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Five Books features in-depth author interviews recommending five books on a theme. You can read more interviews on the site, or sign up for the newsletter.

The Best Vampire Books

There are two essential features of a vampire, says award-winning author Grady Hendrix: they look just like us, and they need us. Beyond this, they are highly adaptable, and have stood in for pandemics, economic exploitation, addiction, abuse, true crime and lust. Here, Hendrix introduces five novels that have shaped this complicated monster. Read more

Public Domain Books

Public domain books are books on which the copyright has expired, which means they are often available for free on the internet. Copyright rules vary by country, but some of the classics of literature were written more than a century ago and are now in the public domain. Read more

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The End Of Roadside Attractions

Jane Stern | Paris Review | 9th April 2025

Driving across America in the 1970s, one could see a marvellous array of eccentric attractions. Not the corporate kind — these were all "a brainchild of an individual with a vision". Their presence was announced by billboard miles away, building the anticipation for eventual arrival at a dinosaur park, the world’s largest ball of twine, the rare fur-bearing trout, the coon dog cemetery and many more (1,700 words)

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What If We Made Advertising Illegal?

Kōdō Simone | 7th April 2025

Thought experiment. It feels like "asking to outlaw gravity", but it could improve the world. Removing paid advertising would, overnight, get rid of addictive digital content and "personalised, reality-distorting bubbles". Our lives would no longer be minutely and stealthily tracked. Perhaps one day we will look back on advertising saturation as we do "cigarette smoke, child labour, or public executions" (600 words)

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'I Am Not Who You Think I Am'

Shaun Walker | Guardian | 10th April 2025

Strange-but-true Cold War thriller. At the age of 16, Peter Herrmann's father Rudi told him that his entire life was a lie. Both his parents were a type of covert KGB agent known as an "illegal". Their life as a "model Canadian family" had been painstakingly constructed so that they could eventually penetrate US government circles. When that didn't work, Rudi recruited his teenage son to take up the mission (6,200 words)

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Another Country

Aurelien | Trying To Understand The World | 9th April 2025

On the problem of feelings vs facts in political discussion, especially when it comes to matters of national loyalty and patriotism. "I probably wasted years of my life under the delusion that people could be convinced by rational argument. Having changed my opinions a number of times in my life on the basis of new information or better arguments, I naively supposed that everybody did the same" (5,500 words)

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The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.

Podcast: The Heist | Crime Next Door. Beginning of a rare light-hearted true crime series, about the theft of a solid gold toilet worth £5 million (19m 59s)

Video: Trains | Vimeo | Gawx | 1m 34s

Visual poem about trains, "metal worms travelling at 36 kilometres per hour". Strange and thought provoking.

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Pablo Picasso’s Stunning Repetitions

Jillian Hess | Noted | 7th April 2025

Picasso was a master realist until the advent of photography. His response was “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”, a painting that “set the art world on fire”. He carried out 809 preliminary studies and filled 16 different sketchbooks, moving from realistic representations to geometric forms, collapsing perspectives, using shapes that didn’t belong together — birthing what would become known as cubism (1,600 words)

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Return Of The Dire Wolf

Jeffrey Kluger | Time | 7th April 2025

Bioscience company Colossal claims to have genetically engineered the birth of three dire wolves. With domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, 20 edits in the gray wolf’s genes were made to create the dire wolf, but the species differences are many: white coat, larger size and vocalisations — “a howl that hadn’t been heard on earth in over 10,000 years”. Efforts to create a woolly mammoth are underway (5,400 words)

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Oh, Tariffs

Kyla Scanlon | 4th April 2025

Economist who coined the term “vibecession” demystifies tariffs. The US last imposed mass tariffs in 1828 and 1930, and “faced a deepening depression after each one”. “History shows that large-scale protectionism can backfire spectacularly. We could be staring at higher consumer costs, a potential trade war, and an economic slowdown. We’re not doomed, but the road ahead is bumpy” (4,100 words)

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The Art Of Too Much

Graham McKay | Misfits’ Architecture | 6th April 2025

Ode to maximalism in Gio Ponti’s designs. “There’s an art to saying something with an economy of means but there’s also an art in using all the means at one’s disposal to create something equally simple. Every part of this bottle from 1949 is an opportunity for more design. These interiors are of their times and places but abundance never seems to go out of fashion. It’s what I mean about the art of excess” (1,400 words)

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Small Countries Should Not Exist

Thomas R. Wells | 3 Quarks Daily | 4th April 2025

The collective population of the forty smallest sovereign states is only 20 million. These places are too small to have effective governments that can protect citizens against invasion or cope with natural disasters. Their economies are perpetually vulnerable. The one route to revenue is a by-product of their sovereignty: economic parasitism via money laundering, tax avoidance, golden passports, and more (1,200 words)

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Something Unsettling About the Neighbours

Amie Souza Reilly | Electric Literature | 3rd April 2025

To hawk. To badger. To ferret. To peacock. To hog. To wolf. To fish. The list of animal nouns turned into verbs of physical action and violence is long. This linguistic investigation was inspired by a pair of very unpleasant neighbours: "The smirks, the repetitive door slamming, the dumped yard waste, the positions of their bodies as they stood in our yard and stared appeared to be strategic moves" (3,500 words)

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Five Books features in-depth author interviews recommending five books on a theme. You can read more interviews on the site, or sign up for the newsletter.

Novels Based on Myth Retellings

Mythological retellings bring us stories with timeless resonance, viewed through the lens of modern concerns, explains Francesca Simon. The bestselling author tells us about her five favourite retellings, and introduces her first adult novel and the rich world of folklore and legend that inspires it. Read more

Notable Nonfiction of Early 2025

As March draws to a close, Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, looks at some of the nonfiction books that have come out in the first three months of 2025, from the biography of one of the world's great female leaders to better ways to measure a country's economy. Read more

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The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.

Podcast: A Georgian Polyphonic Feast | Illuminated. Documentary about a Supra feast, held in the village of Lakhushdi in the mountains of Georgia — a place renowned for its polyphonic singing (28m 27s)

Video: How To Identify Quality In Clothing | YouTube | Bernadette Banner | 24m 16s

Fashion historian gives practical advice on how to distinguish high-quality, durable clothing from the rest.

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Slow Fade Of The Formatting Fetish

Oliver Reichenstein | iA | 31st March 2025

Part love letter to Markdown syntax, part history of document formats. Interesting throughout, with the caveat that this is published by the makers of a Markdown app. Traditionally, file formats like .docx, .pptx, and .pdf were proprietary and intended to reinforce users' commercial relationships with paid software. They also instilled in us an obsession with fonts that has taken years to begin to fade (4,700 words)

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The Department Of Everything

Stephen Akey | Hedgehog Review | 14th September 2024

Former librarian remembers his time working at the Telephone Reference Division of the Brooklyn Public Library in the 1980s. All sorts of people, from journalists and detectives to "park bench crazies" could call up and ask for "ready reference" facts. Each caller got five minutes or three questions. Answers were found by using "logic, inference, imagination, and a tall pile of reference books" (1,900 words)

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Divorce Does Not Make You A Hero

Laura Limpus | Deez Links | 2nd April 2025

Polemical repudiation of "divorce literature", part of a series of provocations titled "Hate Read". This genre is not for women, and especially not for divorced women. "These authors say they want us to 'learn' from their mistakes, but really, they want us to witness their transformation from damsel in distress to hero, and then simultaneously pity them while also idolising their transcendence" (1,000 words)

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William And Henry James

Peter Brooks | Paris Review | 1st April 2025

Book extract, focusing on the strained relationship between these two famous brothers. Henry was well used to his brother's rebuffs and harsh words — "the scenarios established in childhood don’t die" — and yet they still rankled. Responding to a needlessly brutal critique of The Golden Bowl, he wrote: "I’m always sorry when I hear of your reading anything of mine, & always hope you won’t" (2,400 words)

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