Will AI destroy us? Why do some novels not quite work despite having all the right ingredients? Can a bad title ruin a good book? These are just some of the questions prompted by my reading this month.

Here are the books I read last month, from historical fiction to a futuristic novel and a non-fiction book about a radical solution to climate change. Pretty much everything except the present, then, which is just what I needed right…

This month, I read a dense Serbian novel, an analysis of capitalism as a snake eating its own tail, and a couple of Elizabeth Strout's latest novels.

Here's what I read this month, from a novel set in Cyprus and partly narrated by a fig tree to an exploration of the importance of disorder in cities.