Tom Wolfe’, article: ‘You only had to look at him… or read such books as The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff to know that Tom Wolfe was like no other

The hero you couldn’t hope to emulate’, article: ‘Journalism, it is said, is the first draft of history. Nobody exemplifies the dictum better than Wolfe, the cultural observer and social critic par excellence

Effortlessly, elegantly, Tom Wolfe bestrode both fiction and non-fiction… a style at once objective, subjective, and hallucinatory

[Tom Wolfe’s] gleeful use of punctuation and italics, along with entertaining asides and neologisms that often quickly cemented themselves into the English lexicon, helped Wolfe stand out from other journalists

[Wolfe] made literature fun and bores don’t like fun

The Right Stuff is Wolfe's best book

It is Tom Wolfe at his very best...technically accurate, learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compassionate, nostalgic, worshipful, jingoistic... The Right Stuff is superb

An exhilarating flight into fear, love, beauty and fiery death... magnificent

Absolutely first class... Improbable as some of Tom's tales seem, I know he's telling it like it was

Remarkable

Publisher's description. A courageous and clear-sighted memoir about addiction and its terrible repercussions within a family. In 2012, Hans Rausing, heir to the vast Tetrapak fortune, was pulled over by the police while driving erratically across Wandsworth Bridge. What those police officers eventually found would shock the world...

Fascinating ... for sheer science fun, it's hard to beat

Lucid and engaging [...] Tegmark's explanation of how electronic circuitry - or a human brain - could produce something as evanescent and immaterial as thought is both elegant and enlightening.

It should be among the most important items on our political agenda. Unfortunately, AI has so far hardly registered on our political radar ... Max Tegmark's Life 3.0 tries to rectify the situation. Written in an accessible and engaging style, and aimed at the general public, the book offers a political and philosophical map of the promises and perils of the AI revolution. Instead of pushing any one agenda or prediction, Tegmark seeks to cover as much ground as possible, reviewing a wide variety of scenarios concerning the impact of AI on the job market, warfare and political systems. Life 3.0 does a good job of clarifying basic terms and key debates, and in dispelling common myths.

Tegmark's smart, freewheeling discussion leads to fascinating speculations on AI-based civilizations spanning galaxies and eons-and knotty questions: Will our digital overlords be conscious? Will they coddle us with abudance and virtual-reality idylls or exterminate us with bumblebee-size attack robots? While digerati may be enthralled by the idea of superintelligent civilizations where "beautiful theorems" servce as the main economic resource, Tegmark's future will strike many as a one in which, at best, humans are dependent on AI-powered technology and, at worst, are extinct... Love it or hate it, it's an engrossing forecast.

'I view this conversation about the future of AI as the most important one of our time,' he writes. Life 3.0 might convince even those who believe that AI is overhyped to join in.

Explores one of the most intriguing scientific frontiers, artificial general intelligence, and how humans can grow along with it. ... most will find the narrative irresistible.

12 Rules for Life hits home - from identifying the deeply engrained hierarchical ladder that motivates our decision making to asking indispensable and sometimes politically unpopular questions about your life and suggesting ways to better it

Peterson has become a kind of secular prophet who, in an era of lobotomised conformism, thinks out of the box ... His message is overwhelmingly vital

In a time of unrelenting connection, solitude becomes a radical act. It also becomes an essential one. Michael Harris makes a thoughtful and deeply felt case for why the art of spending quality time with oneself matters now more than ever – and the steps we can take to reclaim it.

She often finds herself dealing with the most macabre cases of murder. But the no-nonsense Scot is an upbeat character with a dry sense of humour, clearly identifiable in her memoir.

Ideal reading if you're a cheerful soul who likes to think about death. And think how it'll brighten your conversation on holiday.

Books of the Year

Best of the Year: Memoir
This book captures the profundity of human life while displaying a sense of humour, and peels back the skin to reveal a world few of us ever discover

Dame Sue Black, the woman who inspired the hit television show Silent Witness and has done for forensic science what Strictly has done for ballroom dancing, is an unlikely but deeply worthy national treasure.... Black's memoir, like her story, is curiously vibrant and life-affirming.

You can't help but warm to this retired professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology who chose "the many faces of death" as her medical speciality, yet is herself so vividly alive. Like [David] Nott, Black travelled the world at times, sifting maggots, bullets and human body parts in war zones. Despite it all, she remains convinced that our humanity transcends the very worst of which our species is capable.

All That Remains provides a fascinating look at death - its causes, our attitudes toward it, the forensic scientist's way of analyzing it. A unique and thoroughly engaging book.

This fascinating memoir, dealing with everything from bodies given to medical science to the trauma caused by sudden, violent ends, offers reassurance, and even hope, to the fearful and cynical.

A gripping natural-history detective story. Was Rist a cunning con-artist who more or less got away with the perfect, albeit clumsy crime? Or was he hopelessly addicted to feathers, to his hobby, and to his status as a young fly-tying protégé without the economic means to realise his dreams and potential?

This well written account of the known facts is well worth a read

It was hard to put the book down… Read it yourselves, enjoy it and learn from it!