Yesterday
Formula 1 is booming. So are romance novels about the sport
The sports romance genre is seeing a new trend thanks in part to the popularity of the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive.
- Gregory Leporati
This Month
What the Dickens have they done to the year 12 English syllabus?
Charles Dickens, George Orwell and Sylvia Plath will all disappear from the HSC English syllabus in NSW, but their replacements aren’t too shabby.
- Jonty Claypole
- Opinion
- Chanticleer
What our top CEOs read, watched and listened to in 2024
From business books to crime thrillers and podcasts, here’s what our CEOs did in their spare time this year.
- Anthony Macdonald and James Thomson
You’ve seen this book everywhere. TikTok is responsible
The romance novel “Icebreaker” has sold almost 2 million copies since publisher Anthea Bariamis discovered it on BookTok, a forum turning the fiction industry on its head.
- Lucy Dean
The year’s best books as chosen by the Financial Review newsroom
From highly anticipated novels to memorable memoirs, here are the top picks from our journalists to make your summer reading list sizzle.
- Staff writers
Oliver Sacks’ letters from a beautiful mind
The great neurologist offered a lesson in treating our fellow humans with care and true attention.
- Erica Wagner
Booker winner’s protest shows the new perils of arts sponsorship
Richard Flanagan said he’d only accept the Baillie Gifford Prize when the sponsor divested fossil fuels. It helps explain why “artwashing” corporates are moving to less controversial sponsorships.
- Updated
- Michael Bailey
November
How Barbara Taylor Bradford put Boris Johnson in his place
From matrimony to sexism, the seller of 90 million novels - who has died aged 91 - had sage advice, and a blunt way of communicating them.
- Celia Walden
‘India, not China, is the historic centre of the Asian world’
Scottish author William Dalrymple argues in his new book that Indian thinkers like Aryabhata and Brahmagupta should be as familiar to the West as Archimedes and Galileo.
- Michael Bleby
October
The Dublin slum dweller who became Ireland’s global intellectual
‘Buffoonery as tyranny’ is Fintan O’Toole’s phrase for Donald Trump, and growing up in Catholic Ireland, tyranny is a concept the writer knows something about.
- Julie Hare
Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point sequel oversimplifies the times
The C-suite’s favourite thinker has written a follow-up to his runaway bestseller of 2000. One problem: it’s like the internet still doesn’t exist.
- Gal Beckerman
The Aussie novel Camilla ‘adores’ and what she reads on tour
The Queen champions literature through her Reading Room charity, which has thrived since it was launched during the pandemic as part of a global boom in book clubs.
- Lucy Dean
Religion has made Sally Rooney boring
“Intermezzo”, the fourth book by the kingpin of Millennial fiction, sees a growing preoccupation with religion flatten out her once enigmatic prose.
- Susie Goldsbrough
At home with Plum Sykes, the author who skewers the rich and famous
The satire in the writer’s novels about wealthy and glamorous women is all the sharper for being written by an insider.
- Lauren Sams
September
- Opinion
- Opinion
The rise and rise of the self-help book
For as long as there have been selves, they have needed help – and books have offered it. As the genre has grown, so have its claims.
- The Economist
Why men are joining book clubs
The world sleepwalked into a loneliness epidemic. Is the humble book club the remedy?
- Lucy Dean
How to start your own book club
So, you and a couple of your friends have embarked upon a quest to read more? Here’s how to get your book club up and running – and enduring.
- Lucy Dean
August
- Opinion
- Visual art
Too many children are being encouraged to follow their dreams
If history has taught us anything, it’s that there are no risks to a young artist giving up on their dreams.
- Ed Cumming
‘If I stand behind Mandela and he gets shot, I’ll take a bullet, too’
In the final years of apartheid in South Africa, a young doctor was asked to prepare for an assassination attempt on current and future presidents.
- Peter Friedland and Jill Margo
July
- Opinion
- Publishing
Why influencer publishing is bad for the book industry
Why a new Ebury imprint by the social media entrepreneur Steven Bartlett is bad news for books.
- Sarah Manavis