Uplifting, gripping, moving, feel-good, tragic, timely, provocative, suspenseful, searing, mind-bending, thrilling: just some of the adjectives that spring to mind as our reviewers and friends reflect on the very best books they have read this year

Uplifting, gripping, moving, feel-good, tragic, timely, provocative, suspenseful, searing, mind-bending, thrilling: just some of the adjectives that spring to mind as our reviewers and friends reflect on the very best books they have read this year

FRANK COTTRELL BOYCE
James Lovelock is 100 years old, and you can feel both the weight of experience and the demob-happy lightness of outliving your fears in his astonishing Novacene (Allen Lane, £14.99; Tablet price £13.49). Some of its big ideas seem bonkers, but it’s invigorating to spend time with such an unshackled brain. His main argument is that humanity is about to be replaced as the dominant life on the planet by some kind of artificial intelligence. Despite – or maybe because of – this, Lovelock is upliftingly aware of the things worth ­celebrating about humanity.

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