Hygge died a snuggly, comfy death

Like the light of a cosy candle in a Scandinavian winter, the much-marketed concept of hygge flickered out of popularity this year. Was it replaced by lagom, the Swedish concept of living with just enough, as this Elle article predicted? Well, there are certainly a host of lagom-focused titles out there, in appealingly muted jackets, but we’re told that the next “breaking lifestyle trend” will be the Scottish concept of coorie or còsagach in old Gaelic, which means snug or cosy. Gabriella Bennett’s The Book of Coorie is out next autumn, and “explores Scottishness and coorie through homes and interiors, the way we live, traditions, and what makes us feel good”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The children’s book joke grew old ... Five on Brexit Island.

Humour died, too – but unicorns are alive and well

This festive season, we’re not finding ourselves particularly tickled by the Ladybird and Famous Five pastiches that have done so well in recent years, with neither making bestseller charts this week. Instead, the “giftier” titles picking up sales in the lead-up to Christmas include two unicorn books – the Where’s Wally-esque Where’s the Unicorn? (“Follow a colourful blessing of globetrotting unicorns as they gallop around the world on an incredible whistle-stop tour”), and, hitting trend after trend on the nose, the unicorn colouring book, Keep Calm and Colour Unicorns (“There’s nothing like a unicorn to give life some colour”).

We returned to nature...

Exemplified by Robert Macfarlane’s The Lost Words, Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees and Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows, 2017 saw readers celebrate the wonders and mysteries of the natural world. All three titles were hugely popular, along with …

Supernatural thrills

Domestic suspense – those tales of creepy goings-on in the home a la Before I Go to Sleep and The Girl on the Train – was still going strong in 2017, but the paranormal has started to creep in as 2018 looms, led by Sarah Pinborough’s smash hit Behind Her Eyes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Goldeneyes to the right … Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.

Faceless women are out, goldeneyes are in

Amazon.com has spotted a few trends in book cover art this year, all of which are decided improvements on the faceless woman obsession of a few years back. There have been a spate of flame-backed jackets, including David Lagercrantz’s latest Lisbeth Salander thriller, The Girl Who Takes An Eye for An Eye, and Anita Shreve’s The Stars Are Fire. Then there’s the “misty blue and bold hand lettering” seen on George Saunders’s Booker winner Lincoln in the Bardo, a look that took off this year, as did the use of painted typography, seen on the likes of John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down. Amazon also spotted a trend it’s calling “goldeneyes”: an image of an unsmiling face, obscured by the book’s title.

Serial killers love playing cards

As identified (by me) in the Bookseller, there were three thrillers out, in November alone, in which a serial killer left a playing card on their victim’s body, in order (we assume) to tantalise the detective with whom they are in a cat-and-mouse situation: James Patterson’s Murder Games, PJ Tracy’s Nothing Stays Buried, and Elly Griffiths’ The Blood Card. Snap!

Medical insiders revealed the best – and worst – of healthcare

Adam Kay’s diaries of a junior doctor, This Is Going to Hurt, was named book of the year by the British public – but we’ve also seen fellow junior doctor Rachel Clarke’s Your Life in My Hands, ambulance driver Kit Wharton’s Emergency Admissions, and heart surgeon Stephen Westaby’s Fragile Lives.

At least we all know how to make fires now

And in tune with the bleak state of news in 2017, writing about surviving in the wild had a good year. Books on fire-making lit a spark among readers: author Sally Coulthard says that her The Little Book of Building Fires sold out its first run in just three weeks. Then there was Daniel Hume’s The Art of Fire and Paul Heiney’s Playing With Fire, as well as Bear Grylls’s How to Stay Alive (a “survival guide for any situation”), David Scarfe’s The Wild Book (“outdoor activities to unleash your inner child”) and Daniel Beard’s Do It Yourself Bushcraft. Whether this is due to the threat of impending nuclear war or the surprise success of Lars Mytting’s guide to chopping and stacking wood, Norwegian Wood in 2015, it’s hard to say.