Books

Youngsters have traditionally found joy in using paints and pencils – but now they can also generate images and words by pressing a few keys on computers or phones.Axel – who has illustrated many books for young readers such as The Gruffalo, Zog and The Highway Rat – is worried this will stifle creativity.He said: “AI is a worrying development. I am all for kids drawing with pencils and paints and we need to protect this from AI.“It is a worrying development and I do not know what the future will bring. But I would always defend people creating, rather than having something artificial.”Asked if technology was likely to affect his career, he admitted: “I am ignoring that whole AI thing and maybe I am naive and stupid.“I know if you say, ‘Do something in the style of Axel Scheffler’ then ...

I love books about video games, especially the ones that look back at some of the iconic releases and classic consoles I grew up playing.Then there are those deep-dives into my favourite games of the modern era, focusing on all-time greats like Dark Souls, Nier and Bloodborne.If you're looking for some Christmas gift ideas for the video game lover in your life, then I would recommend a good book.Covering everything from beat-em-ups and shooters, to old-school consoles and arcades, these are ten of the best books for video game fans this Christmas.If you're really lucky, you might even be able to grab a discount or two on Black Friday. Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat-em-UpsStarting off with a bang (as well as a crash and wallop), Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to ...

The dawn of a new year often brings with it the tradition of setting resolutions, be it hitting the gym, picking up a new hobby or kicking an unhealthy habit.A common resolution is to reduce screen time and increase reading hours.However, despite starting the year with high hopes, statistics reveal that over 90 percent of New Year's resolutions are discarded within a few months.Fear not, as there are practical steps to help maintain your resolution, such as setting achievable goals.For instance, if you haven't read any books this year, aiming for 100 next year might be overly ambitious, regardless of how effortless BookTok makes it appear.Instead, consider setting realistic targets. If you're seeking some motivation, here are some reading challenges to embark on in 2025.1. Alphabet read...

Luke Arnold, centre, as Martin Scarsden in hit BBC adaptation of Chris Hammer’s Scrublands against b (Image: BBC / Easy Tiger / Getty / AP)Being a political consultant is a high-risk job. Careers can be short and brutal. But former journalist Chris Hammer might just hold the record for the speediest exit, having spent just three weeks as a special adviser to an upcoming Australian politician.Happily, a lucrative book and TV contract rather than scandal triggered his departure.“I quit because I got this wonderful deal and realised it was now or never,” he chuckles. “It was a bit risky but I figured I could make a go of it. My former boss is a reasonably senior minister now and he’s got half the cabinet reading my books!”Drawing on his experiences as a reporter, Hammer’s debut novel Scrub...

Andrew Scott played the brilliant, evil Jim Moriarty in the BBC's 2010 series Sherlock (Image: BBC / Hartswood Films /Colin Hutton)Was there ever a greater description of a fictional villain than the “Napoleon of crime”, as Sherlock Holmes brands his arch-rival Professor James Moriarty? “He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city,” Holmes continues.“He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.”While the fictional consulting detective of 221B Baker Street ranks as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest creation, Moriarty, one of the most terrifying wick...

To order any of the books of featured visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25Wyndham and Bannerjee creator Abir Mukherjee, above, whose standalone thriller Hunted (Vintage) is out, now says: “Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (Macmillan) follows Dave Win, an Anglo-Burmese man, from childhood and through his life as an actor. It’s a poignant book about race, class and sexuality in a changing Britain. Hollinghurst has rightly been described as the UK’s finest living author. The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (Vintage) is a Senegalese writer’s quest to uncover the fate of a vanished author, the book weaves together colonial history, identity, and the power of literature. Absolutely haunting.” (Image: Express...

To order any of the books of featured visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25Sir Ian Rankin, above, whose 25th Rebus novel Midnight And Blue (Orion) was one of the smash hits of the autumn, says: “White City by Dominic Nolan (Headline) features postwar, but pre-groovy London in all its gangland glory as communities and individuals clash and race tensions reach boiling point. A hard-hitting novel with a very human heart. Missing Person: Alice by Simon Mason (Quercus) sees a detective specialising in finding people long disappeared methodically searching for a young woman. Hints of Georges Simenon here though the story is set in contemporary England. It’s lean, tense, gripping.” (Image: Orion)Tessa Hadley, above, whose latest...

Dave Rowntree, Damon Albarn, Alex James and Graham Coxon of Blur (Image: Getty Images)Blur bassist Alex James has revealed how the band was fined £20,000 for smoking on stage when they played their two massive reunion gigs at Wembley Stadium. The musician turned farmer, who was rarely without a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth in the Britpop band’s nineties heyday, chuckles: “It’s all there in the tour accounts!”By then, having played to 180,000 ecstatic fans at the sold-out London shows – their best ever, he believes – as well as tens of thousands more around the world, Blur could afford the write-off. But rewind to the run-up to last year’s reunion, and James admits money was so tight he was forced to borrow from his mother-in-law.Sitting on a sofa in a converted thres...

This book is a must-read before the end of the year, it has been called a "perfect book for the festive season” by an expert.Maia Snow from The Bookseller said her book of the year is Orbital by Samantha Harvey.She said: “It might not be very original, but for me, by far the must-read book of 2024 is easily this year's Booker Prize winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey.“I read it in a single day when the prize shortlist was announced and immediately my favourite to win and I was thrilled when it did.“It's the perfect book read over the festive season, or even to get you out of a reading slump as it clocks in at just 136 pages - easily devoured in a day, and warrants rereading to really appreciate everything the author packed into such a short book.”This year was huge for books, with reader...

"A good scary book thrills in a way no other genre can quite match, it simply demands to be read," says children's horror author Rachel Burge as I interview her, appropriately enough, on Halloween.Burge has just published her fourth book Whispering Hollow, a spook-fest which melds contemporary teenage life with painstakingly researched English faerie folklore (hard to know which is the scarier, I know...) in a gripping, darting, twisting page-turner of a novel.But be warned, these are not Tinkerbell-esque Tooth Fairies she is writing about. Burge's Faeries are nasty murderous killers just as - pre-Disney - most Faeries actually were."As I looked into British folklore about faeries," says the best-selling writer, "I was surprised to discover just how cruel they could be to humans. In Cor...