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1 month ago | 
countrylife.co.uk | John Niven
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts…Underlining Mark Twain’s words in the departure lounge at London Heathrow, I’m reminded of how his prose still swings today. You look at the bracketed dates after his name and you’re surprised to see he was born not as recently as 1935, but in 1835, so that this year sees the 190th anniversary of his birth. It’s the reason I’m boarding a flight to New Orleans and the Mississippi.
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | John Niven
There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A .’ and the End of the Heartland Hachette Books, pp.230, 28 In 1977, in the wake of the death of the king of rock’n’roll, the American journalist and music critic Lester Bangs said: ‘We will never again agree on anything like we agreed on Elvis.’ The ‘we’ was America. And Bangs was right – until June 1984, when Bruce Springsteen released Born in the U.
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Jul 23, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | John Niven
Text size Line Spacing Comments Share Share John Niven Born in the USA: how Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 album bridged the American political divide Linkedin Messenger Email There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A .’ and the End of the Heartland Steven Hyden Hachette Books, pp. 230, £28 In 1977, in the wake of the death of the king of rock’n’roll, the American journalist and music critic Lester Bangs said: ‘We will never again agree on anything like we agreed on...
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Jun 4, 2024 | 
waterstones.com | John Niven
Vivid, visceral, brilliantly funny in places, dispensing sharp punches to the gut in others . . . [O Brother] made me sob more than once, and I suspect it will do the same to you - Guardian Riotous and yet bracingly moving . . .
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Jun 4, 2024 | 
waterstones.com | John Niven
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Dec 18, 2023 | 
esquiremag.ph | John Niven
Large-living writer John Niven interrogates the growing popularity of the medicalized holiday-with surprising results. It would be fair to say I take it badly. Do I want to go to a remote Austrian medical health resort for 10 days to experience first-hand the booming industrial wellness-travel complex and write about it forEsquire?10 days?This is the kind of thing you’d threaten me with ifyou wanted me to reveal where I’d hidden the diamonds. Or to get me to tell you the secret codes.
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Oct 18, 2023 | 
waterstones.com | Caitlin Moran |Adrian Edmondson |Anna Orhanen |John Niven
O Brother by John NivenAlmost certainly the best memoir of 2023. Kill Your Friends author John Niven performs one of the most astonishing literary gear-changes, as he diverts from his trademark visceral thrillers to deliver a heart-punching, insanely tender account of the suicide of his little brother, Gary, “Who could start a fight in an empty room.” Incredibly, O Brother also manages to be one of the funniest books of the year, too. It’s the one everyone I know can’t stop talking about.
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Oct 12, 2023 | 
theguardian.com | John Niven
My earliest reading memoryHarry by the Sea by Gene Zion. My mum taught me to read with this fine tale of a wee dog’s adventures by the shore. We’d sit in the armchair by the window of our tiny flat in Irvine, Ayrshire. I’d have been three at the time, making it 1969. The book that changed me as a teenagerI was 17 when I read Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, in the summer of 1983. I picked it up in the school library one day and it was the first time I laughed out loud reading a novel.
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Sep 28, 2023 | 
l8r.it | Kelsey Parker |Michelle Zauner |Rio Ferdinand |John Niven
LoveReading Says Heart-rending, captivating and, ultimately, suffused in the promise of hope, With and Without You sees Kelsey Parker share her experience of losing her husband Tom, lead singer of The Wanted, and her first year as a widow.
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Sep 13, 2023 | 
standard.co.uk | Zadie Smith |John Niven |Grace Dent |Teju Cole
Autumn is the perfect time to pick up a new book. It’s when publishing’s so-called Super Thursday occurs – the single day when the highest number of best-selling hardback titles is estimated to hit the shelves. This year, in the lead up to Christmas, new books from Richard Osman, Stephen King and JK Rowling, writing as Robert Galbraith, will appear. There will also be memoirs from Britney Spears, Barbara Streisand and Jada Pinkett Smith.
