Hello all, it’s Jane here 🥵 with the Weekend Edition, including our summer book recommendations special. 

Before we get to that, a taste of what else we are publishing today. For three days this week, the ARC 2026 conference was running at Olympia in west London. ARC stands for the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship and has been described as “the anti-woke Davos”. In her first piece for the Nerve, journalist Stella Tsantekidou reports from the event, where she dutifully mixed on your behalf with the likes of Boris Johnson, Paul Marshall and Kemi Badenoch, and someone offering to “say eugenicist things on camera”. In his column today, Stewart Lee also writes about ARC: “The Olympia venue should be ashamed of hosting The Alliance For Responsible Citizenship, and when I go there in November to see a punk rock legend double bill of the Damned and the Saints I must remember to make sure to vandalise the toilets as thoroughly as possible.”

I am always curious about what book titles are on other people’s radar and I love getting tips from friends and colleagues. Here in the office, we regularly swap our well-thumbed paperbacks. I’m currently enjoying Keiran Goddard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (as recommended to me by Nerve writer Lucia Osborne-Crowley); Lynsey, who’s sitting opposite me, has just started Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear.

One of the pleasures of packing (hang on, maybe the only one!) is deciding which books to take or download. For those who are going on holiday this summer, we hope you find some inspiration in today’s list of our writers’ and editors’ (and a handful of book influencers’) recommendations of titles published so far this year! Let us know what you’re reading at the moment – or what you plan to take away with you. And if you enjoy the Nerve’s cultural coverage and read for free, please consider upgrading to paid membership to support us. 

We’re launching a new initiative this week. As Nerve articles – be they interviews, recipes, polemics, our weekly Hotlist – often mention books, we wanted to find a way for readers to buy titles without resorting to tech-bro/private-equity-run marketplaces. So we are launching an online bookshop, which supports independent booksellers and the Nerve via a little extra revenue for each book sold. Do bear with us as we continue adding titles to our digital shelves. 

This is also an opportune moment to mention a few upcoming Nerve book events. There’s still time to get a ticket for our event on Thursday in Manchester with the incredible American writer and novelist Dave Eggers, who burst onto the literary scene with his extraordinary memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius over a quarter-century ago. He will be in the UK to promote his unputdownable new novel Contrapposto and in conversation with Lucia. 

Further ahead, on Tuesday 8 September, we are partnering with Brighthink in Brighton for what should be a fascinating conversation between co-founder Carole and tech writer and Nerve columnist Cory Doctorow. Finally, tickets will shortly be on sale for our event in October with Omar El Akkad (author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This) in Bristol, where we will partner with Bookhaus. 

Check your inboxes on Sunday morning for the next instalment of our investigation into Christopher Harborne’s political donations.  

Here are today’s links:

“In the week the world grinds to a halt in the face of the undeniable reality of climate change,” writes Stewart, can there be anyone who still isn’t joining the dots about global warming? Unfortunately it seems so: in Norfolk, a Reform councillor’s meeting to overturn the local authority’s declaration of climate emergency “had to be called off as temperatures exceeded 30C and the fens began to boil”. And at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, the big speaker was … Trump’s energy secretary. What’s with all the love for the fossil fuel industry at a meeting of responsible citizens? Read Stewart’s column here.

What are you packing for your holidays this year? Nerve co-founder Sarah Donaldson suggests Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick, culture writer Ursula Kenny recommends losing yourself in Susan Choi’s “breathtaking” novel Flashlight, while our film critic Ellen E Jones prefers something totally different, Daniel Trilling’s If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable… We’ve got all tastes covered with dozens of new book recommendations from the Nerve team, plus three Bookstagrammers share their top picks. Read our summer books package here.

It’s the political conference where the organisers’ idea of a leftwing speaker is Kemi Badenoch. It took place this week in the vast halls of west London’s Olympia, funded by Dubai-based investors’ money and GB News backer Paul Marshall. Some people call it the “rightwing Davos”; the organisers prefer ARC 2026 – standing for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. The speaker lineup is lifted from the GB News green room – Nigel Farage, Melanie Phillips, Matt Ridley, Claire Fox, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, right down to Toby Young… This year’s theme was youth, but as our reporter Stella Tsantekidou found out, the younger attendees didn’t find much to inspire them from the grey-haired anti-woke gurus on stage. Read Stella’s report here.

The doctor-turned-author and standup Adam Kay is best known for his memoir This Is Going to Hurt, a literary sensation that sold over 3 million copies and was turned into a Bafta-winning TV series. As his debut novel, the biting, hospital-set thriller A Particularly Nasty Case comes to paperback, he shares his current cultural favourites, including a hilarious podcast; a tender yet absurd TV comedy; and his favourite island escape that “makes the Garden of Eden feel a bit pedestrian”. Read Adam’s culture tips here.

Even before it opened, Tate Modern’s new Frida Kahlo show was breaking records as the highest pre-selling exhibition in Tate’s history (bumping Hockney’s 2017 show off the top spot). But how will visitors to the much-anticipated show exploring the Mexican artist’s life and legacy feel about the fact that it features just 36 works by her versus over 200 by her contemporaries and the artists she inspired from later generations? “The trouble,” writes Imogen Carter, “is that nobody does Frida as well as Frida: but with so few of her works here, it starts to feel like a highbrow treasure hunt.” Read Imogen’s review here.

If you can’t stand the heat … Spanish chef and restaurateur José Pizarro, whose most recent book, Spanish Pantry, celebrates the staples of his homeland, shares his timely recipe for a chilled tomato soup. For José it is “a story in a bowl, rich with the flavours of summer and brimming with nostalgia”. Get the recipe here.

Thanks for reading – and if you know someone who might like to receive our twice-weekly newsletters, do pass this on to them and encourage them to sign up.

We’ll be back on Tuesday.

Jane