Five Books is a book recommendation website where experts pick the five best books in their subject (as an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases)
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Must-read novels of summer 2026: five must-read books from Ben Lerner (@GrantaBooks), Maggie O’Farrell, Caro Claire Burke, Missouri Williams (@misery_williams) and @rosarankingee
Anne Applebaum, the historian and writer, specializes in Eastern Europe and Russia. Her books have won a number of prestigious prizes and feature on many Five Books reading lists. fivebooks.com/people/books-b… …
"Critical thinking is not just pure logic. It’s a cluster of things. But its aim is to be clear about what is being argued, what follows from the given evidence and arguments, and to detect any cognitive biases or rhetorical moves that may lead us astray"
NEW interview:
Aristotle, says Edith Hall, is "quite simply the most important intellectual who ever lived."
Here the author and classicist selects five key texts to further your understanding of the great philosopher's life and work.
"My most exciting daily journey is to the compost bin and back." As we get going with our second lockdown here in the UK, bestselling author @neilhimself on his favourite comfort reads:
NEW interview: Learning Python and Data Science
Vicki Boykis (@vboykis) recommends the best books for learning Python—a language, she says, as versatile as a Swiss Army knife—and shows that it's possible to teach yourself coding and data science.
"We tend to see writing in books as an act of defacement. But readers in the Renaissance thought that if you didn’t leave notes in a book then you were being lazy and passive. You weren’t doing the job of engaging with the text and answering back to it”
"I am looking for a book which actually increases my knowledge, rather than giving me another angle on what I already know. I don’t just mean knowledge of plants, I mean knowledge of how to live" —@montydon on his favourite gardening books: