This is a brilliant book. It’s so good that I can’t help but gush about it to everyone I know and tell them to do themselves a favour and read it. Of course, not everyone is interested in science-fiction, but if you are, this is a must read. Project Hail Mary is based on a couple of classic science fiction tropes, a threat to humanity, and first contact with an alien species. This is in no way a criticism. I love tropes, particularly huge, overarching themes like this...

Reading this book was an experience. So much about it was unexpected and wonderful. This is my first time reading Mary Stewart and I think I've found a new favourite writer...

E.C.R. Lorac is one of the pen-names of Edith Caroline Rivett, who also wrote under the pseudonyms, Carol Carnac and Mary Le Bourne. She was a prolific writer who wrote more than seventy murder mysteries. She was well-known in literary circles and she was successful in her lifetime. Her novels were both popular and critically acclaimed, but unlike some of her better known contemporaries, her books were forgotten after her death...

This book is many things, it is philosophy, memoir, general life advice and musings on a life well lived. It’s unusual in its structure in that it is not a straight-line narrative in which ideas build on each other. Rosen does not have a theory of happiness or a five-step plan to a happier life. While the word is in the title, he doesn't really talk about happiness in the narrative. He's thinking less in terms of how to be happy and more in terms of what we can do to have a good day.

Mary Beard is one of Britain's most prominent classical scholars and public intellectuals. She’s one of those rare people who seems as much at home in academia as she is in front of a television camera. She's a rigorous scholar who has a real talent for public engagement and is never afraid to challenge received wisdom whether it is about the ancient world or about the modern one.

Old Herbaceous tells the story of a man and his life in the garden, surrounded by plants and flowers that he gives all his time and his love to. At the beginning of the book we meet Burt Pinnegar, a somewhat crotchety old man, the retired head-gardener at the manor house, who's looking back on his life and reliving his memories...

This is a charming book that I find myself wanting to recommend to everyone. It's a book about books and reading, but unlike other books of this kind, which tend to be non-fiction, it's a novel, and it features a very real person, Queen Elizabeth, who is the uncommon reader in the title. It's a delightful account of the journey of a once non-reader into the world of books. 

This is a story about a school-teacher, Mr Chipping, who his students fondly call Mr Chips. He's the beloved Latin teacher at a quiet boys' school in England called Brookfield. When the book opens, we meet him as an old man, living in rooms across the road from his beloved school, still organising his days by the school bell, inviting the new boys, and some of the older ones over to tea, and keeping up with the goings on at the school...

Richard Mabey is one of Britain's most celebrated and influential nature writers. He was born in Hertfordshire in 1941. He grew up with a deep connection to the English countryside, particularly the chalk hills and mixed woodlands of the Chilterns, which would become a recurring landscape in his writing. Here’s a look at some of his books...

The novel tells the story of Brian, a solitary middle-aged man living a carefully ordered life in London. He works at the Camden Council, eats lunch at the same cafe every day, and returns to his quiet flat every evening. His general approach to life can be summed up as, "Keep watch. Stick to routine. Protect against surprises." However, despite his preference for solitude, he does yearn for a bit more, as he enters his forties.

This is a nature diary, compiled from the Nature Notebook Column that the author used to write for The Times. This book is divided into two sections, city and country. It begins in August, 2014 when Harrison was living in London...

This is a book about building and architecture. It's also a book about an idea, the notion of a room of one's own, a cosy private space that we can withdraw into, a place in which to think, read, reflect, and just be for a while, away from the endless demands of a busy world...