Where to Start With the Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist
Six books, seven weeks until the winner, and one of them runs to six hundred pages. Which of the shortlisted novels to open first, which to save for a group, and which one I think wins.
Where to Start With the Booker Prize 2026 Longlist
Thirteen novels, one shortlist in September, and not enough evenings. Here is what each book on the Booker 2026 longlist actually is, and which one I would open first.
What to Read Before Nolan’s Odyssey
You have a ticket and not much time. Here is what I would actually read before Nolan's Odyssey, sorted by how many free evenings you have between now and the cinema.
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Top 5 This Week
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Hidden in a lean-to against a poor family's cottage, a creature nobody has ever spoken kindly to learns language by listening through a crack in the wall. Shelley's novel is at its most moving there, and its stiff narrators and convenient plotting never quite drown that voice out.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Hidden in a lean-to against a poor family's cottage, a creature nobody has ever spoken kindly to learns language by listening through a crack in the wall. Shelley's novel is at its most moving there, and its stiff narrators and convenient plotting never quite drown that voice out.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
A schoolmaster lies in the clover reading about witches until the print dissolves in the dusk, then walks home singing hymns at the frogs. Irving's tale of a gullible newcomer, a village of tall-tale tellers and one long night ride has aged into a comedy about how legends get made.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
A barber locks up his shop on a Friday night, catches the scent of cotton candy on the wind and starts to cry, because nobody in town sells it. Bradbury's carnival novel is a book about middle age dressed as a boys' adventure, rich and frightening, with a sermon or two too many.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
At the end of a June day a young governess daydreams that someone will appear on the path and approve of her. A man does appear, high on the tower, and he is nobody she knows. Henry James's short, fevered ghost story is about longing, neglect and the danger of being the only one who sees.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
A timid guest in black sits in a pink-and-gold drawing room, holding a cake she will never bite, while an old man in a wheelchair offers to show her the table where his family died. Jackson's last novel turns a poisoning into the blackest of comedies.
As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers
A woman wakes to find a lost bumblebee crawling across her pillow, carries it naked through a garden cut into the rock of a tiny moon, and lets it choose a strawberry flower. The rest of the novel explains how she earned a morning that quiet.
Mothsblood by Lynn D. Jung
Over dessert in an immortal's private lounge, the wine turns to blood and moths fill the light fittings. By the time the hallucinations fade, the immortal is dead. Jung's first novel is a hungry, haunted portrait of ambition and abuse that rewards its readers and occasionally exhausts them.
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
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A schoolmaster lies in the clover reading about witches until the print dissolves in the dusk, then walks home singing hymns at the frogs. Irving's tale of a gullible newcomer, a village of tall-tale tellers and one long night ride has aged into a comedy about how legends get made.
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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Hidden in a lean-to against a poor family's cottage, a creature nobody has ever spoken kindly to learns language by listening through a crack in the wall. Shelley's novel is at its most moving there, and its stiff narrators and convenient plotting never quite drown that voice out.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
A schoolmaster lies in the clover reading about witches until the print dissolves in the dusk, then walks home singing hymns at the frogs. Irving's tale of a gullible newcomer, a village of tall-tale tellers and one long night ride has aged into a comedy about how legends get made.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
A barber locks up his shop on a Friday night, catches the scent of cotton candy on the wind and starts to cry, because nobody in town sells it. Bradbury's carnival novel is a book about middle age dressed as a boys' adventure, rich and frightening, with a sermon or two too many.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
At the end of a June day a young governess daydreams that someone will appear on the path and approve of her. A man does appear, high on the tower, and he is nobody she knows. Henry James's short, fevered ghost story is about longing, neglect and the danger of being the only one who sees.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
A timid guest in black sits in a pink-and-gold drawing room, holding a cake she will never bite, while an old man in a wheelchair offers to show her the table where his family died. Jackson's last novel turns a poisoning into the blackest of comedies.
