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MYSTERIOUS: Tolstoy - What They Never Told You

It took me 10 years to read this beast of a book – but it was worth it

First published in 1941, Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is not quite War and Peace. But it comes close

The Guardian - UK

Genghis Khan got lucky with the weather. Mark Zuckerberg was lucky too, says the Pulitzer-winning author of ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’

Author Jared Diamond told Fortune that a leader’s impact depends almost entirely on the industry—and utility bosses may be the most replaceable of all.

Fortune

I devoured classic novels as a teenager. In a world of distractions, can I relearn how to read them?

In less than a decade, surrounded by screens, I lost my ability to read some of the best books ever written. But, inspired by the Guardian’s 100 best novels list, I was determined to get it back

The Guardian - UK

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The story behind The Jolly Postman, the best book of your childhood

BOOKS: A new exhibition marks 40 years since the publication of Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s delicately crafted tale of a tea-drinking postman delivering (real) letters. Their daughter Jessica tells Jessie Thompson how her parents created such an enduring British children’s classic

The Independent UK

‘I’m not blaming Bond for screwing up my career’: Maryam d’Abo on playing a thieving writer on stage – and a sniper cellist in 007

The former Bond girl talks about her new role as a top writer accused of stealing a story as her actor husband is cancelled – and why she has no regrets about her time aboard the 007 rollercoaster

The Guardian - UK

Red Dead Redemption 2 is "slightly more novelistic" than GTA 5 because Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser "binged on Victorian novels" for inspiration

"If you look at Dickens, Zola, Tolstoy or any of those authors, there's that feeling of all the world is here – that's what you're trying to get in open world games"

GamesRadar

Tainted love: how Ukrainians are ridding themselves of Russian-language books

Putin’s invasion has seen Ukrainian book lovers recoil from Russian literary dominance, by a range of means

The Guardian - UK

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Long Story Short: this Jewish family comedy from the creator of BoJack Horseman is painfully beautiful

A sweeping, hilarious family saga told in multiple timelines from the 50s to the present day. Yes, that’s right – it’s basically Bluey meets Tolstoy

The Guardian - UK

Billy Corgan on launching his new podcast, the future of music and the 'shocking shift' brewing with AI

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has parlayed his music success into various businesses, from wrestling to a tea shop. This year, he launched his podcast "The Magnificent Others" with Bill Maher's Club Random Studios.

Fortune

Cynthia Ozick: ‘Alice in Wonderland seems calculatedly cruel’

The American author on the wonder of Little Women, re-evaluating Lolita and her belated discovery of Thoreau

The Guardian - UK

Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah review: tightly-plotted excellence

I’ve just finished a story about a man who has everything,” says Karim, the ostensible hero of Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s 11th novel, set in 1990s Tanzania. “How do you think the story will end?” he asks Badar, his mother’s servant boy, in a cruel taunt disguised as a…

Evening Standard

Ben Okri: ‘Is A Tale of Two Cities the greatest English novel? Meet me in a pub to discuss’

The poet and novelist on having his heart broken by Animal Farm, imagining Ibsen and Chekhov characters as Nigerian, and ditching physics for Plato

The Guardian - UK

Open Socrates by Agnes Callard review – a design for life

A bracing conteporary account of the philosopher’s age-old prescription for living

The Guardian - UK

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar Warehouse review: exciting, audacious and infuriating

3/5 Based on 70 pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, this is maddening and brilliant in equal measure

Evening Standard

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The Independent UK

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, review: Larger-than-life Tolstoy rock opera gets intimate

4/5 After a decade of anticipation, the much talked-about musical arrives in London

Louder

"There wasn't too much talking about who should play what, it was a very instinctive kind of relationship": Mick Taylor on life in the Rolling Stones, Altamont and leaving the band

The Rolling Stones’ secret weapon throughout their golden period looks back on his time with the band

The Guardian - UK

How do I live my best life? I’ll consult a painting, thanks – not my smug ‘AI future self’

Really, what can these chatbots developed by researchers at MIT teach us that Tolstoy or Lucian Freud can’t? asks comedian and author Viv Groskop

The Guardian - UK

Sigrid Nunez: ‘When I was growing up I wanted to be Dr Seuss’

The American author on the greatness of Tolstoy, the joy of Jamaica Kincaid and her insatiable appetite for fairytales

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The Guardian - UK

‘Spirits dancing in private rapture’: the best descriptions of joy in literature

The last word, our series about emotions and states of mind in books, focuses on depictions of happiness this month, from Austen’s Persuasion to a 21st-century sonnet

The Guardian - US

Trump 2026 trial date in election case should be rejected, prosecutors argue

Special counsel prosecutors urged the US district court judge Tanya Chutkan to ignore Trump’s ‘skewed’ statistics

The Guardian - UK

Michael Bakewell obituary

Radio and television producer who was head of plays at the BBC and steered productions of work by Harold Pinter, Alan Plater, Ibsen, Strindberg and Athol Fugard

The Guardian - UK

We can revile Putin’s violence in Ukraine, but we’re not at war with Russian culture

Elizabeth Gilbert was wrong to stop her novel being published on account of its setting

Bristol Post

'Old Vic's Anna Karenina is a delectable on-stage spectacular'

Performance is on at the Old Vic until the end of the month

The Guardian - UK

Kamila Shamsie: ‘There’s nothing more comforting than Seinfeld scripts’

The novelist on the dangerous allure of Gone With the Wind, taking comfort in comedy and discovering George Eliot’s Middlemarch

The Week

Anna Karenina review: ‘fluid and febrile’ adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic novel

This entertaining co-production of “Anna Karenina”, which transfers from Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre to Bristol Old Vic next month, “began as a dare”, said Fergus Morgan in The Stage. The British-Russian director Polina Kalinina was complaining to the Scottish writer Lesley Hart that Russian literary texts typically “suffered from staidness…

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