Two new books about reading are polar opposites. Alexander McCall Smith's musings are platitudinous while Nick Hornby reads like someone you’d love to chat with until the sun came up

Perhaps the Booker judges awarded Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries the prize to ensure that their getting through all 836 exhausting pages of her frustrating novel wasn’t in vain

MaddAddam occasionaly misses the mark, but at its best is an existential voyage and an exploration of storytelling itself

James Salter is seeing something of a renaissance of late. His elegantly written Collected Stories confirms him as a writer of moving and humane prose