Category: library

Whoops! Turns out I pre-ordered this last year and forgot all about it. Perfect for after my next tranche of hard reading and I just want to relax into some light, expert storytelling. Tim Sullivan builds lovely plots.

THE BOOKSELLER (UK) (US+)

Okay, I’m definitely on a book buying spree. I decided at the top of 2025 that I wanted to read more this year as a priority. Just checked my Kindle and apparently I finished 45 books last year. I’m past the point in my life where I want to gamify reading, hitting food goals and hydrating just to ensure I get enough nutrition, but I do want to get more in, this year.

The Kropotkin is about filling holes in my education. The Nixey because I’m a sucker for the histories of cults.

THE CONQUEST OF BREAD (UK) (US+)

HERESY (UK) (US+)

I seem to be on a book buying spree.

In Pocket Pantheon Alain Badiou, one of today’s leading political and philosophical minds, invites readers to engage with some of the great thinkers of the postwar Western tradition such as Lacan, Sartre and Foucault. Drawing on his own encounters with this pantheon – his teachers, opponents and allies – he is able to offer unique insights into both the authors and their work.

I’m game. I haven’t actually read Badiou, to my recollection, and this looks like an easy introduction to his writing.

POCKET PANTHEON, Alain Badiou (UK) (US+)

I read the first five of the DI ROB MARSHALL sequence by Ed James at the end of 2024. HIS PATH OF DARKNESS is number 6. The Marshall books are expert crime plots, and it’s a pleasure to watch Ed unfold them.

My partner is doing ULTRA PROCESSED PEOPLE as an audiobook right now, and apparently it’s brilliant and terrifying, so I bought a copy for myself to read alongside her.

HIS PATH OF DARKNESS (UK) (US+)

ULTRA PROCE3SSED PEOPLE (UK) (US+)

(UK) (US+)

My Russian-politics rabbithole led me to hunt down information about Aleksandr Dugin, and to this book.

Steve Bannon in the United States. Aleksandr Dugin in Russia. Olavo de Carvalho in Brazil. All rising to positions of power in the past decade. All affiliated with an obscure philosophical movement called Traditionalism.

Since its birth in the early 20th century, Traditionalism has defined itself against modernity and Enlightenment values. Traditionalist thinkers celebrated hierarchy, denounced the idea of progress, and regarded liberal secularism, capitalism, and communism as aligned forces working to replace social, cultural and political norms. Ethnographer Benjamin Teitelbaum had been studying Traditionalism for years as a sort of novelty, associated with a restless subsection of the right — too antisocial for activism and largely without influence. And yet when Steve Bannon entered the White House in 2017, reports suggested he was an avid reader of Traditionalist teachings.

Teitelbaum spent years infiltrating this strange group of self-styled thinkers, gurus and influencers and getting to the heart of their philosophy. Through exclusive interviews and deep historical context, he reveals the radical worldview infusing the thinking of powerful figures today and inspiring a renegade reinterpretation of humanity, geopolitics and history. 

DOWNFALL (UK) (US=), because, like everyone else, I was riveted to the news when he marched on Moscow, wondered why he stopped, and was not remotely surprised when he was killed not long after.

A little brutalised by the postman, but the eleventh and penultimate LORE EP arrived this morning. Cannell must be exhausted: she’s had an insanely busy year, judging by output alone.