Millions dream of quitting the grind and replacing their income through a rewarding, creative endeavour.

When online bookselling began to dominate the market in the early 2000s, many were predicting that the bookshop would simply die away. Now, however, Irish independent book shops are not only managing to survive. In fact, they are flourishing. Ahead of Independent Book Shop week, we spoke to several independent booksellers on how they’re surviving in the Amazon age, how they differentiate themselves and the joys of a good book.

This cool little machine was recently spotted at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France

The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) is reportedly testing new safety procedures that could require airline passengers to remove books from their carry-on bags when going through security lines, raising privacy concerns.

The Nazi war effort relied to an astonishing degree on dowsing, astrology and mysticism, as Eric Kurlander reveals. By Robert Carver.

For decades, Bill Gates made billions in technology. Now he's spending that money on fighting disease and climate change. It's no wonder the man loves science. Over the years, Gates has recommended a number of science-related books to the public. Some deal with the environment, others with the cosmos, and others with stopping tiny biological invaders. Here are some of his favorite titles.

Hemingway wrote in cafes, nursing a marc, and later at a stand-up desk surrounded by polydactyl cats. Melville used an upstairs study in Pittsfield with a view of Mt. Greylock, which in winter looks very much like a white whale. Virginia Woolf had a room of her own and Edith Wharton was said to write in bed. Few things are as treasured by writers as privacy, that place where you can tune out the world and live in the alternate one on your page. Joseph Kanon found it in one of the most public places imaginable, crowded with tour groups and class visits, a must stop in the guide books.

We now accept culture drove our extraordinary success as a species, but how? A compelling new account brings us up to speed with the story so far

What happens in brains and bodies at the moment humans engage in violence with other humans? That is the subject of Stanford University neurobiologist and primatologist Robert M. Sapolsky’s "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst." The book is Sapolsky’s magnum opus, not just in length, scope (nearly every aspect of the human condition is considered), and depth (thousands of references document decades of research by Sapolsky and many others) but also in importance as the acclaimed scientist integrates numerous disciplines to explain both our inner demons and our better angels.

What Happened to Venezuela? By Greg Grandin.

In 1920s Russia, children read about sugar beets, hydroelectric plants, and five-year plans.

It began with the kind of research the Trump administration wants to unfund: fiddling about with tiny obscure creatures. And there had been US Republican hostility to science before Trump, of course, when Sarah Palin objected to federal funding of fruit fly research (“Fruit flies – I kid you not,” she said). The fruit fly has been a vital workhorse of genetics for 100 years. Jennifer Doudna’s work began with organisms even further out on the Palin scale: bacteriophages, tiny viruses that prey on bacteria.

Pop-ups, harlequinades, and Meggendorfers, oh my!

Fake books – powered by clickfarms – are gatecrashing Amazon’s charts. And despite being aware of the issue for well over a year, Amazon has failed to resolve it. If you look at the Kindle Store Best Seller charts right now, and click over to Free Books, you will see that the Top 20 currently has five suspicious-looking titles. None of them have reviews. All were published in the last week. They have no Also Boughts – meaning they have had very few sales. Each of these titles are around 2,500 pages long, seem to have duplicated content, and are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. What is going on here?

Marcia Angell reviews “Women Against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century” by Karissa Haugeberg and “About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First-Century America” by Carol Sanger.

The Australian website Mamamia has apologised to the US author Roxane Gay after publishing a podcast interview with text that asked whether she would “fit into the office lift”. Gay, the award-winning author of "Bad Feminist," said she was “appalled by Mamamia” after the interview she gave to the site’s co-founder and creative director, Mia Freedman, while promoting her new book "Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body."

In 1692 A. Boogert" sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water.

How do we feel about Brexit now that a year has passed? As the old advert for tonic wine used to ask, above a drawing of a housewife with her head in her hands: Tired? Depressed? Anxious? By Ian Jack.

Savvy "Game of Thrones" fans longing for a release date for George R.R. Martin's sixth novel, "The Winds of Winter," know where to look for news -- in the comments of unrelated posts on Martin's website. (He calls it "Not a Blog," but come on, it's a blog.) This week, a fan pleaded for news on the series, noting that Martin's been sharing info about the Wild Cards sci-fi anthology series he edits instead, and the author defended himself.

When Samantha Haskell took over a bookstore in Maine, she looked to local farms for commercial inspiration.

Following John McPhee to Florida.

A new book aims to help us deviate from the bounds of perception and awaken from habitual thought patterns.

The year's not even close to over, and we already have a growing list of great sci-fi reads.

Reading “Careful” may make you want to stay in—but, in fact, fifty per cent of all fatal accidents happen at home.

Though written, or at least translated, using concrete, often simple language, her work rarely relies on conventional storytelling or character studies.

In recent years, free libraries have popped up across the country in an effort to bring access to books to local communities. Detroit is now home to a new free library in the form of a replica TARDIS from the BBC show Doctor Who. The library is a life-sized replica of the time traveling Doctor’s famous time machine.

The library at the University of Mosul, among the finest in the Middle East, once had a million books, historic maps, and old manuscripts. Some dated back centuries, even a millennium. Then ISIS sought to kill the ideas within its walls—or at least the access to them. Now, the future of the University of Mosul’s library is a microcosm of the challenge facing Iraq after the ouster of ISIS.

They sell millions of books, but you rarely see them in bookshops – three successful novelists on working under the radar of the book charts

A few days before she turned 61, writer Anne Lamott decided to write down everything she knew for sure. She dives into the nuances of being a human who lives in a confusing, beautiful, emotional world, offering her characteristic life-affirming wisdom and humor on family, writing, the meaning of God, death and more.

While debates over the relationship between technology and protest have often degenerated into praise of Facebook revolutions or anti-slacktivism diatribes, this book offers a more productive tension: The technology that helps modern movements organize high-profile protests, Zeynep Tufekci concludes, can also keep them from developing the staying power to achieve their long-term goals. And the leadership principles of contemporary movements aren’t helping much, either.

Two books shed new light on the toppled dictator’s final days—and what the U.S. still doesn’t understand about Iraq. By Jacob Silverman.

John Gibbs on making the tough decision to get rid of a book.

The influential stylebook discards ‘addict’ and ‘alcoholic’ for nonjudgmental language that recognizes addiction as a medical disorder.

Ben Hutchinson reviews “Goethe: Life as a Work of Art” by Rüdiger Safranski as translated by David Dollenmayer.

Thomas Morris's book "The Matter of the Heart" is not for the squeamish.