Open Thread: The best back-to-school books
Let us know which books get the highest marks for their accounts of the great return to teaching and testsSeptember is here, and the summer – what there was of it– is officially over. Nights are...
View ArticleThe literary riches of the Scottish Borders - video
In the latest in a series of films about landscape and literature produced in association with National Book Tokens, Rosamund de la Hey introduces The Mainstreet Trading Company, an award-winning...
View ArticleBest walks and days out from Wigtown
As Wigtown in Scotland prepares for an influx of visitors for its annual book festival, (wigtownbookfestival.com), we ask a local secondhand bookshop owner for his tips on what to see and do in the...
View ArticleOpen thread: The best Halloween books
Let us know which books light your candle for the scariest night of the yearAs mornings take on the first breath of winter chill and evenings draw in our thoughts turn to things which go bump in the...
View ArticleOpen thread: recommend your favourite cold-weather classics
Let us know which books you'd choose to see you through those long winter eveningsWinter is well and truly upon us, but the cold, dark days have their consolations. The return to Greenwich Mean Time is...
View ArticleNational Book Tokens 80th anniversary: book tokens through the decades
Today marks the 80th anniversary of National Book Tokens, launched in 1932 by publisher Harold Raymond. Celebrate with a look at the way in which the tokens have changed over the decades, from the...
View ArticleOpen thread: recommend your favourite short stories and poetry collections
Tell us which mini masterpieces you'd choose to calm Christmas nerves'Tis the season to be stressy - and while the pages of Bleak House or Middlemarch might seem the ideal refuge, it's hard for most of...
View ArticleLiterary London: Jenny Valentine's guide to children's stories - video
Guardian children's fiction prize-winner Jenny Valentine introduces Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street. She also considers why the city has been the source and location for so much great children's...
View ArticleWriters' gifts: Jonathan Steele gives The Glorious Art of Peace to world leaders
In the latest in our podcast series on the books writers would give to other writers, Jonathan Steele visits his favourite bookshop, Housmans, and tells us why Sarah Bakewell's How To Live was the best...
View ArticleWriters' gifts: Sadakat Kadri gives The Trial to Franz Kafka
In the latest in our podcast series on the books writers would give to other writers, barrister Sadakat Kadri tells us how Foyles is his favourite bookshop and The Hudood Ordinances: A Divine Sanction?...
View ArticleWhat are the best books for Valentine's Day?
When it comes to romantic reading, are you a Rock Star or a Librarian?• Enter our competition to win £500 of National Book TokensWith the high street awash with heart-shaped objects - enterprising...
View ArticleWriters' gifts: Stuart Neville gives American Tabloid to JFK
Crime writer Stuart Neville continues our series of writers recalling the best books they've been given, and the ones they'd like to give. He tells us why an omnibus of great SF was the best book he...
View ArticleWhat's the best undiscovered book you've read?
Open thread: What is the best and most obscure book you have read? We want your recommendations• Enter a competition to win up to £400 of National Book TokensMiddlemarch: read. Nineteen-eighty Four:...
View ArticleThe curse of the forgotten authors
Open thread: Which neglected authors do you think are ripe for rediscovery• Enter a competition to win up to £250 worth of National Book TokensIt seems to happen every once in a while: an new talent...
View ArticleThe Albion Beatnik bookshop: a viral success worth catching
A high-street indie drawing 81,000 web visits in a day might seem surprising – but there are many reasons why it should• Enter a competition to win up to £250 worth of National Book Tokens, and enter...
View ArticleWhich books make you laugh? - Open thread
This year's Wodehouse prize for comic fiction has been awarded to Howard Jacobson - again. But what makes you laugh?• Enter a competition to win up to £250 worth of National Book Tokens, and enter your...
View ArticleWeird and wonderful bookshops worldwide – in pictures
From a Canadian bookshop opened by Alice Munro in the 1960s to one in the island of Santorini started by drunk Oxford students, some of the world’s most exotic booksellers feature in The Bookshop Book,...
View Article10 independent bookshops you should visit worldwide: our readers recommend
From a bohemian Parisian temple of reading to a bookshop with hidden animals: to mark Independent Bookshop Week, here are 10 of the best around the world – compiled with the help of our readersSee our...
View ArticleHow indie bookshops are fighting back
Independent bookshops are thriving because they understand readers’ tastes better than an Amazon algorithmAs global temperatures rise at the rate political standards fall, the news that independent...
View Article12 of the UK’s best independent bookshops, chosen by readers
From old tales to new thinking, gardening to science fiction, our tipsters find literary nourishment – and cake, too – at these indie booksellersScarthin Books in Cromford, Derbyshire, is a tall, thin...
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