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Latest features and reviews

<p>Richard Osman</p>

The sad truth about Richard Osman and the books you should buy instead

More books will be sold in the next few weeks than in the rest of the year, but in a below-average year for new titles, be careful not to be swayed by award-winners and chart-toppers, says Robert McCrum. There are still far better options for gifts

<p>From us to you: The Independent team pick their favourite books to gift this year</p>

Christmas 2025

The best books to give as presents this Christmas

<p>Best of the bunch: here are our top picks of this year’s releases</p>

The best fiction and non-fiction books of 2025

<p>Finnish infantry soldiers fighting the forgotten ‘Winter War’, from 1939-40, in which Josef Stalin’s Soviet army advanced on Finland</p>

The forgotten winter war: A timely reminder of Russia’s threat today

<p>Bookworm: Robert Pattinson in ‘Remember Me’</p>

in focus

Men aren’t vanishing from fiction. The truth is much more complicated

<p>‘I never have a problem with guys who make a movie that misses as long as they make the movie they want to make’: Bill Murray and Wes Anderson on the set of ‘Rushmore’</p>

Extract

How Bill Murray terrified – then befriended – Wes Anderson

<p>iRead: are AI-generated books welcome in our literary world?</p>

In Focus

A troubling question has been raised around human authors vs AI

<p>Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift: cultural twins or worlds apart? </p>

The Reading List

Maggie Nelson is wrong: Taylor Swift isn’t this generation’s Plath

<p>Parton is a country music trailblazer, business genius and, to many, fairy godmother</p>

The Reading List

Star of the Show: Is Dolly Parton having the final say on her career?

<p>‘The whacked-out Odd Couple’: Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson at Cannes Film Festival in 1978</p>

the reading list

The book that captures Martin Scorsese’s cocaine-fuelled bromance

<p>David Szalay’s sixth novel ‘Flesh’ is the second of his books to be shortlisted for the literary award</p>

Comment

David Szalay’s Flesh is the most deserved Booker Prize winner in years

<p>Olivia Laing’s new novel is a queer romance narrative about lust, politics and cinema</p>

Interview

Author Olivia Laing is turning their back on non-fiction

Reviews

Anthony Hopkins’ memoir falls short of the depth his career deserves

<p>Woody Allen photographed in September 2023</p>

Woody Allen’s debut novel is an incorrigible story of male lechery

<p>A quelled tornado: Charlie Sheen, star of ‘Two and a Half Men’ and ‘Platoon’</p>

Reviews

The flaw with Charlie Sheen’s memoir is the tragedy of his own life

<p>The Big Three: Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1945</p>

Tim Bouverie recalls The Big Three’s fall-out with wit and sensitivity

Lists

<p>What better way to become the best version of yourself other than with a trusty self-help book? (Alamy/PA)</p>

7 books that are cheaper than therapy

<p>Must-reads: the books you can’t miss in 2025 </p>

The books to read in 2025, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Adam Kay

<p>Clockwise from top-left: Matilda, Artemis Fowl, Peter Rabbit, The Hobbit</p>

The 30 best children’s books of all time

News