The big idea: Is it your personality, or a disorder?

Psychological diagnoses offer an easy way in to understanding character – but our habit of using them comes at a cost

The Joy of Small Things by Hannah Jane Parkinson review – a compendium of delights

The Guardian writer’s collection of her columns is a droll and open-hearted bite-size read

Jimmy Carr on booze, taxes and being a virgin at 26: ‘Do I sound like an incel elder?’

The controversial comic’s new book is a surprising mix of memoir and self-help. Has having a baby softened his edges? He talks about depression, anxiety, punching down and his friend Sean Lock

A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century review – self-help laced with pseudoscience

Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein attempt to show how human nature is at odds with modern society, but their science, and style, grates

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman review – a brief treatise on time

A sage and sane theory of ‘time unmanagement’ exhorts us to stop chasing the seconds and embrace the joy of missing out

Can ‘smart thinking’ books really give you the edge?

Trust your gut, boost your memory, de-bias your decision making… can we train our brains to perform better?

Inflamed by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel review – modern medicine’s racial divide

The colonial legacy of healthcare is laid bare in an urgent study of how medicine has progressed – and who has been left behind

Through the Looking Glasses by Travis Elborough review – the spectacular life of spectacles

From Henry VIII on his charger to the sex symbol Michael Caine, this close-up history of glasses illuminates their special kind of cool

Spike by Jeremy Farrar and Anjana Ahuja; and Vaxxers by Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green – review

Two urgent and fascinating accounts from the frontlines show how scientists succeeded, and failed, at saving us from Covid-19

This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan review – the trip of a lifetime

This fascinating insight into our relationship with mind-altering plants weaves personal experimentation with cultural history