Yoel Noorali

posted several more little book reviews on the infamous No Future Tshirt Blog today, for those who want to know my thoughts and feelings about certain books. someday you will die nofuturetshirt.blogspot.com/2026/01/brief-…

The Kingdom by Yoel Noorali: bureaucratic madness and the absurdity of life irishtimes.com/culture/books/… via @IrishTimesCultr

Nights at Osip, lunches at Mountain, ludicrously expensive handbags and cases of delicious wine – we've got some amazing prizes to be won in our festive prizedraw. Enter now, and help us turbocharge our growth for 2026. crowdfunder.co.uk/p/fences-fight…

BOOKS OF THE YEAR Introduced by @tanjil_rashid_ This time last year, I was experimenting with a career in teaching. Schools offer an amazing insight into the future of the written word. Books were once the most natural, most common and most important objects in a school, but today they have receded from school life. Schooling is now mediated not by the page but the screen. Of the dizzying number of wonderful books published each year – and recommended in our “Books of the year” feature – few will likely reach the eyes of young people. This was the year people started fretting about the consequences of this for what has historically been our book-oriented. A year ago, in the OECD’s once-in-a-decade skills survey, we learned that adults across the developed world are becoming less literate. According to the National Literacy Trust, enjoyment of reading among young people fell this year to its lowest ever recorded level (surveys began in 2005). Amid all this, the one book that seemed to find itself more, not less, read was Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, which had argued in 1985 that declining literacy posed a threat to democracy. Whatever side you might think you’re on, you’re actually on the same side: the one that says, “We are passionate about the reading life!” That’s why, at the New Statesman, we haven’t just reviewed books in 2025; we’ve reflected on why they matter. There’s still so much life in literature. Our list of the year’s best books, selected by luminaries from Julian Barnes to Slavoj Žižek, speaks to that vitality, and for the first time this year we have also inaugurated a New Statesman fiction book of the year and nonfiction book of the year. Read our cover story to find out what they are:

Everything Is Totally Fine and Joe Dunthorne's various novels are among the funniest books I've read. Here are some nice things Joe and @zacsmithtweeto said about The Kingdom, under barely any duress. For the love of god, please preorder it: linktr.ee/yoelnoreally

NHS gets go-ahead to make thousands of redundancies bbc.in/47CpBs0

Inside London's mysterious wave of smashed shop windows #Echobox=1753962878" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">standard.co.uk/news/crime/lon…