If you read one sports book this year, this is the one

This is a gripping story

So darn riveting that it simply cannot be put down

Having nearly lost his life Lance Armstrong serves up his story for the rest of the world to wonder at, shudder at and learn from

Armstrong’s tale of his recovery from cancer remains compelling and inspirational. It has already brought comfort to millions of sufferers and their families, and will continue to do so

This is a remarkable book by a remarkably lucky individual a homage to a breed of men and women who to the rest of us may appear to be touched by lunacy, but who are forever questing, forever valiant

Susan Rogers is one of the greatest listeners and feelers of music... This Is What It Sounds Like is just like having a great conversation with her... she has opened my mind to how we hear music, and has once again inspired me as both listener and musician

An essential music handbook - not only for its smart exploration of why we're drawn to different genres and styles but for its joyous celebration of the art of listening. Susan Rogers's words dance on the page with their sheer enthusiasm and eloquence. The way she illuminates what makes music so effective - from breaking down a Kanye West instrumental to the vocal skill of Frank Sinatra - will have you reconsidering songcraft and the way you process it. I wish I'd had a book like this when I was starting out as a music journalist. And, of course, I could read her personal stories about being in the studio with Prince forever. This Is What It Sounds Like is a triumph of the personal, technical and philosophical, fizzing with energy and insight, and a crucial addition to the canon of music must-reads

Like a therapist that untangled my musical relationships, Susan Rogers helped me understand my past and gave me a map to work out where I want to go next. I understood why I love the records I do and now I've got a map for my next treasure hunt

The mysterious gravitational tractor beam of musical obsession that has directed my entire life has now been explained so eloquently by Susan Rogers. She has guided me on a righteous riff to the engine room of my own unique musical journey

Susan Rogers is the only person who could have written this incredible book. Her passionate love of music, her vast experience creating history in the recording studio, and her deep knowledge about the subject helped me understand WHY I love the music in my life. She will open your ears and eyes in a way you won't expect. I cannot get this book out of my head

Susan Rogers is unusually well qualified to investigate the mysterious, drug-like impact music has on the physical body and the emotional mind. ... Rogers' theories, both scientific and romantic, come as close to a breakthrough to anything I've read

Rogers... is a superb listener... [and This Is What It Sounds Like] can show you how to be a better listener - and, perhaps more importantly, how listening, too, is an art and a fundamental part of the creative process

Magnificent - an unbelievably immersive and mind-blowing account of how other animals experience our world

Like stepping into a new kind of Alice in Wonderland. The perfect mixture of revelation, curiosity, science, beautiful prose and buckets full of wonders

A cornucopia of wonders... a fascinating reminder of the humbling truth that most of what happens among life forms on Earth is beyond our ken

An expansive, constantly revelatory exploration of the biosphere's sensorium... Ed Yong is my favourite contemporary science writer

Every page finds the reader mouthing quiet whoa's, as the world she thought she knew opens out into a hundred others, improbable, strange, and fabulous.

An Immense World took my hand and brought me on a journey I'll never forget. After reading this book, I'll never look at our planet the same way again

A whirlwind tour of animal perceptual abilities. A magnificent book

A tour of places that are, in essence, unknowable... Yet Yong...proves an outstanding guide... Beautifully written and painstakingly researched... this fantastic book leaves you wondering what else is left to be discovered

Ed Yong's fascinating new book on the complex behaviours of creatures uncovers a universe of unfathomable beauty... Not since Oliver Morton's masterpiece of popular science Eating the Sun (2007) has a book so persuasively made the case that the Earth is greater than we know

A wonderful, wonder-full book

Both eye-opening and humbling

Remarkable... a delight, a book that prompts awe at the world around us

A tour of our own world as we may never experience it

This book will reignite your sense of wonder and appreciation for our amazing planet

Immaculately researched, elegantly written, iconoclastic and compulsively readable

[Yong's] skills are on full display here, as he clearly and succinctly sketches out complex scientific and philosophical ideas in terms that are understandable for the lay reader

Yong ... has a rare ability to break down overwhelming amounts of information into compelling, digestible detail. His An Immense World will make you question everything you thought you knew about how non-human animals perceive our shared world.

One of President Barack Obama's 'favourite books of 2022'

Remarkable ... manages to be both a celebration of our species' genius for observation while also revealing how narrow and partial our 'sense' of things. Yong reveals how life is much greater than we can images.

Yong's colourful, character-filled writing reveals a multidimensional world that has hitherto remained hidden to us

This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals

Ed Yong's book is a celebration of sights and sounds, smells and tastes, and the ways different animals exist on the planet we all share. Yong blends scientific study and elegant prose to transform textbook fodder into an excting read

A brilliant story about life's most challenging puzzles: friendship, family, love, loss. By turns funny, poignant, wistful, and occasionally devastating

The sort of book that comes around once in a decade - a magnificent feat of storytelling. It is a book about the intersection between love and friendship, work and vocation, and the impossible and relentless pull of our own west-bound destinies

Sam and Sadie's relationship is pure wizardry; it's deep and complex, transcending anything we might call a love story. Whether you care about video games or not is beside the point. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the novel you've been waiting to read

I feel completely changed by this book from Gabrielle Zevin. It's a book about love - about friendship, but really it transcends the borders of storytelling. My heart ached when I finished it. Truly unforgettable

The perfect engrossing holiday read...beautiful and heartbreaking

Zevin's delight in her characters, their qualities, and their projects sprinkles a layer of fairy dust over the whole enterprise. Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.

A one-of-a-kind achievement

A particularly memorable and compelling kind of love story... [a] nuanced depiction of human connection over 30 years that will have you blinking back tears behind your sunglasses

dazzling and intricately imagined

Zevin's writing is like being put under a spell. She's kind of magical.

Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.

exhilarating

engrossing

delightful and absorbing . . . expansive and entertaining

The go-to for your next hit of Nineties nostalgia; if you ever spent too long playing Donkey Kong, this one's for you

This is a boy meets girl story that is never a romance - though it is romantic . . . Their relationship is a joining of minds and of worlds that is both purer and sweeter than any base physical attraction

Big-hearted, generous, intelligent and open to the complexities of life

A novel that treasures the act of play and holds it sacred . . . the world of video games and video game development is just the landscape in which life plays out . . . Tomorrow is about love, above all things

Delightful and absorbing

Teenagers of the 21st century are as likely to bond over video games as they are rock music or movies. Gabrielle Zevin's exhilarating, timely and emotive book is perhaps the first novel to truly get to grips with what this means

Exhilarating... this is refreshingly original

It is the imaginary world of a game, a world Zevin describes with the addict's ardour, which forms a universe even the sturdiest parent or antediluvian book-lover will be enticed into.

Friendship, love, loyalty, violence in America and the magic of invented worlds. Gorgeous

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a special book -- one that transports readers fully, as games do their players, into its immaculately crafted world

Woven throughout are meditations on originality, appropriation, the similarities between video games and other forms of art, the liberating possibilities of inhabiting a virtual world, and the ways in which platonic love can be deeper and more rewarding - especially in the context of a creative partnership - than romance.

Zevin probes at many of the themes that energize video games as a medium: their narrative depth, their therapeutic value, their casual violence, their toxic industry. And the possibility of living a better life in a virtual world

Zevin has the ability to make you care about her creations within paragraphs of meeting them... whose fates I consistently worried about when I occasionally had to put the book aside.

[An] engrossing, delightful novel... Zevin has the ability to make you care about her creations within paragraphs of meeting them... [Tomorrow] is rich with characters whose intertwined fates power the narrative

This book, with its respect for craft-the craft of love and games, or loving games-will remind you of how abundant one life is, how lucky we are to keep each other in our memories forever.

[I] raced through this pure wonder of a book in a few days

A 2022 book that everyone should read

A must-read

Anyone who reads Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow can't stop talking about it

Utterly beautiful and endlessly hopeful, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a love letter to life, friendship, and creativity

[The] 2022 book that everyone should read

My #1 book to recommend . . . incredible, like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon meets The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. It's about love and friendship and video games

It feels right that the best video game novel out there is by a woman. Her story about the decades-long friendship and partnership between video game designers Sam and Sadie gets at so much about work, love and storytelling. It's a book that spawns great conversations.

In following Sam and Sadie's journey from Massachusetts to California and into the imagined worlds of their games, Zevin writes the most precious kind of love story

Zevin's writing is poetic, the plot is entertaining, moving and gripping and the nods to real life video games make it all feel incredibly real

Reading this is almost like an invitation from Zevin to enter a game...with every scene and moment so carefully constructed. Just brilliant

I loved it

A hugely enjoyable novel about lives and loves mediated by technology

This playful, accomplished novel is a poignant celebration of friendship, love - and gaming

An engrossing coming-of-age story

Epic in scale, with unforgettable characters, it breaks you heart and puts it back together