Mick Clifford: Put away the phones and lose yourself in these four books from 2025

Getting stuck into a book has never been more important

Hopefully, these books are to your taste, but if not go out and buy another book, sit down and escape into another world for an hour or two, phoneless. File photo: Alamy/PA

It’s the time of year when this column performs its societal duty and recommends what we like to call bukes. 

Reading is not what it used to be. I haven’t seen deep research but I’d bet my phone that attention spans right across every demographic have been squeezed in the age of scrolling and algorithms.