With daylight savings upon us, thoughts turn to indoor pursuits. Given we’ll soon be steeped in merriment, the smart choice is to embrace every chance for a restorative night in. In other words, it’s time to replenish that bookshelf.

While we each have unique literary leanings it’s still wise to procure an array of options. This may come as a shock, but it’s entirely possible to be a serious person without perennially grappling with weighty non-fiction. You can even (whisper it) read several tomes simultaneously, letting the evening’s mood guide selection: a little climate emergency here, a little speculative fiction there. Before you know it, as well as a sharper mind, you’ll have a trove of insightful tidbits to trot out at all those festive shindigs.

This clear-eyed volume from the hugely influential author of explosive agriculture expose, Eating Animals, as well as top novels, including Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, examines the climate emergency from a personal perspective – beginning with breakfast. With We Are The Weather, Mr Jonathan Safran Foer makes a compelling, galvanising case for urgent changes to our consumption habits so that we might collectively mitigate the worst of the environmental fallout to come. As avowed fan Ms Stella McCartney says, “Read this book. Saving planet Earth starts right here, right now.”

Award-winning poet Mr Saeed Jones’ tour-de-force of a memoir “marks the emergence of a major literary voice” according to Kirkus. Pulling no punches, the black and gay Texan native details his experiences of being raised by his (beloved) Buddhist mother and evangelical Christian grandmother, and reveals how the attendant turmoil pursued him far into adulthood. Once free to explore his sexuality and hone an authentic identity, that battle becomes fiercer still – a propellent for dehumanising and corrosive encounters, as Jones “thinks” in the book: “If America was going to hate me for being black and gay… I might as well make a weapon out of myself.”

Acclaimed journalist Ms Nesrine Malik painstakingly unravels some of today’s most iniquitous and entrenched myths, eg, that we’ve “solved” gender inequality; that free speech is in crisis; political correctness has gone mad; and that Western nations, such as the UK, have glorious, wholly untarnished legacies they may soon recreate (ad nauseam). This thought-provoking text, founded upon rigorous historical research and topical interviews, is an essential read for any who regularly query the surging appeal of populists and nationalists.

Going into a second reprint almost immediately following publication, Catch And Kill documents Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Mr Ronan Farrow’s tenacious and fraught efforts to break the Weinstein scandal. As we all now know, having been muzzled by compromised NBC News executives, Mr Farrow took his thunderous story to The New Yorker, unleashing a tidal wave of a social justice action and casting light on an unholy quagmire of corruption and cover ups by some of the most powerful figures in the US. In the riveting and pacy Catch And Kill, which reveals a host of further instances of abuse, while holding space for victims’ testimony, Mr Farrow also shares the personal cost of his unwavering commitment to the truth.

Take a breather from relentless self-optimisation and allow the brilliant Mr Bill Bryson to reacquaint you with your flesh (and bones, fascia, viscera, skin and so on). Already racing up bestseller charts, The Body invites us to navel-gaze in a worthwhile fashion, for it seems our bodies are miraculous entities – albeit mysterious, gross, intermittently malfunctioning ones.

For those floored by 10:04, Mr Lerner’s phenomenal prior novel, The Topeka School “a pre-history of the present” couldn’t come quick enough. And for those new to one of the most feted literary minds on the planet, well, you’re in for a wild, challenging and deeply satisfying ride – if you get off on experimental metafiction, that is. In this, his third book, Mr Lerner depicts his protagonist in the present day, while also digging around in the grim 1990s mulch that nurtured both this central character and our current real-life cohort of vile and dangerous white males, in a bid to elucidate how US society became so toxic.

One of 2019’s few bright spots has been the continuing ascendance of inimitable literary icon, Ms Margaret Atwood. Frankly, if the eminent author acquiesced to step in as world leader right now, our species might actually have a shot at survival. Until that blessed day, it’s some consolation to spend a few hours with the sensational The Testaments, her latest Booker Prize-winning novel (as shared with Ms Bernadine Evaristo, below), and the sequel to the perspicacious and rightly ubiquitous The Handmaid’s Tale.

Every sensible human now accepts our proverbial house is ablaze, and that we must act immediately. But… well, how? Long at the vanguard of prescient, joined-up thinking, bestselling author and activist Ms Naomi Klein unpacks the climate breakdown’s present and potential ramifications across the inextricably intertwined political, societal, economic and ecological spheres. As for potential solutions? Ms Klein explores the transformative promise of a Green New Deal.

The recent recipient of 2018’s Nobel Prize for Literature (yes, 2018’s prize was awarded in 2019), the awarding committee commended vaunted Polish author Ms Olga Tokarczuk’s “…narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”. Sounds about right, too, for the sublime and discombobulating Flights is perhaps the most fascinating book this hack has ever read. Transportive, astonishing, a marvel. Await a sodden weekend and revel in it.

Wishing to always tell stories that are not being told, Ms Bernadine Evaristo’s intent with her eighth book was simple – to fill its pages with a multitude of multifaceted black women and non-binary characters. Happily, her bid to tilt the egregiously skewed balance of Britain’s literary output back in a decent direction resulted in a captivating piece of “fusion fiction” that follows 12 deftly drawn, loosely interconnected protagonists – and shared the Booker Prize with the aforementioned Ms Atwood.