Five Books - Expert Book Recommendations
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Five Books is a book recommendation website where experts pick the five best books in their subject (as an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases) http://fivebooks.com
We have a wide variety of interviews recommending books on with sociology themes. fivebooks.com/books/sociol...
Sociology - Five Books Expert Recommendations
Best books on sociology recommended by leading sociologists. Everything covered from inequality, to multiculturalism, from feminism to heavy metal.
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"The fact is that audiences will go see a star in something terrible or mediocre, and ignore the prestige play that doesn’t have a known actor in it." fivebooks.com/best-books/c...
Broadway
What divides a hit from a flop, artistically speaking? The New York Times theatre critic Charles Isherwood takes us behind the scenes to assess the art of writing for Broadway and the rules for…
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“The Illuminations are the product of what Rimbaud said he wanted to do as a poet: the systematic derangement of the senses” fivebooks.com/best-books/p...
The Best Prose Poetry
The best prose poetry and modernist French poetry, including Arthur Rimbaud, Gertrude Stein, Francis Ponge and Claudia Rankine, recommended by Jeremy Noel-Tod, poetry critic and editor of the Penguin…
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The Best Shakespeare Books recommended by Shakespeare scholars fivebooks.com/category/fic...
Shakespeare Books - Five Books Expert Recommendations
The best Shakespeare books and plays, recommended by eminent Shakespeare scholars including Emma Smith, James Shapiro, and Stanley Wells
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NEW Heather Parry, author of Carrion Crow, recommends five books that turn physical violation into a tool of social or political commentary. Five of the best body horror novels: fivebooks.com/best-books/t...
The Best Body Horror Books
Body horror is often bloody and gory, argues the novelist Heather Parry, but it is also a vessel for social commentary. Here she recommends five books that explore notions of bodily autonomy,…
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“Popular culture is a dominant force in people’s lives and can’t simply be dismissed as trivial or mere entertainment." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...
Popular Culture
Popular culture shapes our fantasies, our expectations and our beliefs about what is real, argues Susan Bordo. She picks five books that shed light on popular culture.
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“Religion is still so important in people’s lives because it does something that nothing else does quite as well.” fivebooks.com/best-books/r...
The Role of Religion
Religion has an ability to create groups and communities that has yet to be surpassed, argues Selina O'Grady, author of And Man Created God: A History of the World at the Time of Jesus.
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The classics of English literature: whether you're reading for school or for pleasure, it can be hard to get a grip on the Western canon—and even harder to understand it. fivebooks.com/category/fic...
“I wonder if people who read a lot and touch pages a lot feel that extra-special connection to trees.” fivebooks.com/best-books/t...
Trees in Literature
Books are made of trees and sometimes they're also about trees. Best-selling author Tracy Chevalier picks the five best trees in fiction.
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“Celebrity allows us to surrender to our voyeurism, our need to pry into other people’s lives” fivebooks.com/best-books/c...
Celebrity
The best books on celebrity and the industry of Hollywood and Broadway stardom, recommended by Columbia English Professor Sharon Marcus.
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We have an extremely diverse range of interviews on feminism. fivebooks.com/category/pol...
Feminism - Five Books Expert Recommendations
Best books on feminism recommended by leading experts. From motherhood to war, from America to Asia, from the role of women in Islam to ancient goddesses.
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"Everyone in the West was fed up with Indochina and wanted to get out of it after 1975 and didn’t want to pay attention to what was happening." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...
Cambodia
David Chandler, one of the foremost western scholars on Cambodian history—and author of the first study of S-21, the Khmer Rouge interrogation centre—recommends the best books on Cambodia.
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"Your child, all being well, will now live to the age of 120 or 110" fivebooks.com/best-books/h...
How To Be Happy
The best books on how to be happy, as recommended by historian, political commentator and educator Anthony Seldon.
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"There is an important debate about the word genocide and the events of 1915, but behind that there’s an even bigger story about what happened to the Armenians, what happened to their culture, and what is owed to them in terms of memory and honouring their culture." fivebooks.com/best-books/m...
Memoirs of the Armenian Genocide
More than 100 years after the Armenian genocide, author Tom de Waal chooses books that sidestep the politics and bring us back to the human story.
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NEW: "The Egyptians had a really complex view of the supernatural and the mythological." Garry J. Shaw recommends his five best books on Egyptian mythology: fivebooks.com/best-books/e...
Egyptian Mythology Books
Mythological beings were ever-present in the world for ancient Egyptians. Author Garry J. Shaw introduces his five best books to get started, from guides to source texts to lavish illustrations. He…
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"I was absolutely astonished by the idea that you could take a poem like Beowulf and tell it from a different point of view." fivebooks.com/best-books/m...
Novels Based on Mythological Retellings
Mythological retellings bring us stories with timeless resonance, viewed through the lens of modern concerns, explains Francesca Simon. The bestselling author tells us about her five favourite…
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"I want to remind people that the evidence on kids who read a book they might not be prepared for says that no kid has died or suffered from a reading-related disease, unless it’s related to mould." fivebooks.com/best-books/t...
The Best Young Adult Literature of 2025
The best new books for teens and young adults of 2025, as recommended by Dr. Susannah Richards, specialist in literature for youth
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Whether you want to learn more about microorganisms, bugs, animals or humans, Five Books has got you covered, with numerous interviews with leading scientists and other experts in the life sciences recommending their best biology books. fivebooks.com/category/mat...
The Best Biology Books
Best books on Biology recommended by eminent academics, science writers and other experts. Everything from microbes to dinosaurs, from plants to people.
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“When you’re young, it’s like the words are on the top shelf and you have to go on tip-toe to get them down” fivebooks.com/best-books/t...
Teenage Mental Health
Rae Earl discusses five powerful books that explore a range of mental health issues which many young adults and teenagers may face.
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"The role of women up until the 1840s was largely confined to the home. Women were seen as having great influence and power in society, but through their roles as wives, mothers and homemakers." fivebooks.com/best-books/f...
The Best Books about First Ladies
The best books about first ladies, as recommended by historian and specialist Carl Sferrazza Anthony.
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Below you’ll find all AudioFile’s choices of the best audiobooks of 2024 in the biography and memoir category: fivebooks.com/best-books/t...
The Best Biography & Memoir Audiobooks of 2024
From Whoopi Goldberg telling you the story of her life to the biography of a civil rights icon, from the lives of three jazz greats and Billie Holiday's last year to what Stanley Tucci ate in a year,…
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"There are so many ways of revealing yourself as a writer – your personality, your sensibility. You don’t just blurt it out." fivebooks.com/best-books/w...
First-Person Narratives
Writing in the first person doesn’t have to be inward-looking or egotistical, says the author of The Snow Geese. He tells us about his favourite autobiographical works that use the first person to…
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“Difficulty is part of his authorial aesthetic—he wants you to work at understanding his novels” fivebooks.com/best-books/w...
The Best William Faulkner Books
The best books by and about William Faulkner and his life and work, recommended by Faulkner scholar Ahmed Honeini of Royal Holloway
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The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction is awarded annually to "outstanding novels and collections of short stories, first published in the UK or Ireland, that illuminate major social and political themes, present or past, through the art of narrative." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...
The Best Political Novels of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Fiction
The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction is awarded annually to "outstanding novels and collections of short stories, first published in the UK or Ireland, that illuminate major social and political…
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"Ways to come up with new, more trustworthy mechanisms are incredibly valuable, especially in the technology world." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...
Blockchain
The best blockchain books, as recommended by Kevin Werbach, professor at Wharton business school and author of Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust
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"There is so much superstition about birds. Birds being so visible, there is more superstition about birds than about other animals." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...
Birds
Birds are everywhere. They capture our imagination and make us wish that we, too, could soar away. Jonathan Elphick eloquently recommends the best books on the wonders of birds.
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Even if you love reading mysteries, it sometimes takes a while to figure out what kind of books you enjoy reading. At Five Books, we cover a range, and our best of the year lists, which appear below, are a great place to start. fivebooks.com/category/fic...
The Best Mystery Books
Get to the bottom of things with the best mystery books, recommended by the experts.
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NEW Snow leopard expert Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi recommends five excellent ecology books, from a study of the Serengeti lion to one man's search for a most elusive owl. fivebooks.com/best-books/e...
Ecology
Five of the best books on ecology, as recommended by the snow leopard expert and conservationist Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi
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