Readers love book clubs because they help them to know which books are actually any good. Last year, over 4m books were published in America alone. It is an open secret in publishing that most of them are either bad or dull or both. Many titles are so dull that a prize has been set up to honour them: contenders for it have included last year’s “Self-Recognition in Fish: Exploring the Mind in Animals” as well as “The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais”. The reader needs help. Book clubs also make reading less lonely. You are never alone with a good book, as the saying has it, which is true—and nonsense. You are always alone with a good book: it is the only way to get through it. Emma Smith, a professor at Oxford University, says book clubs translate “a solitary experience…into a collective one”. Book clubs seem to be socially, financially and intellectually praiseworthy. And so naturally, some high-minded folk loathe them. In the 1920s book clubs were accused of promoting the wrong sort of books (“second-rate” sniffed one) by the wrong sort of person (“middlemen”) to the wrong sort of reader (the “middlebrow”). The “snobbery”, says Nicola Wilson, author of “Recommended!”, a book about book clubs, “goes back a long way”. Modern critics question celebrities’ motivation, their qualifications and their dedication to the literary cause. Ms Winfrey’s podcast intersperses programmes on books with programmes on “Do Dogs Really Love Us?” and on “Building a Billion-Dollar Brand”. Celebrities, critics say, are just Building That Brand. They are less reading books than accessorising with them on Instagram. In one snap Ms Lipa licks her teeth while holding a copy of Ms Atwood’s biography (typical quote: “Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies?”). Some of this criticism is bunk. Books do not demand a monkish devotion from those who work with them: T.S. Eliot worked in a bank; Anthony Trollope worked for the Post Office. Much of this criticism is old-fashioned intellectual snobbery, as if celebrities are incapable of taxing intellectual endeavour. In 1955, when Marilyn Monroe posed reading James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, the image spawned astonishment, articles and a decades-long debate. As one article put it: was “she actually reading it?”
That being said, certain criticisms seem justified. Some of the celebrities— like Ms Lipa—seem to be promoting books that they genuinely read and love (even if they show that love a little oddly on Instagram). Ms Witherspoon is witty and clever in her choices. Others are effortfully worthy: in her thankfully erstwhile book club, Emma Watson of “Harry Potter” fame offered drivel about “journeys” and tips on “empowering!” books about feminism. Book clubs, it is true, can be irritating. They are also a little paradoxical. Reading rates are declining rapidly, everywhere. Yet there are podcasts about reading, campaigns about reading and handwringing books about reading. The public seems simultaneously unable to start reading—or to stop banging on about it. Perhaps, instead of listening to people talk about books, you should enjoy books the old-fashioned way. Sit down. Open a book. And silently enjoy it. ■ For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/05/07/many-celebrities-now-have-book-clubs- most-are-irritating
What is Elon Musk’s formula? A historian and a technology writer uncover the essence of “Muskism” May 7th 2026 LOVE HIM or loathe him, Elon Musk is hard to avoid. The world’s richest man is poised to float the world’s most valuable startup on the stockmarket. Just as Henry Ford provided the template for 20th-century capitalism, known as Fordism, Mr Musk offers one for the 21st. That is the thesis advanced by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff in “Muskism”, an illuminating book that examines where Mr Musk came from and the episodes that shaped his worldview. In many ways it is the inverse of Walter Isaacson’s authorised biography of 2023. Despite the lack of direct access to Mr Musk, the authors provide a portrait of his psyche that is arguably more revealing.
Mr Musk grew up in apartheid-era South Africa, a country that saw itself as a citadel of white civilisation on a black continent, and used technology to divide and control. As a teenager the young Mr Musk, who had become enamoured with computers, moved to Canada to avoid military service, and then to America. But “Apartheid South Africa came along like a spore in his luggage,” the authors write. What they call the “fortress futurism” of his youth shaped his attitude to technology, and its symbiotic relationship with the state. As the dotcom boom kicked off in the mid-1990s, many techies saw themselves as breaking free from state control—even though the internet had originated as a government project. Mr Musk’s first startup, Zip2, fused business listings with existing digital maps built using GPS satellites, another government system. Rather than escaping from the government, Mr Musk built a business using the infrastructure it had provided: what the authors call “state symbiosis”. Zip2 never made a profit, but he sold it for $307m. After the dotcom crash Mr Musk founded SpaceX and pivoted to building rockets. Space was another area where the government had started the ball rolling, but was opening up to private firms. George W. Bush’s administration was keen to outsource all kinds of state functions to private contractors. Mr Musk brought tech-industry thinking to the rocket business, and pushed the government to award contracts through competitive bidding. SpaceX took off with the help of government contracts, and ended up taking on functions—such as carrying astronauts to the space station—previously performed by the state. Mr Musk’s other big company, Tesla, also presented itself as anti- establishment even as it grew with the help of government loans and subsidies. Mr Musk pushed electric cars as a way to reduce both carbon emissions and dependency on oil from the Middle East. Tesla’s solar panels and giant batteries offer resilience against power outages and high energy prices. Its vertically integrated model (making its own batteries, for example), and establishment of a factory in China, protect it from trade shocks. It has also benefited from what the authors call “attention alchemy”—Mr Musk’s prowess at turning social-media engagement into business value: “The first meme stock wasn’t GameStop but Tesla.” In a
warming, fragmenting, doomscrolling world, it is by far the most valuable carmaker. The essence of Muskism, then, is a business empire in symbiosis with the state. Mr Musk’s firms provide crucial government services, and not just for America. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-internet service, is vital to Ukraine’s war effort, granting him extraordinary political influence for a private individual. In recent years he has intervened in politics explicitly, by buying Twitter (now called X) and shifting it rightwards, and offering support to right-wing parties around the world. In 2025 he assumed a political post when Donald Trump put him in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to slim down the government. The methods that served Mr Musk well in business have not transferred to politics. Mr Musk left DOGE in May 2025, having achieved little except to cripple some government departments and demoralise others. That, the authors argue, was the point, and Mr Musk was set up to take the blame. After years of co-opting the state to achieve his ends, the roles were reversed. He has bounced back quickly. Long a proponent of AI, Mr Musk has merged his social-media and AI firms into SpaceX, turning it into the world’s most valuable startup. He has promised data centres in orbit and satellite factories on the Moon. These developments came too late to be included in the book, but they fit neatly into the framework it provides. For students of modern capitalism, the resulting book is, you might say, a Musk-read. ■ For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/05/07/what-is-elon-musks-formula
Turn on, tune in, trust no one: the paranoid style captures TV Conspiracy thrillers are the favourite genre of a distrustful age May 7th 2026 Cold-callers might be fraudsters and emails could be phishing scams. Dotted lines of dirty money connect venal Westerners with hostile powers. When a gunman tries to storm a presidential dinner, half the internet thinks it’s a hoax. Nothing and no one can be trusted, it may seem—not in real life and, these days, definitely not on TV. For just as this is a heyday of conspiracism, it is becoming a golden age of conspiracies on television. The villains of crime shows and thrillers have traditionally been terrorists, mobsters and serial killers. Now they are likely to be dodgy cops, double agents and corrupt politicians. The danger is