page_4

Including the latest novel from the author of Submarine, healthy eating for the brain, the female Bukowski and the history of our closed cities.

Building and Dwelling: Ethics For The City by Richard Sennett

It’s easy to be intimidated by what might seem dense sociological writing. Especially if said writing comes courtesy of an academic who used to rub shoulders with the likes of Susan Sontag and Michel Foucault, but Building and Dwelling is surprisingly readable. Tracing the relationship between how cities are built and how people live in them, the book takes readers on a journey around the world and through history to see how the ‘closed’ city is spreading from the global North to the exploding global South. Never short of richness, Sennett’s ability to inform whilst being highly persuasive is why he’s one of the world’s leading thinkers.

Building and Dwelling (Allen Lane) is out on 22 February

How To Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell

It was the female Bukowski comparisons that first brought Cat Marnell to our attention and after perusing her graphic and brutally honest Amphetamine Logic columns for VICE, we knew the inevitable book would be a page turner. Charting her turbulent career as beauty editor of Conde Nast title, Lucky, How To Murder Your Life is an addiction novel of equal parts hilarity and misery. As is so often the case with such biting honesty, there’s spots of wisdom and softness among the despair.

How To Murder Your Life (Ebury) is out now

Birds of America by Mary McCarthy

To mark exactly a hundred years (this month) since the passing of the Representation of the People Act, beginning the inclusion of women in the UK political system, Penguin have brought four neglected classics from female writers back to print. Our pick of the new Penguin Women’s Writers series is Mary McCarthy’s lesser known Birds of America, which brings to mind the teenage angst of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, but with a political conscience. Environmentalism, war and a rejection of consumerism are all intertwined with the lead character’s summer in Rocky Port and schooling in Paris. Full of hilarious and extremely honest one-liners, Birds is a novel that’s as timely now as it was at the time of its release.

Birds of America (Penguin) is out now

Brain Food: How to Eat Smart and Sharpen Your Mind by Dr Lisa Mosconi

A lot of what Dr Lisa Mosconi puts forward shouldn’t be a surprise to most. We’re living longer, which is great, but this doesn’t necessarily mean a better quality of life in later years. Unsurprisingly, a balanced and varied diet is good for our health and processed foods are bad for us. What might come as a surprise however, is that less than 1 percent of the population develop Alzheimer’s disease because of a rare genetic mutation of their DNA. This points towards lifestyle, with Mosconi highlighting the influence of diet. A welcome change from sensationalist newspaper science, but by no means a shortcut to eternal life, Brain Food is a fascinating look at the brain and its evolution, with dietary advice on how to keep it healthy.

Brain Food (Penguin Life) is out now

The Adulterants by Joe Dunthorne

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Dunthorne’s The Adulterants dances effortlessly between drunken wit and sobering emotional intimacy. The long-anticipated follow-up to the award-winning novels Submarine and Wild Abandon, Dunthorne’s third outing offers a caustically charming dissection of modern everyman and all-round malcontent, Ray Morris. Set to the backdrop of the 2011 London Riots, The Adulterants chronicles Ray’s increasingly inept responses to a series of catastrophic – and largely self-inflicted – scandals. All of which would have the makings of a touching coming-of-age novel, were it not for the fact that Ray is already knee-deep in his thirties and should damn well know better.

The Adulterants (Hamish Hamilton) is out now