Mainstream comedy is frankly in a bit of a lull right now. Sitcoms and theatrical comedy movie are disappearing, few comic novels are getting published, and comedy podcasts are just comedians interviewing other comedians. It's perhaps of little surprise, then, that the best nonfiction comedy books released in 2025 were focused on the past - comedy's history, themes, and steadfast examples of greatness and insight.
In the seventeenth chapter of John Dickson Carr's mystery novel " The Three Coffins " (1935), the story pauses so that Dr. Gideon Fell, a brilliant sleuth, can deliver the "Locked-Room Lecture," an elaboration of all the various methods by which a person might be found murdered in a "hermetically sealed chamber," a room locked from the inside. It's one of the most justly celebrated passages in the history of detective fiction,
Thammavongsa was born in Nong Khai, Thailand, in a Lao refugee camp. The family moved to Toronto when she was one year old. She grew up in a one-room apartment with her parents and brother; when she was fifteen and her parents decided to open their own business, she, her mother, and brother spent months sleeping in the family van to make the transition work.
So much contemporary fiction is based on history, or inspired by myth, that Booker prize judges often find themselves asking: What is a novel's role in relation to the past? What can the imagination do with facts?' said Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker prize foundation. These questions offer ways to think about fiction of all kinds, and I'm delighted that the distinguished and much-loved classical scholar Mary Beard has agreed to steer this year's panel.
I'm a stand-up comedian. Not a book critic. I don't want to be a book critic. And writing about books is really fucking hard. I don't want to recap the plots or write shit like "languorous prose." I can't even remember character names, much less general themes, and I have zero interest in "what the author is trying to say."
Completed in 1906, John Pierpont (JP) Morgan had the structure built to house his study and library right next to his brownstone residence. Stepping into the original structure, you're immediately transported to the Gilded Age: extravagant paintings line the ceilings of the entry rotunda, deep red wallpaper gives a solemn tone to his study, and wood bookcases display the impressive book collections.
Pei Lulu is the pride of her divorced parents. Her life in Boston is supported by her mother's salary from a job at Tsinghua University and her father's business of sculpting Buddhas and dragons for overseas clients. That Lulu has managed to study abroad-at Harvard, no less-is already an achievement. But she's also particularly dedicated, even among her extraordinary peers. When her wealthy friend Rachel vacations in Newport or goes skiing in Vermont, Lulu is content to stay on campus, reading books in the library.
The neurologist Oliver Sacks's early books, including "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," established his reputation as unique literary voice and the avatar of a new medical outlook that considered a patient's life story and sense of self as being crucial to the treatment of a range of ailments. Yet, as Rachel Aviv reports in a rich and nuanced piece for this week's issue, Sacks privately expressed guilt about some of what he had written.
Judge a book by its cover, and you might think that American Canto, the memoir by Vanity Fair's outgoing West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi, is destined to be a classic. The memoir, which chronicles Nuzzi's drama-filled life and career as a political reporter in the Trump era, features a strikingly simple cover that serves as shorthand for the book's ambitions. "The intent was to give the book a clean, no-frills design that felt both classic and contemporary,"
Fantasy and science fiction readers can add another Brandon Sanderson book to the to-be-read pile. Tailored Realities, a lengthy collection of novellas and short stories, is available now, and Amazon is offering a 30% discount on launch day (December 9). The hardcover edition of Tailored Realities is on sale for only $21 (was $30).. Walmart had the same deal, but the retailer is currently sold out of copies.
"People were writing poems," Patricia Lockwood tells us. Also: "People brought you cabbages." In her hands, events don't unfold in the usual way, with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, we seem to come upon people and things doing what they always do, their actions and goings on both a matter of course and an incorrigible fact of their existence.
Morrison's debut novel, published in 1970, addresses racism, beauty standards, child abuse and sexual abuse through the eyes of 11-year-old Pecola in the years after the Great Depression. The novel was listed among the top 10 most banned books of 2024 by the American Library Association. The book was challenged in the Bonita Unified School District in 2023, but the school board decided to keep it on shelves.
Smashing Library expands again! We're so happy to announce our newest book, Accessible UX Research, is now available for download in eBook formats. Michele A. Williams takes us for a deep dive into the real world of UX testing, and provides a road map for including users with different abilities and needs in every phase of testing. But the truth is, you don't need to be conducting UX testing or even be a UX professional to get a lot out of this book. Michele gives in-depth descriptions of the assistive technology we should all be familiar with, in addition to disability etiquette, common pitfalls when creating accessible prototypes, and so much more.
A couple of years ago, my daughter-a recently graduated English major with an impeccable track record for book recommendations-suggested that I read Dear Edward. It took me a while to make it happen, but while we traveled together last holiday season, she glanced over mid-flight and was startled to see me reading her recommended novel about a plane crash while we were navigating multiple legs of our own air travel. I understood her concern.
At least two terrible ironies surround the death of Mike Lynch. One lies in the name of his superyacht, which sank off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of 19 August 2024. He had named the boat Bayesian to honour Bayes's theorem, a mathematical rule that helps you weigh up the probability of something given the available evidence, which served as Lynch's guiding light over the course of a tempestuous career.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Atwood said she believed the plot was bonkers when she first had the concept for the novel as the US was the democratic ideal at the time. It was the land of freedom and people in Europe just didn't believe that it could ever go like that, she said. Despite this, Atwood added: I've always been somebody who has never believed it can't happen here. It can happen anywhere, given the circumstances.
Taking the crown as the most checked-out adult title this year at San Jose Public Library branches is Kristin Hannah's The Women, a compelling coming of age story. The prequel to The Hunger Games, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, remains the top pick for teen readers for the second consecutive year. And once again, a Dav Pilkey title comes out on top among children's books: Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder was the most-checked out title for that age group.
I'm going to ask you to describe this man in as much detail as you can. What's the most distinctive feature on his face? It would be the eyes. He's called Kristian Hadeland. Twenty years old. Narrow eyes, high cheekbones. He's a photographer, wants to be a photographer. And he is ruthless, obsessive. He wants to be an artist for whatever price it takes. There's something that kind of releases all of that and he's very successful.
A fter reading that Selena Gomez looked ethereal in a custom Ralph Lauren wedding dress, that the Vitamix 5200 is a legend for a reason, and that scientists made a yogurt using ants, I feel sufficiently bad about myself because of how much time I have spent staring at inconsequential words and meaningless images on my little screen that I transition to the big screen that is my laptop.
Winter is the perfect time to curl up with a good book, sip on some hot cocoa (or coffee, if you're me), and get smarter. But hey, let's not limit ourselves to design books alone. As a designer, growth isn't just about mastering tools, it's about mastering life and the skills that can help you elevate your work and your hustle. So, here's a list of books that will level up your game in ways you didn't see coming.
If the moon were to suddenly turn to cheese, the movie pitches would be insufferable. Astronauts would be irritated, grad students would be demoralized and news articles would overflow with terrible puns. The great jaws of the Internet would get hold of the details, churning out doomsday scenarios, memes and conspiracies. And that's even before the moon cheese would start to compress, creating geysers of material and a dangerously unstable lunar landscape.
Deliberating over the Atlantic 10 list is, in some ways, a test of memory. Does a novel we read in January still thrill us? Does the reportage that impressed us midyear still feel surprising when we turn back to it in the fall? We're asking ourselves, in short, which books have kept our attention, sometimes months after we've first encountered them.
In a chaotic and distressing year, books provided a respite, a chance to commune with works of coherent voice and vision. Some people find it harder to read during days overflowing with one-minute distractions and incessant notifications, but when I took the time, I was rewarded with a slightly bigger foothold in a world of decency, humanity, patience, and compassion. Here are 10 good reasons to give that a try.
Kane: So in trying to find the best fiction and the best nonfiction of a year it means doing a ton of research, which, thankfully, we're a bunch of good-natured nerds, and we love any excuse to research and any excuse to read more books. I mean, it was a great self-assigned homework project this year. [Laughs.] So some of the most important things that we were looking at for every book is it had to have an exceptional voice in writing and an incredible story.
