Best books
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Review The best fiction of 2014
Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks … Justine Jordan rounds up
the biggest fiction of 2014 -
Ian Sansom’s festive suggestions include Grumpy Cat, cheese jokes and ‘a philosophy of beards’
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Review The best sport books of 2014
Premier League excess and moving stories from the golden age of county cricket – Richard Williams offers his sporting highlights -
From Nigel Farage and the rise of Ukip to Andy Coulson and the phone-hacking scandal – Helen Lewis on the politics books that won our votes this year
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Review The best paperbacks of 2014
Nicholas Lezard’s paperbacks of the year: Hunting in the wild west, a creepy story about motherly love, and the plight of the bumblebee
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Naomi Klein tackled climate change, Owen Jones got to grips with class politics, and Russell Brand preached revolution. Writers from Hilary Mantel to Lena Dunham recommend the titles that leaped out at them this year
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From first hand accounts of gulag survivors to memoirs of defectors once part of the top echelons of government, here’s our pick of the best books on the secretive kingdom
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From The Burning Ground by Roselle Angwin to JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, Guardian readers pick their favourite reads of 2013
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From Lionel Shriver's Big Brother to Jim Crace's Harvest, and from Ruth Rendell's No Man's Nightingale to Iain Banks' The Quarry, Guardian readers pick their favourite reads of 2013
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The shock of the new has given way to the comfort of the old in this year's bestseller list, with plenty of football and blokey chefs, writes John Dugdale
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From Sebastian Faulks's Jeeves and the Wedding Bells to Patrick Ness's More Than This to Alan Johnson's This Boy, Guardian readers pick their favourite reads of 2013
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The hits, the misses and the ones that nearly were – top publishers choose their books of the year
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Indie bookshops from all over the UK use their expertise and 'handsellers'' passion to choose their books of the year
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From Fleur Adcock's Glass Wings to Train Songs edited by Sean O'Brien and Don Paterson, Adam Newey rounds up the best poetry of the year
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From picture books for toddlers to novels for teens, Julia Eccleshare and Michelle Pauli choose this year's standout titles
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Review The best drink books of 2013
From the latest edition of The World Wine Atlas to World's Best Cider, Henry Jeffreys rounds up the best drink books of the year
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From Pen Vogler's Jane Austen recipes to Heston's Georgian fare, Kathryn Hughes tucks into the best food books of the year
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From Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam to Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, Adam Roberts rounds up the best science fiction of the year
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Writers, Observer critics and others tell us their favourite reads of 2013 – and what they hope to find under the tree
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Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm Gladwell, Eleanor Catton and many more recommend the books that impressed them this year
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From Dostoevsky to Trollope, from anguished spiritual quests to social comedies, the novelist ordains the best fictional clerics
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Historian Sean McMeekin picks the best books about the great 'Dual Monarchy' destroyed by the first world war
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From Charles Dickens to Angela Carter, these stories capture the high-mindedness, ambition and selfishness of this 'season of extremes'
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The novelist chooses the books that best explain a fascinating, baffling, tumultuous country
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From Daniel Defoe to Roger Deakin, the novelist picks the best books about a region blurring land and sea
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From Ophelia to Captain Ahab, the novelist considers literature's most watery endings
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As readers pointed out, my last list was rather skewed to a male-dominated tradition. Here is an alternative perspective
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From history to fiction, politics to poetry, Guardian readers pick their favourite reads of 2012
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The books they loved and lost: publishers on their favourites – and the ones they wished they had on their own lists
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From chopping your own tree to making 'crack pie' or potatoes that look like stones, there's more to our top 20 food and drink books of 2012 than simple recipes
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Tell us which mini masterpieces you'd choose to calm Christmas nerves
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Sean O'Hagan applauds blockbuster retrospectives and innovative ideas
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Adam Newey selects his favourite collections of the year