In an overloaded world of hassle, waste and a lot of ‘stuff’, Bea Johnson decided to make some changes. The ultimate guru to simplified, sustainable living, her book Zero Waste Home shows how a few key moves can strip back the excess and transform your life for the better. Follow her ten top tips and you’ll be wasting less in no time.
Helen Dunmore’s remarkable new novel Exposure will take you on an emotional journey of forbidden love and the deepest betrayal. In light of her new book, the author reflects on the process of reading in an essay that explores how we read not just with our eyes, but with our hearts.
Praised for her “polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”, Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, and delivered her Nobel lecture on Monday at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. You can read the lecture in full here.
Lucy Mangan discovers the Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups, and muses on what topics she would create for the series.
In Hello World, Alice Rawsthorn explores the relationship design plays in society, and how it influences our lives as one of the most powerful forces that can determine how we feel and what we do, often without our noticing. In this extract, the role of the colour green is explored, from its use as a colour denoting environmental causes, to the irony of it being one of the least natural colours in the man-made world.
This month, Lucy Mangan muses on her childhood favourites, and how passing them down a generation can result in a shared love, or potentially sever even the closest of bonds. Re-reading your childhood favourites as an adult is a strange experience. Your previous selves shuffle in and out of prominence within you. The child you were when […]
Edited and introduced by novelist and journalist Philip Hensher, The Penguin Book of the British Short Story celebrates the diversity and energy of British writers. In this extract, Hensher introduces the collection.
In this month’s blog, Lucy Mangan muses on her tumultuous relationship with rhyming verse, from her father’s lyrical outbursts to her teenage poetic epiphany.
In The Great British Dream Factory, historian Dominic Sandbrook looks at the strange, diverse and wonderful creative industries that have sprung up in Britain since the end of empire. In this extract, we find out about the unlikely beginnings of the Black Sabbath guitarist’s unusual playing style…
Penguin Blog 
Seven Micro-Actions for Health and Happiness
It’s the small, everyday things that make a difference and contribute to a happier, more fulfilled life. Writers from The Book of You have chosen some of their favourite micro-actions that you can easily put into practice for a sunnier, more contented you.