🎯 Today's Books Pulse
Lyse Doucet’s ‘The Finest Hotel in Kabul’ Wins 2026 Women’s Prize for Non‑Fiction
Lyse Doucet’s book *The Finest Hotel in Kabul* captured the 2026 Women’s Prize for non‑fiction. The work uses the Intercontinental Hotel as a narrative anchor to trace Afghanistan’s upheavals from its 1969 opening through successive eras of conflict, highlighting the hotel’s shift from a modern symbol to a refuge for soldiers, mujahideen and NATO officials.
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The Physics of Interstellar Travel
Coryn Bailer-Jones’ The Physics of Interstellar Travel fills a need which has become apparent only in the last twenty years. Indeed, going back to the turn of the century, one would find the idea of traveling to another star discussed only in relatively isolated pockets, often presented at the tail end of conferences devoted to […]
Centauri Dreams
Solitary Agents by David Goodman
David Goodman’s A Reluctant Spy was widely acclaimed upon release in 2025, the Legends programme at its heart a clever twist on spy fiction and something the CIA themselves have commented on. The programme sees everyday civilians trade their identities with agents and live a... The post Solitary Agents by David Goodman first appeared on Crime Fiction Lover.
Crime Fiction Lover
The Twitnam Summer by Hester Grant Review – Swift, Gay and Pope’s Season in the Sun
A noble, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to argue that Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Gay spending a few weeks in 1726 together was a momentous turning point in each man’s career In 1726 Jonathan Swift, dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, crossed the Irish sea with the manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels in his luggage. Beneath the child-friendly chatter about a sailor marooned on an island full of tiny Lilliputians, the book was a scabrous satire on the corruption of public life under the politically ascendant Whigs, whom Swift regarded as a pack of moral pygmies. Swift’s ultimate destination, though, was not Whitehall but rather the idyllic Twickenham – “Twitnam”, as they knew it – home of his old friend, the poet Alexander Pope. Here he intended to work out a plan for anonymous publication of his sulphurous masterpiece, one that would not land him in legal trouble. In Pope he could be sure of a sympathetic co‑conspirator. Both men were members of the Scriblerus Club, an unofficial association of dissident wits who nonetheless set great store by literary collaboration. Pope was equally disaffected with the state of the nation, although his loathing was directed towards the philistine Hanoverians, who had arrived from Germany in 1714 to take up the British throne. Pope, whose Catholicism disqualified him from royal patronage, made a big point of not having to scramble for favours from the court. Instead, he emphasised the superiority of his life of suburban independence on the banks of the Thames. Continue reading...
The Guardian – Books
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Thread by @Rachelle_literary_agent
I just heard a publishing industry analyst say that out of 500k trad-published books every year, only .5% (one half of one percent) sell more than 10k copies in their first year. Keep in mind, in addition to the Big 5 publishers, this is taking into account the smallest boutique publishing houses. But still... let's all keep our expectations in check.
Tweet by @Thomas_m_wilson
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