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WHOEVER suggested hibernating in winter hasn’t spent whole days inside with young kids, but as it happens, January and February can be a great time of year to treat the family to a budget day out.

Drizzly winter weather often means lower prices at top attractions, and there are plenty of exciting deals from now until spring. To prove rainy days don’t have to drain your bank account – we’ve hunted down the best bargain days out for families to enjoy in the wetter weather.

Plus, with February half term just around the corner, it’s best to plan ahead and pre-book your family days out – and secure these bargains whilst you can.

Read on for our pick of the best winter days out…

Theme parks and attractions

1. 50 per cent off Legoland Windsor Resort

Legoland Windsor Resort are offering some great deals ahead of the February half term, with half price tickets available when you book online.

Tickets can cost as little as £32 pp when booked in advance, saving you 50% on the walk up price.

Add on the adventure golf package for an extra £2 to save £42 pp on your trip to Legoland.

If you’ve got little ones under 90cm in height, they can enter for free.

The attraction is also offering “Brick Days” deals from 14 – 23 February.

These are days throughout the February half term packed with extra activities, specific weather-proof rides and meet and greets.

You can book a Brick Days deal online from £32pp, saving 53% when booked ahead.

2. Gulliver’s Kingdom family deal

Over at Gulliver’s Kingdom theme park in Matlock Bath, a family of four (with children aged 2-13) can visit for £39.

The deal comes courtesy of Wowcher, where families can save 61% off the original price of £99.

The family ticket is sold as a voucher, with flexible booking dates including 2026 school holiday availability.

There are also family vouchers for four available for £49 at the Warrington and Rother Valley locations.

3. Two thirds off at Chessington World of Adventures

Similarly, day tickets to Chessington World of Adventures have been slashed by two thirds during the February half term.

When prebooking online, tickets are available from just £22pp instead of £66pp.

A day ticket to Chessington includes entry to the theme park, zoo and SEA LIFE aquarium – that’s three attractions for just over twenty quid.

The same rule applies with those under 90cm being allowed in for free.

There’s even a short break deal from £32pp, meaning that you can stay overnight for the price of a regular day ticket.

And if it does get a bit chilly outside, Chessington has plenty of indoor attractions for you to explore.

There’s colourful soft play in the Dragon’s Playhouse, a walk-through tunnel in the indoor aquarium, and the Savannah Splash Pool.

4. After-school Legoland Adventure Golf

When it comes to crazy golf, Legoland Windsor Resort is a pretty unbeatable location.

Choose between three courses with space themes, pirates, or the impressive LEGO City.

The after school deal costs just £6pp instead of the £10pp walk up price.

This includes a round on one nine-hole course, and runs between 2 – 6pm from Monday through Thursday.

Make sure to prebook online at least a day in advance.

5. Merlin five attraction pass deal

This Merlin five attraction deal can save you up to 70% on family days out.

With this offer, you can visit five different Merlin Entertainments attractions over the course of 90 days for just £59pp.

This works out at £11.80pp per attraction, and is a great way of seeing some of London’s must-visits for families.

Choose between Shrek’s Adventure London, SEA LIFE London Aquarium, the London Eye, Madame Tussauds London, the London Dungeon and the Big Bus Hop-on, Hop-off Sightseeing Tour.

6. London Dungeon discounted day out

The London Dungeon is a thrilling indoor activity for older kids – and you can save extra if you book online in advance.

Inside there’s everything from the terrifying Drop Dead ride to a creepy escape room set in Guy Fawkes’ cell.

Attraction tickets on the day cost £35 per adult, but you can save up to an extra £8 by booking your tickets online ahead of time.

Adventure and weather-proof activities

7. Forest coaster with a free kids meal

Adventure centre Zip World are offering some major discounts, locals’ loyalty and after-school deals across locations in England and Wales.

On Thursday and Friday evenings in January, kids can enjoy a free hot meal and a drink when visiting the forest coaster at Betws-y-Coed.

From 3pm onwards, kids can enjoy a thrilling 1km ride through the forest before sitting down to a choice of free tomato pasta, bean or beef chilli.

Forest coaster bookings start at £25 for three rides, and if you’re a local resident you get an extra 30% off from Monday – Friday.

8. Cave trampolining with a free meal and unlimited squash

Over at Zip World’s Llechwedd location, kids can enjoy an hour of cave trampolining with a free meal and unlimited squash for £15.

The Bounce Below deal runs from 5 – 31 January on Thursdays and Fridays from 4pm.

You can also enjoy an extra 30% locals’ discount at Zip World attractions if you’re a resident of London, Manchester, Windermere, North Wales or South Wales.

The locals loyalty offer runs from 5 January – 13 February.

9. Ninja Warrior obstacle course

There’s some great deals running across Ninja Warrior UK courses – and this fully indoor attraction is perfect for any weather.

Here you make your way past a series of challenging inflatable obstacles, and end by facing the giant Ninja Warrior wall.

Early Bird and off-peak sessions cost £9.95pp, and a Ninja Toddlers session costs just £2.

There’s 17 locations to choose from, including Bristol, Cardiff, Sheffield, Wigan and more.

10. Indoor high ropes

Another great indoor option for burning off steam is the Gravity High Ropes experience in Birmingham.

At 31% off for just £10.95pp, adventurers can take on an action-packed course of climbing challenges, rope bridges and more.

You can save up to 41% if you book as a group, too, as the deal costs just £37.95 for a high ropes course for four.

11. Snow tubing deal

Elsewhere in Birmingham, take the kids to this unique snow tubing experience.

Those aged eight and over can grab themselves a doughnut tube and slide down a dry slope at Ackers Adventure Centre.

Taking place within a snow sports centre, this activity can be done in any weather.

The deal for two comes out to £8 per person if booked for two, which includes 30 minutes of tubing and is valid seven days a week.

12. Paintball for £2pp

For fans of outdoor adventure, Unreal Paintball in Madeley, Cheshire, is currently offering paintball group deals for 92% off.

A family-of-five can enjoy a paintballing day with 100 paintballs included for £10 – meaning the day out costs £2pp.

The Manor Farm location boasts nearly 40 acres of land including woodland, trenches, a castle and more to hide in.

The offer runs on weekends from 9am – 4pm for new Unreal Paintball customers.

13. 60% off Family Laser Quest

Over in Milton Keynes, the whole family can enjoy up to 60% off Laser Quest.

The deal includes two games for six players, costing just £6.50 per person – and there’s deals available for smaller groups, too.

This top-rated Laser Quest centre is decked out with misty fog, mazes, neon lights and pumping music.

The deal is available from Mondays – Fridays, from 4pm – 9pm during school time or 10am – 9pm during school holidays.

14. Bowling with dinner included

Bowling is another classic rainy weather activity for the whole family.

Hollywood Bowl has over 90 bowling centres, and they’re currently running a January Sales kids’ eat, drink and bowl deal from £8.50pp.

This includes one game of bowling, a choice between a burger or hotdog with fries, and drinks – which includes an alcoholic drinks for adults.

More offers include “Double the Fun Fridays”, where you can get a second game of bowling for free when you bowl after 9pm in January, using code JAN262G50 at online checkout.

15. 2-for-1 Ice skating and disco party

Planet Ice have skating rinks across the UK in cities like Peterborough, Leeds and Coventry – and they’ve got some great deals to book in time for February.

You can enjoy a 2-for-1 Valentines Day skating offer on February 13, which is suitable for all ages.

The offer is available online only – so make sure to snap up your plac by booking ahead on their website.

There’s also a half term disco skate taking place on February 13 and 20 across multiple locations.

16. Splash World waterpark

An indoor waterpark is always a safe bet on a drizzly day – and this offer for Splash World in Southport gets you 51% off full price.

This waterpark includes toddler splash zones, flume rides and a lazy river.

An £8 ticket (all ages) grants you a two hour session, with the offer ending in February.

17. Inflatable pool disco and obstacle course

Sticking with the waterpark theme, the London Aquatics Centre are running inflatable pool discos and obstacle courses on select dates until May.

For the Atlantis Obstacle Course, the Olympic-sized 50m pool becomes covered in a giant inflatable course with slides and climbing walls.

The obstacle course costs £12.60 per adult and £9.45 per junior.

The inflatable disco session, on the other hand, is suitable for ages five and above – and includes a fun inflatable run and massive floats.

The inflatable disco is priced at £10.50 for adults and £7.35 for juniors.

18. Cheap waterpark day in Derby

Moorways Sports Village and Waterpark in Derby is running Waterpark Wednesdays, giving families a cheaper option to visit during term time.

On Wednesdays from 4pm – 7pm during term time, adult tickets cost just £6.99, three to five-year-olds can visit for just £1 and under two’s go for free.

The waterpark is home to an aqua tube fast slide, a body slide, wave rider and rider slide – and a great choice whatever the weather.

19. Trampolining with giant inflatables and free pizza

Jump Inc have loads of indoor trampolining centres across the UK, including places like Blackpool, Birmingham, Chelmsford, Bristol and Aberdeen.

What makes this place unique is its great discounts and offers for families.

The After School Antics offer gives you two jump passes and a margherita pizza for dinner.

There’s also the unlimited jumps offer, where you pay for just one hour but can stay and bounce away up until closing.

The offer is valid from 3pm – 6pm from Mondays to Thursdays during term time. Offers vary by location.

20. Medieval mini golf

Knights Realm Adventure Golf in Basingstoke, Hampshire is home to an epic 18-hole themed golf course overlooked by a dragon.

Make your way around a medieval course dotted with armoured knights and historical scrolls teaching you all about the Middle Ages.

Plus you can save up to 31% off by booking through Groupon, and snap up a two adult ticket for £16 and child’s ticket for just £6.

21. 5D Cinema experience for £2.95

You can visit a 5D cinema for a unique movie experience for just £2.95 this winter.

There’s a choice of original films to pick from, including a thrilling rollercoaster journey named Amazon and a creepy horror called Blood Magic.

And if you’re bringing the whole family, you can get four tickets for just £8.95 – giving you something unique to try for a change of routine.

The 5D cinema is located within Laser Quest Bromley, so there’s another family-friendly activity to try out afterwards on your doorstep.

Museums and free exhibitions

Gone are the days where museums were for do-not-touch antiques and corridors of glass cabinets.

Now, there’s loads of unique museums across the UK that are both free to visit and full of exciting experiences made just for kids.

22. Manchester Museum

The Manchester Museum is free to enter, and full of exciting galleries like Living Worlds, Nature’s Library and a live vivarium.

And for families with dinosaur fans, the Manchester Museum has a brilliant Fossils and Dinosaurs gallery, and is home to a popular T. Rex called Stan.

23. Triceratops Exhibition

The dinosaur fun doesn’t stop there – there’s also a triceratops exhibition running at the Manchester Museum until February 22nd.

The exhibition features hands-on elements for kids like a fossil digging zone, and and is suitable for all ages.

Both entry to the museum and the triceratops exhibition are free, however you should book your slot for the exhibition online.

24. The National Museum of Scotland

The National Museum of Scotland is another fantastic place to spend the day with kids indoors.

The colourful Imagine gallery has plenty of sensory and interactive options including dress-up, a musical floor, and a storybook reading corner.

Up on level five of the museum, Adventure Planet caters to older children.

Here, kids can use interactive touch screens to do everything from design their own fish to dig for dinosaur bones and fossils.

25. Giants exhibition

The Giants exhibition is set to open at the National Museum of Scotland on the 31 January.

The exhibition showcases amazing 3D sculptures, from life-sized elephants to the megalodon shark.

26. The National Maritime Museum

The National Maritime Museum in London’s Greenwich is both free to enter and packed with things for kids to do.

There’s The Cove playground, a sea-themed area with a giant shark, pirate ship and huge kraken with rope tentacles to swing from.

There’s also the AHOY! children’s gallery for kids aged 0-7, which has activities ranging from sensory play for babies to interactive pirate cannons.

Not to mention the storytelling characters who visit on Saturdays, and the under-5’s play group which runs every Tuesday at £4 per session.

27. The National Railway Museum, York

The National Railway Museum in York is another fantastic free-entry choice for a rainy day.

Here you can come face to face with a Japanese Bullet Train, or even take a ride on the museum’s miniature railway.

And for an additional £9.90pp, the Wonderlab is well worth getting stuck into.

Here kids can become mini-engineers, learning about the science behind locomotives with daily shows and demonstrations.

Kids can even have a go in a human wind tunnel and try out some hands-on science experiments.

28. House of Marbles, Devon

The House of Marbles in Devon is home to four unique museums and is free to visit.

There’s loads of unique marble runs to take part in, including a massive snooker ball-sized contraption as well as a games garden.

Their free games museum can be enjoyed by kids and parents alike, as you learn about the history that inspired Pac-Man and Space Invaders.

29. Newcastle Discovery Museum

Newcastle Discovery Museum is another great free option.

It’s home to Turbinia: a huge ship powered by steam turbines.

Their play space Tiny Tyneside is full of replica transport inventions to play with, and is open daily.

30. The Great North Museum: Hancock

The Great North Museum: Hancock is worth visiting for its unique Mouse House area.

It’s full of interactive surprises and runs free events such as Museum Mice, where kids can explore and handle museum objects – just make sure to prebook online.

31. Upside Down House

The Upside Down House is a unique indoor attraction that does what it says on the tin – everything inside the house has been turned completely upside-down.

Wandering through the house with kids makes for a unique indoor activity, plus some funny photos to look back on.

There are locations in Liverpool, Brighton, Bristol and London – the cheapest to visit being Liverpool at £6.45pp.

32. Discover Story Centre

The Discover Story Centre in London is a giant immersive space for kids with an exciting and colourful story world and garden.

Escape from the drizzly outdoors into a bright and colourful space with trails, singalongs and screenings.

The best part is that you’re able to build your day exactly how you’d like.

You can choose from a list of constantly updated activities and events like the Monster Funfair and Gabby’s Dollhouse movie screening (January 24).

Each event typically costs £2 – £5, with a Discover entry ticket costing £10 for adults, £5 for 1 year-olds and under 1’s go free.

33. National Football Museum

The National Football Museum in Manchester is a fantastic choice for a sports fanatic day indoors.

Inside, you can find the world’s first international football shirt and the oldest surviving FA cup trophy.

Tickets cost £15 for adults and £9 for kids – but the best part is that once you’ve bought your ticket, you can keep returning for free for an entire year.

There’s also a family saver ticket for four costing £39 – not bad for a whole year’s worth of visits.

34. Underwater exhibition and Octonauts trail

The Horniman Museum in London is opening up a “Voyage to the Deep – Underwater Adventures” exhibition from 13 February.

Here you board the ‘Nautilus’ submarine and discover everything from weird and wonderful sea creatures, to crawling through shipwrecks and decoding the secrets of Atlantis.

Plus, there’s an Octonauts “Adventure at the Horniman” Trail packed with activities.

Adult tickets cost £9.80 and kids tickets £7, with discounted rates for families of three (£20.20) or four (£27).

And if you’re on Universal Credit, the tickets are discounted to £2 – make sure to book in advance.

35. Free story festival

The young V&A in Bethnal Green, London is hosting a Story Festival in January 2026.

The festival will take place across the museum, and is completely free.

This includes singing and dancing performances, puppets and storytelling.

Drop-in storytelling activities take place on a first come first serve basis.

36. Free arts drawing sessions at London Southbank

At London’s Southbank Centre, families can drop in to relaxed drawing sessions over weekends.

Led by artist Erdem Kuslu, families can take part in drawing exercises and group games – entirely for free.

The experience is bookable from 16 January – just make sure you book a slot online in advance.

37. Wonderlab hands-on kids gallery

The Science Museum in London’s Kensington is home to a ticketed interactive kids gallery called Wonderlab.

Built for ages 7 – 14, this hands-on experience turns kids into budding scientists.

Wonderlab reopens on 16 January, and is open daily from 10am – 5pm.

Day passes cost £17 for ages 4+, with a family day pass based on 2 adults and 2 children giving you £3 off.

You can also save several pounds extra by booking your tickets in advance and at specific timeslots listed on the Wonderlab site.

Farms and outdoors

When the days are bright and dry, a family day out at the farm can be one of the best ways to get outdoors.

And we’ve found a range of open farms across the UK with free or cheap entry.

38. Bath City Farm

Bath City Farm is free to visit – and it’s easy to spend an entire day their exploring its woodland trails, children’s playground, seeing the animals and visiting the farm shop and cafe.

The farm is open Tuesday to Saturday from 9am – 4pm, and on Sundays from 9.30am – 4pm.

39. Stonebridge City Farm

Another free option is Stonebridge City Farm in Nottingham.

This unique working farm in the middle of the city has amazing grounds, with a well-kept wildlife pond and even Japanese gardens.

They also run cheap events for kids, such as Rainbow Stripes on Tuesdays which is an interactive live music workshop.

40. Bucks Goat Centre

The Bucks Goat Centre in Aylesbury is offering a deal with just £4.55 entry for adults and £3.90 for children – or a family of four can visit for £15.40.

Here you can meet the friendly goats, chickens and alpacas, then sit down to enjoy hot chocolates and milkshakes in the Grazing Goat Cafe.

There’s also weekend events to look forward to like Bunny Brunch on Saturdays at 10:30, and Ferret Fun on Sundays at 11:30.

41. HAPPA Horse haven

For fans of horses and ponies, the HAPPA horse haven in Burnley is open to visitors.

Here you can meet rescue horses, donkeys and ponies, and take part in kids events like Pony Squad.

Visiting HAPPA costs £6 per adult and just £1 per child.

Make sure to book your slot online before visiting.

42. Mudchute Park and Farm

Mudchute Park and Farm in East London is another working farm that is free to visit – and has a massive 32 acres of land to explore.

Their courtyard and small animals area has just re-opened for the year, where you can visit guinea pigs and rabbits.

Here you can also meet cows, sheep, goats, and more.

43. Challenge Woods adventure playground

Outdoor activity centres like Bewilderwood can be quite expensive, especially by the time you’ve bought tickets for the whole family.

Challenge Woods in Norwich is miles cheaper than the nearby attraction, at just £4 entry for ages 4-17 with ages 0-3 going free.

Whilst it’s not quite high ropes, here kids can take part in zip lines, slides, wooden climbing structures and more, backed by Norfolk woodland.

44. Alpaca experience at Pennybridge Farm

Pennybridge Farm in Hampshire has gone fluffing mad with this discounted alpaca experience.

For just £7pp, you can meet and greet a herd of adorable alpacas at this open farm.

You even get to take part in feeding the animals, and learn all about the unique mammals.

The farm is open daily, and this bargain experience is a great way to spend a bright winter’s morning outdoors.

Soft play and younger children

There’s plenty of cheap and easy ways to keep little ones entertained over the winter months.

45. £1.75 Soft play with a drink

This soft play deal in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire is offering 50% off for two hours of play and a soft drink – costing just £1.75 per child.

Sqoshis Play Centre has plenty of climbing areas and slides, and it also has a laser and Nerf centre to entertain the older kids, too.

46. Slime making with kids meal and a hot drink

Colourful slime always goes down well with younger children, and this slime-making experience at Tilly Pots in Ravenshead makes for a creative afternoon out.

The deal includes a children’s meal and a hot drink for parents, costing just £6.95 for an adult and child together.

And for a family of four with two adults and two children, you can visit for just £11.95 – which is 46% off the usual price.

47. Little Diggers giant sandpit

Over in Leicester, mini-builders can put on their hard hat and visit a giant sandpit full of mini bulldozers, diggers and tractors – and play to their heart’s content.

The Little Diggers experience is currently 37% off, costing just £9.50 per child.

The experience takes place in Jump Giants Leicester, where there’s also trampolines and obstacle courses to enjoy.

48. Warwick Castle parent and toddler offer

Warwick Castle is currently running a parent and toddler offer for £20.

The deal includes access to the Zog Playland, the Horrible Histories maze, the UK’s largest birds of prey show and more.

The castle has more than 64 acres of grounds to explore with princess tower and dungeon experiences – plenty to keep the family entertained for an entire day.

49. Gruffalo Clubhouse term time deal

The Gruffalo Clubhouse in Blackpool is a great themed immersive indoor option.

Inside, there’s the Deep Dark Woods to explore, as well as soft play, a toddler play zone, a sensory room and the exciting Zog’s Dragon School Challenge.

Booking an adult and toddler ticket online costs £9 (saving you £10), and can be used from Monday – Friday during school term times.

50. Indoor play offer

A parent and child can visit Oasis Play in Surrey or London for a session of ball pits, slides and more for just £5.50 with this offer.

Oasis Play is a soft play centre with a sea-themed area, glowing neon lights – and it’s even rumoured that Bluey likes to visit.

This deal grants you 75-minute access on either weekdays or weekends, so your little ones can jump, climb and crawl to their heart’s content.

There’s further discounted offers available on Groupon, including a two adult one child ticket for £6.50 and a two adults two children ticket for just £10.50.

As movies have morphed from a vibrant public event into a product we watch on our personal screens, film criticism has also been disrupted thanks to apps like Letterboxd. Fortunately, film critic A. S. Hamrah hasn’t gotten the memo. He is an insurrectionary voice in a time of critical complacency. Hamrah, who contributes reviews to Bookforum, n+1 and the Baffler, wields his pen like a flame thrower, lambasting Hollywood’s decline in a trenchant voice spiked with barbed wit while also shining a light on great marginalized films.

Hamrah has recently published two new books: a collection of his reviews called “Algorithm of the Night,” as well as a compilation of Hollywood news items called “Last Week in End Times Cinema” that reads like a doom scroll of cultural decay. I chatted with Hamrah about Marvel, Pauline Kael and AI.

✍️ Author Chat

A. S. Hamrah is a film critic and author of the recently published books “Algorithm of the Night” and “Last Week in End Times Cinema.”

(Courtesy of A. S. Hamrah)

Both of these books really describe the end of an era for movies, what you call the end of a worldview. What do you mean by that?

I think the goal of the studios, Netflix in particular, is not just to end theatrical exhibition but to end a certain way of understanding the cinema and to just turn it into television. The merger of cinema and television is very bad for cinema.

In the past, when existential threats of film reared their head, whether it was television or videocassette recorders, there was a sense of movies having to work harder to maintain its supremacy. But if everything is film, then there is no countervailing force. It all just merges into one thing.

People who watch a lot of TV were seen as kind of not really up to life in some ways. But it was never the goal of TV to crush cinema, which is the case now. Someone like Ted Sarandos at Netflix, his whole thing is based on pretending that no one likes to go to the movies anymore, when, in fact, millions of people all over the world love going to the movies.

I feel like your criticism is not about thumbs up, thumbs down. Even when you write a negative review, it’s fun to argue against it. You are creating a dialogue with your readers.

I don’t write a negative review to stop people from seeing a film. I want them to see it and make up their own mind about it. I also really try to avoid writing anything that can be extrapolated for a movie ad. I don’t want my stuff to be taken out of context and thrown onto a movie poster.

“Algorithm of the Night” is a collection of reviews by film critic A. S. Hamrah.

(Courtesy of A. S. Hamrah)

What critics inspired you?

Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael. The writer who had the biggest influence on me is Manny Farber, for the way he thinks about things and the freedom of his writing.

“Last Week in End Times Cinema” is the most depressing book I read last year, just a desultory litany of headlines about movie reboots, the creeping influence of AI on film, and so on.

When I first started publishing these, people thought I was making them up. I started culling them with great joy and mirth, but as the year progressed, with the wildfires in LA, the whole project became much more dire. And the death of David Lynch was a real blow, I thought.

You take a dim view of AI.

It seems to be Hollywood’s goal to not have any human beings involved in filmmaking. Why pay Will Smith $20 million when you can have an AI voice? But they’ve been preparing the ground for this since the beginning of the century. It feels like the whole system of production of Marvel films is already a form of AI. They’re trying to educate audiences into liking garbage, and that is what I mean when I write about the death of a worldview.

What films did you like last year?

“The Secret Agent,” “The Mastermind,” “Bugonia.” I saw “One Battle After Another” twice. There’s plenty of good commercial films that people can see in theaters, but the media acts like they don’t exist.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

“One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South. It’s Disneyland. It’s California,” author Eric Lichtblau says.

(Photos by Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times, Little Brown Company)

Costa Bevan Pappas has a chat with Eric Litchtblau about his new book “American Reich,” which explores the roots of white supremacy in Orange County. “One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South,” Lichtblau tells Pappas. “It’s Disneyland. It’s California. These are people who are trying to take back America from the shores of Orange County because it’s gotten too brown in their view.”

Xialou Guo has crafted a radical remix of “Moby Dick” titled “Call Me Ishmaelle,” and Leanne Ogasawara is enchanted: “There is so much pleasure to be had in rereading old favorites — and part of the joy is meeting beloved characters, who have been updated or somehow arrive in a new form to resist old tropes and types.”

A year after the wildfires, L.A. native Jacob Soboroff has written “Firestorm,” and he sat down with Mariella Rudi to discuss the first book to be written about the calamity. “For me, it’s a much more personal book,” Soboroff says. “It’s about experiencing what I came to understand as the fire of the future. It’s about people as much as politics.”

Finally, Bethanne Patrick gives us the lowdown on January’s must-read book, while Eva Recinos gives us the five best science books of 2025.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Josh Spencer, owner of the Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, opened a second location of the book store at 4437 Lankershim Blvd.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Ever since it opened a little over a year ago, Josh Spencer’s second edition of The Last Bookstore has grown a vibrant community of Valley-dwelling book lovers hungry for a store that sells newly published titles and a curated selection of second-hand gems. I chatted with store manager Shane Danielson about what customers are excited about right now.

What’s selling right now at the Valley store?

Right now film adaptations current and upcoming are driving a lot of our fiction sales – “Frankenstein,” Pynchon’s “Vineland” (for “One Battle After Another”), “Wuthering Heights.” Certain “brand name” authors always do well: Brandon Sanderson, Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut. But generally, our stock is so diverse that it’s hard to spot broader trends.

What kind of community has gathered around the store?

We have a growing community of literate, curious, frequently funny, often politically-engaged readers and book lovers, both young and not-so-young, who see reading and things like book groups as an act of resistance to the dominant culture. They want to turn off their screens for a while, and give themselves over to the longer narrative and deeper pleasures that a book provides.

What specific genres are popular?

Plays and books about acting sell every day – unsurprising, since we’re close to the Warner Bros. and Universal studios as well as two local theatre schools. Horror, science fiction and fantasy are perennials; and an increasing number of women, presumably disillusioned with real-world dating options, are enthusiastic consumers of “romantasy” authors like Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas. Classics also do surprisingly well: people seem to be reading an awful lot of Dostoevsky and George Orwell and Jane Austen. Which is encouraging.

We know how difficult it is in this culture to make folks care about books. Do you still find in people that desire — to read, and to explore through books? Are people still curious to learn about the world via books as opposed to ChatGPT?

Many of our customers say they treasure the physicality of a book – its heft, the tactility of the pages – as opposed to the frictionless experience of reading on a Kindle or another device. And interestingly, they all say variations on the same thing, which is that those other reading experiences just don’t stick; for whatever reason, they don’t retain much of what they’ve read afterward.

The Last Bookstore in Studio City is located in 4437 Lankershim Blvd.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

ONE county in the UK is on the must-visit list for 2026 as it celebrates 200 years of a beloved children’s story.

The tales of Winnie-the-Pooh written by A.A. Milne were inspired by Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.

New York Times named ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’s England‘ as one of the best places to visit in 2026.

Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared in print on December 24, 1925 – and just over 100 years on the destination has become a must-see for fans of the bear around the world.

The publication said: “The focal point will be in East Sussex, where Milne lived in a 16th-century farmhouse with his wife and son, Christopher Robin, who played there with his stuffed bear.“

The author A.A. Milne lived in East Sussex for most of his life – and it’s where he was inspired to create Winnie-the-Pooh.

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Milne lived in Hartfield, which is found 30 miles south of London.

He based the story in the fictional Hundred Acre Wood which is inspired on the real-life Ashdown Forest just minutes away.

Fans of the tale can actually see locations like Poohsticks Bridge which was originally called Posingford Bridge and was built in 1907.

There’s also Galleons Lap which is the real-life inspiration for “The Enchanted Place” – essentially a circular clump of trees on a hilltop.

Visitors who want to explore the actual forest and find these spots to relive the magical adventures of Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and friends can do so on a guided walk.

Throughout 2026 there are even organised Pooh Treks through Ashdown Forest.

The guided walk will “reveal awe-inspiring views across the forest, with story locations within comfortable walking distance of each other.

“With our expert local guide sharing the literary history and natural surroundings, your visit becomes something rather special.”

The experience is for four to six explorers and there can be tailored itineraries.

It can also includes lunch at a classic English country pub and afternoon tea at Piglets Tea Room in Pooh Corner.

Pooh Corner is also home to a range of original Winnie the Pooh sketches by illustrator EH Shepard, and another room filled with movie posters and other artwork.

If you fancy, taking a gander around Ashdown Forest on your own – it’s free entry into the woodland.

A.A. Milne lived at Cotchford Farm in Hartfield which is now a holiday cottage – so you can actually stay in it yourself.

The 16th-century farmhouse has six bedrooms and three reception rooms which includes Milne’s writing study and a music/library room.

There’s also a kitchen, oak-panelled dining room, family rooms along with two acres of gardens, wildflower meadows, swimming pool and a tennis court.

The whole property that sleeps 12 can be booked from £1,200 per night.

Check Out The Top Destinations Around The World To Visit In 2026…

Here are the 52 top destinations to go to New York Times…

1. Revolutionary America
2. Warsaw, Poland
3. Bangkok, Thailand
4. Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
5. Bandhavgarh, India
6. Dallas, Texas
7. Oran, Algeria
8. Route 66, USA
9. Saba, Caribbean
10. Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain
11. Nepal’s Other Mountains
12. Bayreuth, Germany
13. Canadian Rockies by Train
14. Top End, Australia
15. Penang, Malaysia
16. Los Angeles, California
17. Nagasaki, Japan
18. Breuil-Cervinia, Italy
19. Memphis, Tennessee
20. Armenia
21. Sorolla’s Spain
22. Winnie-the-Pooh’s England
23. Seychelles
24. Inhotim, Brazil
25. Iceland
26. Sanibel and Captiva Islands, Florida
27. Hyde Park, Chicago
28. Træna Islands, Norway
29. Miches, Dominican Republic
30. Portland, Oregon
31. Tien Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan
32. Assisi, Italy
33. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska
34. Vietnam
35. Querétaro, Mexico
36. Medora, North Dakota
37. Camiguin, Philippines
38. Messinia, Greece
39. Guyana
40. Deer Valley, Utah
41. Yunnan, China
42. Bentonville, Arkansas
43. Cape Froward, Chile
44. Genoa, Italy
45. Dongseo Trail, South Korea
46. Okinawa, Japan
47. Río Pastaza Watershed, Ecuador
48. Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania
49. Melbourne, Australia
50. Virginia Beach, Virginia
51. Big Sur, California
52. Møn, Denmark

For more on country escapes, here are ten of our top country houses to visit in 2026 – including tropical seaside gardens, deer safaris and luxurious spas.

And here are six holiday homes from TV shows and films that you can stay at in the UK… with game rooms and hot tubs.

As the new year begins, novelists send characters to great heights in Tibet and Wyoming, to the great depths of the 19th century Atlantic and back in time, to early 20th century Pakistan. Meanwhile, nonfiction authors contemplate a Spanish shipwreck, a racially motivated murder, the origins of great ideas and how laughter can change our lives. Happy reading!

FICTION

Call Me Ishmaelle: A Novel
By Xiaolu Guo
Grove Press: 448 pp., $18
(Jan. 6)

Guo, whose 2017 memoir “Nine Continents” detailed her difficult road to personal and artistic freedom, pours that experience into Ishmaelle, a young woman from England’s coast who joins the crew of a whaling ship named the Nimrod. Yes, it’s a retelling of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” and yes, it’s well worth your time. By adding in new characters while adhering to the original story, the author creates something new, strange and thrilling.

The Last of Earth: A Novel
By Deepa Anappara
Random House: 252 pp., $29
(Jan. 13)

Set in 1869, when Europeans were forbidden to enter Tibet, this slow-paced yet tense novel follows the perspectives of Balram, an Indian surveyor, and Katharine, a woman of mixed English and Indian heritage, as they both attempt expeditions for different purposes. During their treks both characters meet a man named Chetak, whose eerie folkloric tales underscore the power structures they’ll each have to surmount before reaching their goals.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives: A Novel
By Daniyal Mueenuddin
Knopf: 368 pp., $29
(Jan. 13)

While most of this stunning book takes place in Pakistan, an important section leads two brothers to college at Dartmouth in the United States, a place about as far in every respect from their Rawalpindi origins as possible. Mueenuddin, whose gift for satire shines whether he’s describing society matrons or gangsters, never loses sight of his theme: How do any of us ever manage to justify our treatment of the underserved?

Crux: A Novel
By Gabriel Tallent
Riverhead: 416 pp., $30
(Jan. 20)

A “crux” refers to the toughest point in a climb; it also means a decision point, as well as a place where two things cross. For Tallent’s sophomore novel, two characters who are climbers have reached an important moment in their teenage lives. Daniel and Tamma (he’s straight, she’s queer) have been close friends for years, scrabbling all over Joshua Tree peaks, but as their home lives and individual paths diverge, their bond wavers.

Vigil: A Novel
By George Saunders
Random House: 192 pp., $28
(Jan. 27)

It seems unfair that, after his spectacular “Lincoln in the Bardo,” Saunders returns with not just another novel featuring a ghost, but with a new novel even more spectacular than the last. “Who else could you have been but exactly who you are?” says the newly incarnated Jill “Doll” Blaine, sent to comfort nefarious oil tycoon K. J. Boone in his last hours alive — a statement that in no way diminishes the political urgency of this spare, lovely book.

NONFICTION

Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy
By Chris Duffy
Doubleday: 272 pp., $29
(Jan. 6)

We’ve all heard that laughter is the best medicine; funny stuff isn’t merely diversion, but essential to our health. Author Duffy, who hosts the TED Talks podcast “How to Be a Better Human,” believes that anyone, from age 10 to age 103 (he gives examples of each), can make you laugh, help you form community and even lead you to make better decisions. One of the latter? Learn to laugh at yourself; it can signal “general intelligence and verbal creativity.”

The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw: From Reconstruction Through Black Lives Matter

By Sylvester Allen Jr. and Belle Boggs
University of North Carolina Press: 296 pp., $30
(Jan. 27)

The titular Outlaw was the first Black constable of Graham, N.C. In 1870, he was killed by lynching by members of the local Ku Klux Klan, no doubt in part due to his efforts to build coalition between members of different races and social classes. Allen, a native of Graham and a playwright who wrote a drama based on Outlaw’s legacy, and Boggs, a scholar, connect the terrorism and hatred behind this man’s murder to the present day.

How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success

By George Newman
Simon & Schuster: 304 pp., $30
(Jan. 27)

So many cartoons depict great ideas using light bulbs that we’ve forgotten many of the greatest ideas come about from long deliberation and careful winnowing. Canadian professor Newman uses archaeological terms for the process: surveying, gridding, digging and sifting. Who knew that Jordan Peele rewrote “Get Out” 400 times, or that Paul Simon composed his “Graceland” album by combing through all of his previous work?

Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

By Julian Sancton
Crown: 384 pp., $33
(Jan. 27)

In 1708 the San José, a treasure-laden Spanish galleon, sunk off the coast of Colombia. In 2015 a man named Roger Dooley found the galleon’s wreck and brought back artifacts proving it. Unfortunately, with little education, few bona fides and a sketchy reputation, Dooley received no credit for the discovery. Sancton tracked down Dooley — now in his 80s and somewhat reclusive — and thus is able to provide a fascinating conclusion to the tale.

Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Meaning and Purpose

By Jennifer Breheny Wallace
Portfolio: 288 pp., $30
(Jan. 27)

Loneliness pervades our society and to heal it, people need to feel that they actually matter to others — something author Wallace saw when she researched and wrote her 2023 bestseller “Never Enough,” which focused on adolescents and burnout. Now Wallace shares her findings from talking with people of all ages and hearing what a difference it makes when connections are made and individuals are recognized for even the smallest contributions.

Patrick is a freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.”

Books can be a refuge from (waves arms) all this, even when they take you deeper into the darkness of 2025. There is a grace in the relationship between book and reader, with nothing but your eyes and brain and the words on the page. Thank goodness for the hearts and minds of the authors who imagine and construct these worlds, who ask these rigorous questions, who spend their lives with words. It’s a pleasure to join with a couple of my fellow book critics in selecting some of our favorite books of the year. — Carolyn Kellogg

Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.

“Audition: A Novel” by Katie Kitamura

(Riverhead)

“Audition”
By Katie Kitamura
Riverhead: 208 pages, $28

This is one of those books the less explained the better. Kitamura is one of our most exacting novelists, with never a careless word. On its surface, “Audition” is about an actress, her husband and a young man in New York City. As you’d expect with this setup, the ideas of self, performance and identity are in the mix. Every observation, theater visit and glimpse into their apartment becomes quietly important. The marriage’s past spools out with such clarity that what they have for breakfast becomes ominous. Every relationship has secrets, but this one’s are transformative. Elements of this book that cannot be prized apart also cannot cohere. It’s an astonishing accomplishment of form and narrative. It’s a rare book that can surprise like this one does. And it’s a delight to read. — C.K.

“Flesh: A Novel” by David Szalay

(Scribner)

“Flesh”
By David Szalay
Scribner: 368 pages, $28.99

Emotionally stunted men aren’t particularly hard to find in fiction. But Istvan, the antihero of Szalay’s fifth novel, is an extreme and engrossing case. Born in poverty and surviving an adolescence of sexual violation, wartime PTSD and drug abuse, he enters early adulthood destined to be a casualty if not a menace. But a lucky chance gives him money and a relationship, until his failure to deal with past traumas catches up with him. This novel, winner of the Booker Prize, uses a blunt, clipped style to advantage, exposing Istvan as an exemplar of both toxic masculinity and hinting at what’s required to escape it. — Mark Athitakis

“Flashlight” by Susan Choi

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

“Flashlight”
By Susan Choi
Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 464 pages, $30
Should anyone think controlling metaphors are so 20th century, please pick up Choi’s new novel about family, exile and the different ways the titular humble tool works on literal, figurative, allegorical and visceral levels. When Louisa is 10, she and her Korean-born father go for a walk by the ocean; he’s carrying a flashlight to guide their footsteps. That night he disappears and Louisa is found half-dead in the surf; she has to shine a light onto her past in an effort to heal this loss. However, it’s her father’s past that signals this expansive book’s great theme of loneliness, even in the midst of other human beings. — Bethanne Patrick

“Shadow Ticket” by Thomas Pynchon

(Penguin Press)

“Shadow Ticket”
By Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Press: 304 pages, $30

That in this his 88th year Thomas Pynchon has published another novel, beginning in 1930s Milwaukee, of all places, packed full of punny names per usual, featuring a lug of a detective, successful with women who flirt as exquisitely as they dance or sing or grift, then shifting to Europe where it can be hard to sort out, from moment to moment, who’s in power, is more than anyone could have hoped for. “Shadow Ticket” is a detective novel that is also an anti-Nazi romp, with improbable motorcycles and flying machines. In The Times, critic David Kipen hailed Pynchon’s classic style as “Olympian, polymathic, erudite, antically funny, often beautiful, at times gross, at others incredibly romantic, never afraid to challenge or even confound.” This book is more accessible than “Gravity’s Rainbow,” more cheerful than “The Crying of Lot 49” and more political than “Inherent Vice.” It’s also still Pynchon, in all his goofy paranoiac glory. Rejoice. — C.K.

“The Director: A Novel” by Daniel Kehlmann

(S&S/Summit Books)

“The Director”
By Daniel Kehlmann
S&S/Summit Books: 352 pages, $28.99

Kehlmann’s stunning novel about Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst makes every reader a collaborator, at least about their level of comfort with fascism. The real-life Pabst, who returned to Europe after a disappointing sojourn in Hollywood, fell in readily with Hitler’s propaganda machine, to include directing “The White Hell of Pitz Palu” starring none other than future Third Reich filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. History may never know precisely why Pabst played along, and Kehlmann uses this uncertainty to great effect, inventing scenes juxtaposing art versus propaganda, sleekly privileged Nazis against frail prisoners, and historical truth with the chaos of dementia. — B.P.

“The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s” by Paul Elie

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

“The Last Supper: Art Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s”
By Paul Elie
Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 496 pages, $33

Today’s culture wars didn’t start in the ‘80s, but Elie’s rich cultural history shows how the decade ushered them into the mainstream. Sinead O’Connor tore up a photo of the pope on live network TV, Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” sparked protests, Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” made him a literal target, and legislators fumed about public art. Religion sat at the center of all of these donnybrooks, and questions of culture and faith had real-world consequences: AIDS victims, especially in the demonized LGBTQ community, took their pleas to religious leaders on the streets and in the pews. It was a vibrant and dispiriting time, and Elie’s history is a sharp cross-cultural study that speaks to the present as well. — M.A.

“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” by Omar El Akkad

(Knopf)

“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”
By Omar El Akkad
Knopf: 208 pages, $28

Novelist Omar El Akkad’s despair at the unfolding genocide in Palestine drove him to write this, his first nonfiction book. It’s part cry of anguish, part memoir that examines how the systems we enjoy in the western world are allowing Israel to perpetrate violence in Gaza in real time. The book poured out of El Akkad, though normally a slow writer: “I was writing quite furiously for months on end,” he told Dan Sheehan of Lithub. On Nov. 19, that furious outpouring won the National Book award in nonfiction. “It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” El Akkad said in his acceptance speech, refusing to let the reason for his book go unspoken. “It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I have spent two years seeing what shrapnel does to a child’s body. It is difficult to think in celebratory terms when I know that my tax money is doing this and that many of my elected representatives happily support it.” The book provides a vital moral questioning and point of connection. — C.K.

“Bad Bad Girl” by Gish Jen

(Knopf)

“Bad Bad Girl”
By Gish Jen
Knopf: 352 pages, $30

Perhaps this novel is really a thinly disguised memoir about the author’s mother — but what a brilliant disguise Gish Jen has concocted to give her Chinese-born mother, posthumously, a full voice that speaks to the pain of intergenerational misogyny and abuse. After the mother’s, Loo Shu-hsin’s, childhood story is told, her statements (in the U.S. she was known as Agnes) appear in boldface as stark counterpoint to her daughter’s searching questions. “Bad bad girl! Who says you can write a book like that? I laugh. That’s more like it.” Ultimately this novel-plus-memoir morphs into an artist’s origin story, one in which the artist understands that there is no creative work without origins, no matter how twisted their roots. — B.P.

“Minor Black Figures: A Novel” by Brandon Taylor

(Riverhead)

“Minor Black Figures”
By Brandon Taylor
Riverhead: 400 pages, $29

Taylor is one of the most emotionally perceptive fiction writers working today, and his third novel, set in the New York art world, is his best. Its hero, Wyeth, is a Black painter anxious about being pegged as simply a Black painter; he’s exhausted with what he considers the easy pandering (and bad art) surrounding identity politics. But a budding romance and unusual restoration project prompts him to question his certainties. Covering high and low, the sexual and the intellectual, Taylor’s book is a New York social novel distinct from the swagger of “The Bonfire of the Vanities” or the fevered melodramas of “A Little Life.” — M.A.

“Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson” by Claire Hoffman

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

“Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson”
by Claire Hoffman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 384 pages, $32

This marvelous biography of Aimee Semple McPherson reasserts her vital place in Los Angeles’ history. She was a celebrity, a brilliant performer, an inspiring preacher with a nationwide flock devoted to her writings and radio programs. She was, too, genuinely called to her Pentecostal Christianity, at least at first, which author Claire Hoffman writes about with great sensitivity. Her climb was slow and earned; she spent many years on the road, pitching tents and preaching to diverse audiences. Then to Los Angeles, where her grand church, the Angelus Temple, was built in Echo Park. In 1926, she vanished at Venice Beach and was thought to have drowned. She reappeared — after a memorial service attended by thousands — with stories of a dramatic kidnapping. It was a sensation. Reporters raced to find the kidnappers and, instead, turned up evidence of a tryst. Hoffman unspools the scandal, which included headline-grabbing trials, in page-turning detail. What she shows us is a woman whose spiritualism, stage presence and charisma propelled her into a place of celebrity and fame that became a trap. — C.K.

“What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan

(Knopf)

“What We Can Know”
By Ian McEwan
Knopf: 320 pages, $30

It’s 2119 when scholar Thomas Metcalfe sets out to find the sole copy of a poem, “A Corona for Vivien,” written by one Francis Blundy in 2014. Much of the speculation about the poem’s whereabouts centers on a dinner party that allows McEwan to flash his tail feathers in describing a late-capitalist tableau of quail and ceps, anchovies and red wine, high-minded conversation and low lamplight. Is it a spoiler to share that a tsunami has wiped out most of Europe, leaving scattered archipelagos as repositories of things once known? Definitely not, in light of who narrates the book’s second half. Don’t miss this, among the author’s best. — B.P.

“Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers” by Caroline Fraser

(Penguin Press)

“Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers”
By Caroline Fraser
Penguin Press: 480 pages, $32

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, America was overpopulated with notorious serial killers like John Wayne Gacy, BTK and Ted Bundy. By the ‘90s, though, evidence of that brand of savagery declined. What happened? In “Murderland,” Pulitzer winner Caroline Fraser considers the theory that the derangement was tied to smelters that released mind-warping levels of arsenic and lead into the atmosphere until regulations kicked in. Braiding memoir, pop science and true crime, Fraser delivers a remarkable, persuasive narrative about how good-old-fashioned American values — manufacturing might, westward expansion, cheap leaded gas — turned into a literally toxic combination. — M.A.

“Stone Yard Devotional: A Novel” by Charlotte Wood

(Riverhead)

“Stone Yard Devotional”
By Charlotte Wood
Riverhead: 304 pages, $28

An atheist walks into a convent. … That’s not the start to a joke but the premise of this 2024 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel. The unnamed narrator leaves Sydney (husband, house, grievances) to live with a rural religious order. Even as she works alongside the nuns, worldly troubles rush in: The bones of a murdered nun are accompanied by famed climate activist Sister Helen Parry, disrupting the quiet. The narrator knows Sister Helen from schooldays and wonders whether our past actions affect our present circumstances, all while the women battle a rodent infestation that might not be out of place in a horror story. In other words, it’s riveting prose about how humans beat back despair. —B.P.

“Cece” by by Emmelie Prophete

(Archipelago)

“Cécé”
By Emmelie Prophète
Translated from French by Aidan Rooney
Archipelago: 224 pages, $18

Prophète’s blunt, bracing novel concerns Cécé, a young Haitian woman whose world has fallen out from under her — she’s endured an absent, drug-addicted mother, a recently dead grandmother, and a slum life that leaves her with few options beyond prostitution. An unlikely escape hatch arrives in the form of Instagram, and as her posts about her Haitian life gain traction, she becomes a prize — and a target — for rival gangs. Cécé can be read as a portrait of contemporary Haiti, a parable about influencer culture or a distressing study of exploitation. However it’s read, Prophète’s vision is piercing and memorable. — M.A.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 12th Edition

(Merriam-Webster)

“Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary: 12th Edition”
By Merriam-Webster.
Merriam-Webster: 1,856 pages, $34.95

Take your AI-hallucinated definitions and send them in a rocket ship to Mars, baby! The Merriam-Webster dictionary is back in print in a new edition. In its first update since 2003, it’s added 5,000 new words, 20,000 new usage examples, and 1,000 new idioms and phrases (hello, “dad bod”). But that’s not the most important part, which is that this is a beautiful, solid, immutable printed book. It will never randomly serve up some flaky incorrect definition or reference. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary captures language in a moment, with the full history and understanding of the way it evolves. It was crafted by researchers and etymologists who love words (“comes from the Greek word etymon, meaning ‘literal meaning of a word according to its origin’ ”). The Merriam-Webster website is hugely popular — keep using it! — but an actual printed dictionary will never let you down, and be good for another 20 years. — C.K.

WITH her steamy shower scenes and sexy outfits, you might assume the much-hyped Sydney Sweeney is the centre of attention in new thriller movie The Housemaid.

Instead, critics are raving about her older co-star Amanda Seyfried as the standout of the film that hit UK cinemas yesterday.

Mamma Mia! actress Amanda, 40, is tipped for an Oscar nod for The Testament Of Ann Lee, which is out in February and sees her play the founder of the Christian fundamentalist Shaker Movement in the 18th century.

But it is The Housemaid, based on the same-named bestselling 2022 novel by US author Freida McFadden, that will be putting bums on seats first.

In the sexy flick, Amanda plays deranged housewife Nina Winchester, who hires 28-year-old Sydney’s Millie Calloway to take care of domestic chores and her daughter.

But nothing is what it seems in this psychological potboiler as Amanda — also famed for 2004 teen movie Mean Girls, as a student who believes her breasts predict the weather — steals the show.

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Revelling in the role, she teases: “It’s dark as s**t. But when you get opportunities like that — to go nuts, go anywhere — I’m so happy I can still do it.

“There were ample opportunities for me to play unhinged, and playing unhinged is delicious. I had so much fun.”

In The Housemaid trailer, the two co-stars appear to be at each other’s throats. There is shouting, screaming and knives are reached for.

But in real life, fellow Americans Amanda and Sydney became great pals while making and promoting the film.

‘She’s a sweetheart’

For a bit of fun together, they even took a lie-detector test for Vanity Fair magazine, with a very animated Amanda asking Sydney whether her breasts were real.

Sydney is now caught in a storm over her recent “great jeans” ad, as some claimed its pun on “genes” hinted at white supremacy.

But Donald Trump, hailed it “the hottest ad out there”.

There have also been online rumours of her having romances with co-stars including Housemaid actor Brandon Sklenar and Glen Powell, who Sydney got steamy with in 2023 rom com Anyone But You. None of it was true.

Amanda knows about falling for a co-star, having dated Dominic Cooper from 2008 film Mamma Mia! for three years before the British actor reportedly broke her heart.

But asked about all the hype around pin-up Sydney, she told Vanity Fair: “I don’t envy anything she’s going through.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with her, we just hit it off immediately. She’s a sweetheart. I did not have a moment like she’s having, ever.”

If Sydney ever wanted to know more about the ups and downs of fame, Amanda would be a great person to chat to.

People would run into me and kids would be like, ‘Hey, can you tell us what your boobs are thinking?’ I got that so often, but I didn’t mind it’

Amanda Seyfried

Her pharmacist dad Jack and mum Ann, an occupational therapist, brought her up on a college campus in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

At school, Amanda started modelling then, in her teens, broke into acting with roles in US soap operas As The World Turns and All My Children.

This led to the “liberation and freedom of living on my own in New York City”, as her career took off.

She says: “I was having so much fun — paid a thousand dollars a day and working, like, three times a week — for a 17-year-old.”

The dream seemed to be over when the TV work dried up, and she enrolled at college.

But then an audition for mega-hit Mean Girls, which starred Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams, saved her career.

Amanda says: “I was just happy to be working — big cheque.”

But playing that student who believes her boobs have superpowers led to some pointed questions from admirers.

She recalls: “People would run into me and kids would be like, ‘Hey, can you tell us what your boobs are thinking?’ I got that so often, but I didn’t mind it. I did my job, good enough, I guess.”

Four years later, she got the lead role of Sophie in Abba-inspired smash-hit movie musical Mamma Mia!, alongside Meryl Streep.

Amanda says of the much sought-after part: “I can’t f***ing believe I got that role but it felt like something I should be doing, could be doing.”

She was on a roll as further box-office success followed, including 2009 comedy-horror Jennifer’s Body with Megan Fox, 2010 romantic drama Dear John with Channing Tatum, and 2012 hit Les Miserables.

But not all of her career choices turned out well. She passed on the role of green alien Gamora in 2014 superhero blockbuster Guardians Of The Galaxy, only for it to take nearly £600million worldwide and spawn a pair of sequels.

The part was played instead by Zoe Saldana. Amanda says: “The offer came in and I was like, ‘I should take this, right? But this is going to be Marvel’s first bomb and I do not want to be ruined for the rest of my life. Who the f is going to see a movie with a talking raccoon?’”

But her later decision to star in an off-Broadway play in New York called The Way We Get By in 2015 was to have a major impact on her personal life. Co-star Thomas Sadoski would become her husband two years later.

She says: “We met, we came very, very close, and then we started seeing each other a year later — and now we have kids [a daughter born in 2017 and son born in 2020].”

Amanda had never intended to be a mum because she feared it might ruin her career.

But she says: “If you’re lucky enough to accidentally get pregnant, which was me twice, I’m just like, thank God. I would have been, ‘I’m too busy’, ‘I’m gonna disappear from Hollywood and it’s gonna be hard to get back on track.’”

If you’re lucky enough to accidentally get pregnant, which was me twice, I’m just like, thank God. I would have been, ‘I’m too busy’, ‘I’m gonna disappear from Hollywood and it’s gonna be hard to get back on track.’

Amanda

In reality, after getting pregnant, Amanda took only a few months off and discovered she was being offered “mum” roles by casting directors.

She says: “There’s something that happens to you when you become a mother or a father.

“You know, when your life no longer matters as much and you can’t live for yourself any more.

“That sacrifice also is very enriching and the roles got better. But it was funny how fast that happened. They’re like, ‘She’s pregnant. Is she pregnant? Oh, she had a baby. Oh, yeah, no, she’s a mom. She’s a mom now.’

“But I did play one character where I was not a mom, since then.”

One mum she played was silent film star Marion Davies in Gary Oldman’s 2020 movie Mank, about alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz railing against 1930s Hollywood society while completing the screenplay of 1941 movie classic Citizen Kane.

That led to a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination in 2021, which in turn secured a starring role in the Disney+ series The Dropout, for which she won an Emmy and Golden Globe.

‘Weird dance’

Amanda says: “Going to the Oscars, you’re like, ‘I’m just happy to be here’, honestly. But it brought me up the casting list. I got the offer for The Dropout the next day.”

But there were restrictions on playing real-life character Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout because the medical fraudster was not convicted until January 2022.

The programme’s lawyers even advised against sex scenes.

Amanda says: “Every script went through a team of lawyers.

“We couldn’t say certain things, we couldn’t do certain things. We couldn’t show them making love, so we had that weird dance scene because that was their foreplay.”

Every script went through a team of lawyers. We couldn’t say certain things, we couldn’t do certain things. We couldn’t show them making love, so we had that weird dance scene because that was their foreplay

Amanda Seyfried

Fast-forward to now, and her title role in upcoming period drama The Testament Of Ann Lee, about the UK-born Shaker Movement being taken to the US by Manchester lass Ann in 1774.

It sees Amanda shake ecstatically as the ultra-puritanical sect, which avoided earthly pleasures such as sex, celebrated the Almighty.

Also known for their pacifism, the Shakers’ number peaked in the mid-19th century but then declined with industrialisation, with only one active community remaining today, in Maine. Amanda says of Ann: “Nobody could have sex because sex, she thought, was the root of all evil — the root of why she was in so much pain.

“She had got pregnant and lost her babies.

“The idea that taking sex away could make you closer to wholeness is kind of beautiful. I think she’s nuts and also very cool.”

But despite her impressive credits reel, Amanda still reckons she must battle to stay on the “list” of most-wanted actresses in Hollywood.

She says: “These f***ing lists. Every time I’m auditioning it’s like I fluctuate. I fall down the list, I go to the top of the second list or keep going back to the bottom of the first list, and it’s like, I’m lucky to be on the list at all.”

But after The Housemaid, she shouldn’t need to worry about being on that Tinseltown A-list.

EROTIC AND CAMP

THE HOUSEMAID (15) 131mins

★★★☆☆

By LINDA MARRIC

A GLOSSY, erotic thriller that is as hilariously camp as it is suspenseful.

Adapted from Freida McFadden’s smash-hit novel by director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine, Sydney Sweeney stars as Millie, a young woman fresh out of prison.

She takes a live-in maid job at the lavish home of wealthy couple Nina and Andrew Winchester (Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar).

What initially promises a fresh start for the young woman, quickly turns into something far stranger as Nina’s wildly erratic behaviour borders on the theatrical, while Andrew’s “perfect husband” routine grows increasingly unrealistic.

Feig, usually known for his work in comedy, brings an over-the-top energy to this adaptation that makes for a fun, if slightly ridiculous, ride.

While his shift into psychological drama feels a bit bumpy, the film’s knowingly silly vibe is exactly what makes it so entertaining.

But it struggles with its own shifting tone and at 131 minutes, the pacing sags and several twists are made a little too obvious.

Sweeney does her best with the script but it is Seyfried who ultimately comes out on top here, putting in a brilliantly unhinged performance as Nina.

The Housemaid may lack subtlety and genuine menace but no one can deny that it is a great deal of fun from start to finish.

It’s been an uneasy year for science. While there were significant milestones, like breakthroughs in gene editing for rare diseases and novel insights into early human evolution (including fire-making), the U.S. science community at large was rocked by institutional challenges. Drastic federal cuts froze thousands of research grants, and the Trump administration began actively working to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Meanwhile, fraudulent scientific research papers are on the rise — casting a shadow over academic integrity.

Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.

Thankfully, we can still turn to our bookshelves — and podcasts — to ground us. We tapped science doyenne Alie Ward, the host of the funny cult favorite “Ologies” podcast, to share her picks for the best science books of 2025.

Spanning fascinating subjects from bees to human anatomy, Ward’s insightful list reminds us that books remain a timeless vessel for truth and knowledge.

“Ferns: Lessons in Survival From Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants”
By Fay-Wei Li and Jacob S. Suissa
Hardie Grant Books: 192 pages, $45

“Dr. Li is the botanist of our dreams… the way he talks about ferns and why he loves them, and about growing up in Taiwan (in essentially a fern forest), and how the sexual reproduction of ferns has been a great way to draw attention to the LGBTQ and nonbinary community is so charming and funny. They even named a whole genus after Lady Gaga because they were listening to ‘Born This Way’ a lot in the lab and also because there are sequences in their DNA that are ‘GAGA.’

“Laura Silburn’s illustrations are gorgeous — they really put a lot of texture into some of these plants that are really tiny. Every page is like looking at a botany poster. As we’ve seen so much science research being underfunded, especially in the last year, there’s this big question by the culture at large of why does it matter? Why does studying the fern genome matter? It has real-world impacts — that’s fewer pesticides on your crops because we figured out something from a foreign genome. I always love when something is overlooked or taken for granted and because of someone’s passion and their dedication to studying it, we learn that it can change our lives.”

“The ABCs of California’s Native Bees”
By Krystle Hickman
Heyday: 240 pages, $38

“Krystle is an astounding photographer and an incredible visual artist. Her passion for native bees is infectious. A lot of people, when they think of bees, they think of honeybees. And honeybees are not even native to North America. They’re not native to L.A. They’re not native to this country. They’re feral livestock. What I love about her book is it opens your eyes to all of these species that are literally right under our noses that we wouldn’t even consider — and that a lot of people wouldn’t even identify as bees.

“The other reason why I love this book is that she puts these essays into it that are about her experiences going to find the bees. So you’re getting to see these gorgeous landscape pictures. You’re getting to see what it took to find the bee, how to look for it, and more about this particular species. It’s organized in these ABCs that you can pick up at any chapter and check out a bee you’ve never heard of before.”

(Little, Brown and Company)

“Humanish: What Talking to Your Cat or Naming Your Car Reveals About the Uniquely Human Need to Humanize”

By Justin Gregg

Little, Brown: 304 pages, $30

“Justin is hilarious. He is such a good writer, and his voice is really, really approachable. The way that he writes about science is through such a wonderful pop culture and pop science lens. You feel like you’re reading a friend’s email who just has something really interesting to tell you.

“This book is all about anthropomorphizing everything from our toasters to why we like some spiders but hate other spiders. This is a discussion that is so important in this time when we literally have bots on our phones that are like, ‘I’ll be your best friend.’

“Justin speaks to human psychology and our need to want to be friends or villainize objects —or technology or animals — and project our own humanity onto them in ways that are sometimes helpful and sometimes dangerous.

“As a science communicator, you can tell people the most fascinating facts and can give them the best stories. But unless you can give people a takeaway, then a lot of times it doesn’t stick or the interest isn’t there. He really addresses the question of ‘Well, what does this mean for my life?’”

“Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy”
By Mary Roach
W.W. Norton & Co: 288 pages, $28.99

“I’m a long term simp for Mary Roach.

“The humanity that she brings is such a wonderful base for how our bodies fail us sometimes and what we are trying to do to bring them back. From her being present during orthopedic surgeries and the way that she describes the sound of hammer on bone (and just the kind of jovial atmosphere in an operating room that, as a patient, you would never be clued in about because you are passed out half dead on a slab). She really soaks up a vibe that you would never have access to. She goes to Mongolia to learn about eye surgery there in yurts. She takes you to places you would never be able to go. She’s rooting around in archives and old papers — she just makes anything interesting.

“Mary really is both an ally and an outsider, and I think that that’s a really beautiful thing in her book.”

“The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid”
By Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman
Portfolio: 256 pages, $29

“Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman is an absolute force. I’ve followed her work in economics and in equity for years, and I was really excited for this book to come out. We did an episode on kalology, which is the study of beauty standards, years ago and I have always loved the conversation of how different members of society have a certain tax on them — these extra resources that they are expected to provide.

“I was really excited to read about specifically women of color, because that is something that I don’t feel is discussed at large. Anna combines the sociology of it with the reality of her experience and other women of color. Because she is so deft when it comes to policy and economics, she also considers, ‘What can we do about this?’ It’s not just enough to discuss this, but what can be done?

“She has totals of what the gender gap is and what the double tax is, and it’s written up like a receipt. This book really addresses the double tax in a way that, even if you have no insight or it’s something that you haven’t thought about — or you are someone who hasn’t experienced this — it’s laying it out economically in a way that is really accessible and has a lot of impact.”

Recinos is an arts and culture journalist and creative nonfiction writer based in Los Angeles. Her first essay collection, “Underneath the Palm Trees,” is forthcoming in early 2027.

When Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy this weekend with another Latino finalist looking on from the crowd, the Cuban-American quarterback did more than just become the first Indiana Hoosier to win college football’s top prize, and only the third Latino to do so. He also subtly offered a radical statement: Latinos don’t just belong in this country, they’re essential.

At a time when questions swirl around this country‘s largest minority group that cast us in a demeaning, tokenized light — how could so many of us vote for Trump in 2024? Why don’t we assimilate faster? Why does Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh think it’s OK for immigration agents to racially profile us? — the fact that two of the best college football players in the country this year were Latino quarterbacks didn’t draw the headlines they would’ve a generation ago. That’s because we now live in an era where Latinos are part of the fabric of sports in the United States like never before.

That’s the untold thesis of four great books I read this year. Each is anchored in Latino pride but treat their subjects not just as sport curios and pioneers but great athletes who were and are fundamental not just to their professions and community but society at large.

Shea Serrano writing about anything is like a really great big burrito — you know it’s going to be great and it exceeds your expectations when you finally bite into it, you swear you’re not going to gorge the thing all at once but don’t regret anything when you inevitably do. He could write about concrete and this would be true, but his latest New York Times bestseller (four in total, which probably makes him the only Mexican American author with that distinction) thankfully is instead about his favorite sport.

“Expensive Basketball” finds Serrano at his best, a mix of humblebrag, rambles and hilarity (of Rasheed Wallace, the lifelong San Antonio Spurs fan wrote the all-star forward “would collect technical fouls with the same enthusiasm and determination little kids collect Pokémon cards with.”) The proud Tejano’s mix of styles — straight essays, listicles, repeated phrases or words trotted out like incantations, copious footnotes — ensures he always keeps the reader guessing.

But his genius is in noting things no one else possibly can. Who else would’ve crowned journeyman power forward Gordon Hayward the fall guy in Kobe Bryant’s final game, the one where he scored 60 points and led the Lakers to a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback? Tied a Carlos Williams poem that a friend mistakenly texted to him to WNBA Hall of Famer Sue Bird? Reminded us that the hapless Charlotte Hornets — who haven’t made it into the playoffs in nearly a decade — were once considered so cool that two of their stars were featured in the original “Space Jam?” “Essential Basketball” is so good that you’ll swear you’ll only read a couple of Serrano’s essays and not regret the afternoon that will pass as quickly as a Nikola Jokic assist.

“Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay”

(Gustavo Arellano/Los Angeles Times)

I recommended “Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” in my regular columna three years ago, so why am I plugging its second edition? For one, the audacity of its existence — how on earth can anyone justify turning a 450-page book on an unheralded section of Southern California into an 800-page one? But in an age when telling your story because no one else will or will do a terrible job at it is more important than ever, the contributors to this tome prove how true that is.

“Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” is part of a long-running series about the history of Mexican American baseball in Southern California Latino communities. What’s so brilliant about this one is that it boldly asserts the history and stories of a community that too often get overlooked in Southern California Latino literature in favor of the Eastsides and Santa Anas of the region.

As series editor Richard A. Santillan noted, the reaction to the original South Bay book was so overwhelmingly positive that he and others in the Latino History Baseball Project decided to expand it. Well-written essays introduce each chapter; long captions for family and team photos function as yearbook entries. Especially valuable are newspaper clippings from La Opinión that showed the vibrancy of Southern Californians that never made it into the pages of the English-language press.

Maybe only people with ties to the South Bay will read this book cover to cover, and that’s understandable. But it’s also a challenge to all other Latino communities: if folks from Wilmington to Hermosa Beach to Compton can cover their sports history so thoroughly, why can’t the rest of us?

(University of Colorado Press)

One of the most surprising books I read this year was Jorge Iber’s “The Sanchez Family: Mexican American High School and Collegiate Wrestlers from Cheyenne, Wyoming,” a short read that addresses two topics rarely written about: Mexican American freestyle wrestlers and Mexican Americans in the Equality State. Despite its novelty, it’s the most imperfect of my four recommendations. Since it’s ostensibly an academic book, Iber loads the pages with citations and references to other academics to the point where it sometimes reads like a bibliography and one wonders why the author doesn’t focus more on his own work. And in one chapter, Iber refers to his own work in the first person — profe, you’re cool but you’re not Rickey Henderson.

“The Sanchez Family” overcomes these limitations by the force of its subject, whose protagonists descend from Guanajuato-born ancestors that arrived to Wyoming a century ago and established a multi-generational wrestling dynasty worthy of the far-more famous Guerrero clan. Iber documents how the success of multiple Sanchez men on the wrestling mat led to success in civic life and urges other scholars to examine how prep sports have long served as a springboard for Latinos to enter mainstream society — because nothing creates acceptance like winning.

“In our family, we have educators, engineers and other professions,” Iber quotes Gil Sanchez Sr. a member of the first generation of grapplers. “All because a 15-year-old boy [him]…decided to become a wrestler.”

Heard that boxing is a dying sport? The editors of “Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Performances of Rebellion” won’t have it. Rudy Mondragón, Gaye Theresa Johnson and David J. Leonard not only refuse to entertain that idea, they call such critiques “rooted in racist and classist mythology.”

(University of Illinois Press)

They then go on to offer an electric, eclectic collection of essays on the sweet science that showcases the sport as a metaphor for the struggles and triumphs of those that have practiced it for over 150 years in the United States. Unsurprisingly, California Latinos earn a starring role. Cal State Channel Islands professor José M. Alamillo digs up the case of two Mexican boxers denied entry in the United States during the 1930s, because of the racism of the times, digging up a letter to the Department of Labor that reads like a Stephen Miller rant: “California right now has a surplus of cheap boxers from Mexico, and something should be done to prevent the entry of others.”

Roberto José Andrade Franco retells the saga of Oscar De La Hoya versus Julio Cesar Chávez, landing less on the side of the former than pointing out the assimilationist façade of the Golden Boy. Mondragón talks about the political activism of Central Valley light welterweight José Carlos Ramírez both inside and outside the ring. Despite the verve and love each “Rings of Dissent” contributors have in their essays, they don’t romanticize it. No one is more clear-eyed about its beauty and sadness than Mondragón’s fellow Loyola Marymount Latino studies profe, Priscilla Leiva. She examines the role of boxing gyms in Los Angeles, focusing on three — Broadway Boxing Gym and City of Angels Boxing in South L.A, and the since-shuttered Barrio Boxing in El Sereno.

“Efforts to envision a different future for oneself, for one’s community, and for the city are not guaranteed unequivocal success,” she writes. “Rather, like the sport of boxing, dissent requires struggle.”

If those aren’t the wisest words for Latinos to embrace for the coming year, I’m not sure what is.

What do fallen empires leave behind? Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s new work of fiction attempts to answer that question. “Three Stories of Forgetting” probes the inner worlds of three men scarred by their participation in Portugal’s history of rapacious colonialist intervention that ended in 1999. For nearly 600 years, the European republic was involved in a bloody land grab that at its peak controlled over 5.5 million square miles across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Pereira de Almeida’s protagonists — Celestino, a slave trader; Boa Morte, a former soldier who had been conscripted to fight his fellow Africans in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence; and Bruma, an elderly plantation worker — live in a liminal state between past and present, searching for some measure of solace in a world that offers none. I chatted with Pereira de Almeida, who was born in Angola but was reared in Lisbon, about her haunting triptych of stories.

✍️ Author Chat

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida is author of “Three Stories of Forgetting,” a new novel exploring the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire.

(Humberto Brito)

Three stories of forgetting … but nothing is forgotten among these men.

All three men are tormented by what they can’t forget, although they don’t feel exactly guilty, in the case of Celestino and Boa Morte. Bruma is a different story. The “forgetting” of the title relates to the omission of the figures who do not appear in the book, or who appear only occasionally, episodically. Those who are forgotten are the victims and their story. These three stories are also chapters of a more general story of violence, that of colonialism, whose victims are largely forgotten to this day.

Boa Morte, a valet in Lisbon, carries an enormous burden of guilt; in order to expiate it, he tries to save a young street vagrant. Of course, all attempts at redemption in the book are futile — why is that?

I don’t think redemption is as common as much of today’s fiction seems to suggest. The experience of guilt or of an existence haunted by ghosts seems more common to me. Boa Morte was forgotten by Portugal, the country for which he gave his life, and his hateful behavior left him utterly alone. What would redeem his life? Boa Morte is inspired by a man I knew who became my friend and lived on the streets of Lisbon, just like the character. One day, he was found dead in an alley. Not all lives know redemption.

The three protagonists are captives of their pasts, because the past is still present. Can you speak to that?

After reading [British philosopher] Peter Geach’s sentence that opens his book “The Virtues,” I became interested in inquiring into the lives of people who may be, so to speak, “dead in the eyes of God.” The problem with this possibility, however, is that we may die in the eyes of God early in life, without knowing it, and yet live to old age and remain here.

This sentence is important to me, regardless of its religious meaning. It is important in that it opens up the possibility that we may have exhausted our share of grace in life and, as humans, need to keep going.

All three of these characters are looking for some kind of solace — whether it’s reverting to some kind of quiet life among living things that don’t talk back, or building a lean-to as a kind of sanctuary.

Perhaps these places they seek are, in very different ways, the only possible remnants of rest: and also places where questions have ceased. Among living things that don’t talk there are no witnesses, there is no guilt.

You can’t write stories like these without some degree of empathy — do you feel sorry for these men? What do you feel for them as a writer?

I agree with that. I don’t feel sorry for them, but I tried to get closer to them and understand them, without imposing my ideas and opinions on them, something I don’t like to do when I write novels. Instead, I preferred, as I usually prefer, to fly around them like an insect, to study them, to let them talk to me: It is a non-imposing approach, which lets the characters speak. In general, I tend to be interested in characters I don’t like and who wouldn’t treat me with the kindness I show them. It’s my way of seeking justice, in its contradictions, and of exploring ambiguity in human behavior: I want to create hospitality, and that means being able to extend my hospitality to characters whose deeds I condemn.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Carolyn Kellogg, Bethanne Patrick and Mark Athitakis select the best books of the year for The Times.

(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; book jackets from Scribner, Riverhead and Penguin Press)

Jim Ruland talked to Thurston Moore about his new book that chronicles the Sonic Youth guitarist’s love of free jazz. “I go out with my band and I play typical band gigs,” says Moore, “but I prefer being in a basement with a free jazz drummer any day of the week.”

Mark Athitakis finds favor with W. David Marx’s “Blank Space,” a sharp critique that maps the decline of our present culture, as well as Adam Morgan’s biography of 20th century literary firebrand Margaret C. Anderson, a trailblazer who bucked the prevailing culture to champion challenging art, including Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “If we want more works like ‘Ulysses’ in our world (and far less cringe) … it will demand a stubbornness from creators and dedication from consumers that the current moment is designed to strip from us,” Athatakis writes.

Finally, three critics weigh in on the 15 best books of 2025, while Mariella Rudi ticks off the nine best celebrity memoirs of the year.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Apollo, one of two bookstore cats, sleeping in a box at the Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood.

(Gerard Burkhart / For The Times)

The San Fernando Valley has lost many of its beloved bookshops over the last two decades, but North Hollywood’s Iliad bookshop remains. The store, which first opened its doors 28 years ago and remains the greatest purveyor of used books in all of Los Angeles, is the kind of tangled labyrinth teeming with titles that one can get lost in for hours. I spoke with Dan Weinstein about what is moving out of the doors this holiday season.

What is selling in the Christmas rush this year?

We tend to sell the same kinds of titles all year round, so it’s standard literature, science fiction and the handful of authors we can’t keep on the shelves: Octavia Butler, Charles Bukowski, Sarah J. Maas and Brandon Sanderson. Also, a lot of gift cards! Actually, January is our strongest month for sales — winter kicks in and people like to stay at home and read.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a loyal Iliad customer since the ’90s. Do you tend to see the same faces across the years?

Oh, we have very serious hardcore customers that come over and over again. Some of them even come on a daily basis. Fortunately, we are always putting good new inventory out.

What about Hollywood business? You have a tremendous inventory of art and photography books. Do set designers come in to find inspiration?

We do sell a lot to the entertainment industry. That really keeps us alive. If we were doing business in a city other than Los Angeles, I don’t think we would do nearly as well.

The Iliad Bookshop is located in North Hollywood at 5400 Cahuenga Blvd.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

Maybe it’s the brick exterior, or maybe it’s the heartfelt used book inscriptions, but bookstore co-owners Sam and Mike Robertson said Arvida is indeed the setting of many a first date and has even seen some proposals. For Sam, a self-declared “softie,” watching life unfold within Arvida’s walls has been a sweet surprise.

“This was always the dream, but I didn’t realize how much being the backdrop for people’s lives was going to affect me personally,” the bookseller said. She recalled recently watching one boy reading in the store and thinking to herself, “I remember the day you were born.”

As independent bookstores struggle in an Amazon-dominated market, Sam said she’s grateful for the support of a community that treasures that “third space” aspect of Arvida as much as she does. And where some do turn to “the giant that we shall not name,” as Sam dubbed Amazon, for lower prices, the bookseller said sales at the in-store Tolima Coffee Company cart fill in the gaps.

While Sam herself is a graduate of Peet’s Coffee — “coffee college,” as she called it — Mike is the true barista extraordinaire and even created a signature “Bookshop Blend” in collaboration with Stereoscope Coffee Co. Mike specializes in “coffee-forward” drinks, but he also recommended the matcha spritz and local-favorite ube latte for those with a sweet tooth.

With a cozy children’s nook and ample plush chairs to boot, Arvida is a perfect spot to spend a lazy weekend morning. If you need a better reason to make the trek from L.A., the bookstore’s charming Old Town neighbors are also fabulous for afternoon browsing.