The Guardian Books Podcast

The Congolese-born novelist is the latest writer to take up residency in A Room for London atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. Listen to the thoughts inspired by his stay

The Edinburgh International Book festival will welcome authors from 55 different countries, and include the first world writers conference in 50 years. Director Nick Barley previews some big names and we hear some participants from our own archive

We round up this summer's hottest books to pack in your suitcase – or download on to your e-reader – with the Booker-longlisted Deborah Levy and Twitter hit Keith Ridgway

Gore Vidal, who died yesterday, made his last visit to the UK in 2008, during the run-up to the US election. He appeared at the Hay Festival, and spoke to Claire Armitstead about his views on Obama's prospects for victory, and what it would take to make him proud to be an American

Every writer is first a reader – a solitary experience which Siri Hustvedt addresses head on in her latest collection of essays. Ben Lerner tells us about the books which inspired his debut novel, and we hear from The Bookshop Band

Get set for the London Olympics with a stack of books to put your literary life into training including fiction from Alexander MacLeod and Ben Fountain

Get set for the London Olympics with a stack of books to put your literary life into training including fiction from Alexander MacLeod and Ben Fountain

Sebastian Faulks comes to the Guardian Review Book Club to talk about his first world war novel, Birdsong, with Professor John Mullan

Robert Macfarlane kicks off our three-part series about literature and landscape. He takes Madeleine Bunting to the mysterious landscape of Orford Ness, a decommissioned nuclear testing site now owned by the National Trust

Is positive thinking the route to happiness? Oliver Burkeman and Jules Evans make the case for looking on the dark side, while the narrator of Joanna Kavenna's latest novel takes off in search of a new way of living

In the last in our series, Alice Oswald takes Madeleine Bunting for a walk along the river Dart and explains why, for her, water represents the complexity of putting an ever-changing landscape in to words

Artist and writer Rachel Lichtenstein takes Madeleine Bunting to Whitechapel in east London to revisit her own past and consider a place that has changed dramatically since her grandparents arrived there in the 1930s

The Booker-winning novelist is the sixth writer to take up residency in A Room for London on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. Listen to the thoughts inspired by his stay

What riches are to be found in the lesser-known languages of Europe? We talk to Clive Boutle and Paul Gubbins about the pleasures of publishing on the edge, and welcome the poet Gillan Clarke, who is headlining a festival of poetry and music in both Welsh and English

Can graphic design help novelists tell stories fit for a visual age, or is the future of fiction to be found in traditional narrative?