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Gothicka, By Victoria Nelson

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

We live in an age in which popular culture is obsessed with the transcendent, or with a sort of negative sublime that is its mirror image. The argument of Victoria Nelson's interesting, flawed book is that we should not hang around waiting for a revival of spirituality, or regard organised religion as central to such a revival. The books people are reading, the films and television that they are watching– this "new Gothic" is that revival, in itself.

The Golden Hour, By William Nicholson

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The third volume of Nicholson's Sussex Downs saga, set over seven days in July, slips down like a fruity Pimm's.

Three Strong Women, By Marie NDiaye trans. John Fletcher

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

This isn't really a novel about three strong women because, out of the three protagonists, one seems delusional, one a victim of circumstance, and the other a deranged man. The novel's tripartite structure, which appears to be three short stories with a tenuous link, charts their personal hell. The first is Norah, a mixed-race French-Senegalese woman reluctantly returning to visit her despised elderly father in Senegal.

A Visitor's Guide to the Ancient Olympics, By Neil Faulkner

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Imagine 100,000 people thronging Glastonbury at its most squalid. Cross that with the unwashed aggression of an old-style stadium. Then factor in a vast open-air brothel (straight or gay) and a site-wide whiffy barbecue. Crowd control? Hygiene? First aid? Sportsmanship? Don't be funny.

Derby Day, By DJ Taylor

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

As every punter knows, even impeccable lineage and short odds can't guarantee success at the Epsom Derby. According to DJ Taylor's novel, it was ever thus. In a Victorian melodrama surrounding a clever betting sting, Taylor portrays a society in the midst of preparing itself for a new kind of front-runner.

Cultural Life: Irvine Welsh, novelist

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Books

The Day is Dark, By Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Reykjavik lawyer and under-age granny, Thora Gudmundsdottir, isn't usually fazed by the dark. But finding herself in remotest Greenland, investigating the disappearance of mining company employees, she finds herself listening out for unexplained creaks.

Boyd Tonkin: In Jerusalem, words reach out over the walls you can see, and those you can't

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

"I couldn't accept that the writer within me could be beaten. It was like an internal uprising. The only freedom left for someone who has suffered such a tragedy is the freedom to describe it in their own words." Dusk had just fallen over Yemin Moshe, an absurdly pretty flower-strewn Victorian cluster of cottages and terraces that looks out over the old city of Jerusalem. The vista stretches along the Ottoman walls from Mount Zion to the Jaffa Gate.

Book of a lifetime: Still Life, By AS Byatt

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Sometime in my late teens I read, in isolation, a description of a plum, which remained in my mind untethered to anything else. It was only in my twenties that I happened upon a paperback of Still Life and, in an unexpected moment of recognition halfway through the most remarkable novel I've ever read, I recovered the plum's origins.

One Minute With: Shirley Hughes, author & illustrator

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Where are you now and what can you see?

Antigonick, By Anne Carson The Watch, By Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Today, the moral certainties explored by Sophocles's tragedies can seem mysterious. Antigone is the story of what goes wrong when two codes of honour collide. Moral relativism would see these as nothing more than lifestyle choices, and tolerant liberalism try to negotiate a compromise. But communities who believe such codes are facts, in the same way that we might believe in the sciences or human rights, cannot negotiate them away. A tragic impasse results.

The Extract: 'The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus'

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Albert Camus's friend and publisher Michel Gallimard (along with Ringo Starr, Ava Gardner, and the King of Morocco) owned an unusual, expensive, and elegant car. One advert described it as "the fastest 4-seater sports coupé in the world". It had a 360 horsepower engine and was capable of up to 240 kph.

Satantango, By László Krasznahorkai, trans. George Szirtes

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

EM Cioran, the brilliantly tenebrous Romanian thinker, wrote that melancholy is "that same fall into a languid mud, that same circling of the damned without a hell''. Replace that "circling of the damned" with a Hungarian csárdás, danced out in a rain-soaked village on the edge of extinction, then you will have the setting for Satantango, the first novel (1985) by one of the living greats of European literature, László Krasznahorkai.

The Plantagenets, By Dan Jones

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

John Masefield's The Box of Delights allowed young Kay Harker the option of going small or going swift. Historians have to make the same choice. Dan Jones's first book, Summer of Blood: The Peasant's Revolt of 1381, went small, offering innumerable intriguing details, original insights and a vivid characterisation of the petulant young Richard II.

What To Do, See & Buy: Cherchbi; Llanelli Festival of Walks; Muller Van Severen; Topshop; Lego's Architecture range

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Bags of style

Why Nations Fail, By Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

This is the age of the bold intellectual synthesisers. This book, by two US economists, comes garlanded with praise by its obvious forebears – Jared Diamond, Ian Morris, Niall Ferguson, Charles C Mann – and succeeds in making great sense of the history of the modern era, from the voyages of discovery to the present day.

Sin and the single mother: The history of lone parenthood

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It all began with an abbreviated birth certificate that carried only the barest details. I had known since childhood that I was born 'out of wedlock', and that my father had deserted my mother as soon as he discovered she was pregnant in November 1950. But it wasn't until I looked up my full birth certificate after my mother's death in 2001 that I discovered I'd been born in a hostel for unmarried mothers.

Tales from the Mall, By Ewan Morrison

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Gruen transfer is the phenomenon of entering a shopping mall with a specific purchase in mind, only to be confused into buying something else. Ewan Morrison's brief description of how Gruen – designer of the first modern mall and a committed socialist – came to be known for such capitalist sleight-of-hand is clear-eyed and crisp. Yet it also acts as a suitable metaphor for this ambitious yet awkwardly executed mash-up of fiction, history and biography.

Five-minute memoir: Andy Martin recalls how a stolen book changed his life

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It was a small family bookshop, on a peaceful back street in a small town on the fringes of London. I treated it as my own personal library, and I would sit there for hours on end, often on the floor, usually not buying anything. I loved that bookshop, so naturally I had to go and betray it.

Invisible Monsters Remix, By Chuck Palahniuk

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Palahniuk first stepped into the literary spotlight with his debut novel, Fight Club, a brutalist satire that was turned into a cult film starring Brad Pitt.

Millions Like Us, By Virginia Nicholson

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Sixty million women played their part on the home-front while 64,000 service-women helped to win the Second World War.

La Roja: a journey through Spanish football, By Jimmy Burns

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Those who like to sneer that the world's most popular sport is a grossly exaggerated and often meaningless metaphor for the battle of real life should get hold of this splendid book. At the very least, it points out that if football is essentially a simple game, only relentless hard work, superior imagination and considerable passion can make it so. However, in the extraordinary rise of Spain to the number-one football nation there have been, as Jimmy Burns outlines with great skill, quite a number of other factors.

All Hell Let Loose, By Max Hastings

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Readers who know Max Hastings the dyspeptic opinion-monger - indeed, some who have read his narrower military histories - may be surprised or awed by this book.

The 10 Best summer cookbooks

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

1. The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden

The 10 best summer cookbooks

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

1. The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden