an Antarctic shipwreck." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"Her revelations about torture and forced slave labour perpetrated by the British in Kenya completely refuted the lazy idea you sometimes hear that the British were somehow “less bad” as colonial overlords than the French or the Belgians." fivebooks.com/best-books/o...

"Partition is a very complicated story. Many people have tried to tell it before, but this is far and away the best book I’ve read on Partition." fivebooks.com/best-books/w...

Here are six of the best multi-voice audiobooks of 2024, recommended by audiobook experts AudioFile magazine. fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

"The books I have chosen essentially explore the impact of certain crimes, be that fraud or sexual violence, because I think it’s an interesting way to look at how we live our lives and how society works in a particular era." fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

“I would rank Irving Fisher along with Schumpeter as one of the great economists.” fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

"Passionate Leninist that he was, he was critical, though not explicitly, of the Stalinist line and he proposed a new line." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"Generally, I like real life, domestic situations more than plots to destroy the world involving the FBI or CIA. Partly because Covid has had us all stuck at home, I also enjoyed travelling around the world in the books I read." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"Once you get to the twentieth century, you see much more clearly represented sexual life. But in nineteenth-century fiction, sexual plots are often the motivating forces." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

“In a synaesthesiac, stimulation of one sense can trigger a simultaneous response in another sense. So sound might have a colour, shape or a taste attached to it” fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"We shape our tools, then our tools shape us. The very idea that the manmade technological world is a neutral environment seems to me dangerous and wrong." fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

"Finance is the very language of business, and you’re at a real disadvantage in conducting business if you’re not fluent in that language." fivebooks.com/best-books/f...

"Optimism is really about having a very positive attitude towards the future. But there are a number of issues which are important to distinguish." fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

"The advertising business was based on the agency commission model which is dead because the media don’t carry commissions any more." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"The name Salem has been associated with paranoia, betrayal and religious extremism, and the Salem Witch Trials have served as the inspiration for many books, both fiction and nonfiction." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"We’re at a stage in the development of our understanding of the physical world where the theories that we’ve developed to explain what we see have lots of unanswered questions." fivebooks.com/best-books/q...

"I think wilding – or ‘rewilding’ – is essentially about trying to recreate dynamism in a landscape, and you can do that to varying degrees, depending on where you are in the world, and how much land is involved." fivebooks.com/best-books/w...

NEW We spoke to Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, the novelist and judge on this year's Booker Prize panel, about the six books on their 2025 shortlist fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

"It is an extraordinary country. There are enormous variations in terms of climate and landscape." fivebooks.com/best-books/c...

"You can consider whether a novel is like a window you look through to see the people beyond on the other side, or whether the novel is like a painting you just look at." fivebooks.com/best-books/c...

“Difficulty is part of his authorial aesthetic—he wants you to work at understanding his novels” fivebooks.com/best-books/w...

"Moses Montefiore, who was a Victorian magnate, founded the New City of Jerusalem in 1860, around the city walls of the Old City." fivebooks.com/best-books/j...

"The ambition of my books – to be about something beyond the immediate domestic drama of the main character." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"My agent said that my real name – Jonathan Freedland – sounds like “a pointy headed columnist for a pointy headed newspaper”! That was not quite the brand he wanted." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"A lot of math questions can be presented in really short sentences with very clear, objective responses. But even in domains such as math, it’s not straightforward to measure." fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

"The philosophy of information is a new area of research. We didn’t study it when we were students, partly because we didn’t realise that the glasses were on our noses." fivebooks.com/best-books/l...

"The access to technology for people will help them achieve the socio-economic development that they’ve always expected." fivebooks.com/best-books/d...

"Before, you had composer-conductors, and conductors who did various other things, but they were never exclusively conductors until the very late 19th century." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"Fishing is the foundation of Iceland’s modern economy and most families have at least one fisherman" fivebooks.com/best-books/i...

"It became the richest part of the biggest, richest early modern European empire—the Spanish empire." fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

"At the Real Bread Campaign we define real bread simply as bread made without additives...We just say, ‘if it’s got an additive in it, it’s not bread.’" fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"Spies is about the hidden history of the Cold War, the espionage wars between the US and the Soviet Union. It’s about real spy stories that involve a lot of incredible characters, technology and escapades." fivebooks.com/best-books/y...

"Until she leaves, he doesn’t realize how much he depends on her, but towards the end of the book, she starts to depend on him as well. They’re giving away that control and supporting and leaning on each other." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...