Want to fit more reading in your life in 2018? Stylist has tips.

Book Riot recommends books for Gryffindors.

Ever wondered what a day in the life of a literary agent looks like? Wonder no more.

The Guardian rounds up picture books to give this Christmas.

The Observer reviews some recent books for eight-to-twelve-year-olds.

The Grimsby Telegraph has a list of the most festive Christmas countdown books for young children.

Shami Chakrabarti, human rights activist and author of Of Women: In the 21st Century talked to Refinery 29 about gender injustice as an “apartheid” for men and women.

Stylist rounds up everything we know so far about the second series of Big Little Lies.

Kazuo Ishiguro has appealed for more diversity and open-mindedness in literature in his Nobel Lecture, which has been published as a paperback by Faber.

Blackwell’s has named its Book of the Year as the “inspirational” Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo.

Fresh figures have shown the “catastrophic” scale of library closures in Great Britain continues unabated, with 105 closed in the UK last year, with children being hit the worst. And when they’re not being closed, resources are often being diverted to the wrong thing, like Walsall’s Library’s getting a café instead of more books.

Adam Kay’s memoir about his gruelling years as a junior doctor, This is Going to Hurt, has fired up public indignation over the NHS’s future.

Ayòbámi Adébáyò, author of Stay With Me, writes about the importance of counting words, watching cat videos on YouTube, and the creative moments in which magic takes place.

The Big Book Giveaway is a simple idea: to put books into the hands of people who need them, but for various reasons can’t get them.

Podcasts

The Riff Raff talked to former firefighter turned author Clifford Thompson about how an MA helped him write his debut memoir Falling Through Fire, how writers should approach sensitive material, and why life experience is the key to writing well.

On What Page Are You On, Alice and Bethany discuss their top 10 books of 2017.

The latest Backlisted discusses Diane Wynne Jones’s Fire and Hemlock.

On, Radio 4’s Books and Authors, Lionel Shriver discusses her new novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047.

The Allusionist asks how Dickens stole Christmas.