It's 10:47pm on a Tuesday. The school WhatsApp group has erupted over whether next week's cake sale should be nut-free or nut-aware. Someone's posted a passive-aggressive meme about parking by the Year 2 entrance. Your phone pings again. LinkedIn wants you to know a bloke you met at a conference in 2019 has just celebrated three years at a company you've never heard of. This is when you reach for a book. Not just any book. A proper one. The kind where someone sensible narrates you out of … continue reading
For Book Lovers
Reading lists, recommendations and bookish tangents for people who would rather be reading. Keith A Pearson's posts for fellow book lovers.
Books Like The Midnight Library: 10 Novels for “What If?” Readers
Everyone runs their own midnight library. You lie awake at 3am, staring at the ceiling, replaying the version of your life where you took the other job, married the other person, said yes when you said no, said no when you said yes. The books on the shelves stretch off into the dark, each one a life you didn't pick, each one looking, in the small hours, very slightly better than the one you ended up with. Matt Haig didn't invent that experience. He just wrote it down and sold ten million … continue reading
10 Novels for Men Going Through a Rough Patch
If you've landed on this page, there's a reasonable chance your life has recently taken an unscheduled detour into a ditch. And if that's the case, the internet has no shortage of advice for you. Type 'best books for men going through a tough time' into Google and you'll receive approximately four thousand recommendations for Atomic Habits, a book about Stoicism, and something by David Goggins involving ice baths and a lot of shouting. All very motivational. All about as comforting as a pep talk … continue reading
Are These Famous Book Characters Autistic? A Reader’s Guide
Plus the one autistic character you've never heard of — but should absolutely meet. If you've ever finished a novel and immediately Googled "is [character name] autistic?" — you're not alone. In fact, you're part of an increasingly large group of readers who recognise neurodivergent traits in fictional characters, even when the author never uses the word. It's a fascinating corner of book culture. Some authors deliberately write autistic characters without labelling them. Others insist … continue reading
Books for Men Going Through a Divorce
If you're a man going through a divorce — or recently out the other side — you've probably noticed that most of the advice out there isn't aimed at you. The self-help shelves are full of books about "rediscovering your feminine power" and "healing your inner goddess," which is lovely but not enormously helpful when you're eating cereal at 11pm in a flat that stinks of paint. The books on this list won't tell you how to fix your marriage. That ship has sailed, and frankly, it was probably … continue reading
The Best 1980s Time-Travel Novels (For Readers Who Miss the Mixtape Era)
If your heart still lives somewhere between a tape deck and Teletext, this list is for you. This isn't a vague roundup of time travel novels — this is specifically about books that drop you into the 1980s, or close enough to smell the hairspray. Walkmans, Top of the Pops, pre-internet Britain, and the quiet ache of wondering what you'd do differently if life handed you a do-over. I've split the list into three sections: modern British nostalgia (the bittersweet do-over novels), international … continue reading
Books With Autistic Characters: 40+ Fiction Recommendations
If you're searching for books with autistic characters, fiction featuring neurodivergent protagonists, or novels that portray autism with honesty and emotional depth, you're in the right place. This guide curates over forty reader-recommended books across genres — literary fiction, romance, YA, fantasy, cosy mysteries, and contemporary novels. Some characters are explicitly autistic; others are widely understood to be neurodivergent based on how they think, feel, and move through the world. … continue reading
Books About Going Back in Time to Fix Mistakes
We've all done it. Lain awake at 2am replaying a conversation, a decision, a single stupid moment that set your life on a different course. What if you could go back? Not to witness history or fight aliens — just to fix the thing that went wrong. To say the words you didn't say. To walk through the door you walked past. To not buy that can of Coke from a newsagent in 1986. That last one's mine. I've spent the best part of a decade writing novels about exactly this premise — ordinary people … continue reading
Books for Men Who Are Quietly Struggling
This post isn't for the man who's already asked for help. He's taken the hardest step and he'll find his way. This is for the man who hasn't. The one who's sitting in a car park for ten minutes before going inside because he needs the silence. The one who's fine — always fine — because that's what he says and nobody pushes it. The one who's quietly running out of road and doesn't know how to tell anyone, or even whether he should. It might also be for you, if you love that man and you don't … continue reading
Useful Twitter Hashtags For Avid Readers
Imagine being at a party where every guest is shouting at you at the same time. Sound fun? Obviously we'd rather filter what we want to hear and this is why Twitter hashtags are incredibly useful. By clicking any of the hashtags below, you'll only see tweets that are specifically book-related. Using hashtags is also a useful strategy if you happen to be tweeting about a book and want to reach a wider audience beyond your followers. … continue reading