To escape the stresses and strains of adulting, more people are choosing to rekindle their love for childhood toys, games and pastimes

A growing number of adult enthusiasts are rediscovering their love for Lego, helping to fuel a surge in sales that has increased the Danish toymaker’s revenues by 21%.

But Lego isn’t the only childhood pastime people are returning to. We spoke to people who have rediscovered old hobbies about what drew them back. For some, returning to an old pastime offers an escape from the pressures of adult life, while for others it is a chance to reconnect with a younger version of themselves.

Hating The Apprentice? Bored silly of House of the Dragon? Given up on your favourite soap opera after 50 years? Guardian readers share the shows they can’t bear to watch

We loved this show for the first four or five seasons. It had a really good mix of candidates, different ages and walks of life. I think it was after season nine that we started to feel the programme was losing its authenticity. Contestants started to look like homogenous Love Islanders, all the same demographic – 20-30 age bracket, highly polished body image, eye on a post-show influencer career, etc. It lost its uniqueness and became just another reality show. Ngaire Vine, 56, Derbyshire

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I’ve been enjoying Contrapposto by Dave Eggers. The premise that love and art are the only things that make life worthwhile pulses beautifully through this novel and its two protagonists, spanning decades of their obsession with both, and each other. The tragedy is they are not sufficient alone for a relationship to survive to the exclusion of everything else (namely capitalism, which always has a place at the table), but they remain essential and enduring. Nowhere is this better evoked than here. Think John Williams’s Stoner but with art instead of literature and stuffed with more memorable characters.

From influencers gone (really, really) bad and the outrageous Joe Exotic to the greatest reveal in television history – here are Guardian readers’ favourite real-life documentaries and whodunnits

I watched the BBC’s Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared when it came out and Damien Nettles, its subject, still pops up in my mind sometimes. It’s a comprehensive, empathetic and gripping investigation into a case I had never heard of. The Serial/Making a Murderer-style approach of showing the investigation, rather than just presenting information, gives the series a much more human angle. I thought it might turn up new evidence; that level of faith in the work being shown is a testament to how thorough it was. AJ, Devon, UK

Max Porter, Daisy Johnson, Avni Doshi and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I recently read Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot. It’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read about what it means to live with others, or decide not to; what we owe the people we love, the natural world, and ourselves. I also really enjoyed Robert Frost, by Robert Frost and Stacy Skolnik. It’s not that Robert Frost; it’s an itinerant young American Robert Frost who jots down his thoughts and observations on homelessness, food, value, music, drugs, the philosophical wastelands of contemporary life, and Stacy Skolnik has turned them into these delightful, oddly profound, poems. Also, coming soon, End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. Everyone should read it. It tells us exactly what’s going on.

After the Guardian’s music critics chose their best of the half-year, we asked you for your picks – from Brian Jackson and Arlo Parks to Maya Hawke, Flea and more

• The best albums of 2026 so far
• ‘I saw it seven times in the cinema’: readers’ favourite films of 2026 so far

The album is a fun, punchy dance record that will definitely be the soundtrack of my summer. It’s propulsive, full of queer joy, cheeky lyricism, and relatable insecurities as they ruminate on “being past their prime” as pop stars in their early 30s. It will undoubtedly be an amazing live show and is a testament to the importance of artists taking breaks, going out and living and resting before coming back with new things to say and experiences to detail. Jane Tytla, New England, US

Candice Carty-Williams, Patrick Freyne and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I just finished reading Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam. I absolutely adored this book, a fantastic combination of violence and vulnerability set on Manchester’s Curry Mile. I became completely attached to the three main boys, and I loved all of the perspective shifts to different characters throughout the book. I fully weeped at the end – it was an unexpected but completely understandable ending. 10/10, everyone should read this.

Queenie Is Working on It is published on 2 July by Trapeze. To support the Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com.

Never mind leftovers – some dogs will eat anything, from electrics to wasps’ nests. We asked you to tell us about your pets’ most radical experiments in off-menu dining

I adopted my brother’s middle-aged westie, Maggie. She did tend to eat anything unattended, but usually leaned towards actual food. One memorable day, I came home to a living room carpet covered in what appeared to be termite mounds. Maggie had consumed about a kilo of chinchilla bathing sand and a second course of sanitary towels (the ones with wings). The latter contained some kind of absorbent gel, which made the vomit sculptures impressively solid – the vet who checked her afterwards (Maggie was remarkably unaffected, and certainly did not learn any lesson) remarked that it was something of a miracle that she threw it up. If not for my carpet. Fiona, 56, works for a non-profit research institute, Fulford, North Yorkshire

I have a partially sighted two-year-old red fox labrador and a more matronly five-year-old black lab. I have a long daily commute and my dogs come with me. There wasn’t space for a cage that was big enough for both labs in the boot of my small hatchback, meaning they had free access to the whole boot during our two hours on the road. Last year, the younger one, with possible assistance, ate up all the electrics she could get to, pulling them out from under the back seat. She also ate the floor of the boot, the polystyrene around the spare tyre and the backing of the back seats. All done in relative silence during our drive until the car suddenly stopped in the middle of the road as I was driving out of a car park one morning, with all the warning lights flashing. The entire car had to be rewired, costing around £8,000. Thank goodness for comprehensive car insurance. She is no longer allowed to travel in the boot unless she’s in her cage and, thankfully, nothing she ate needed advanced veterinary attention. Rebecca, 51, veterinary surgeon and researcher, Norway

Francis Spufford, Manish Chauhan and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I’ve been reading a very short book by Claire Baglin, translated by Jordan Stump, On the Clock. Set on the edge of somewhere in Brittany, all run-down blocks, dual carriageways and drive-in eateries, it’s a dark, sometimes funny story of a working-class family and a young woman starting work in a fast-food restaurant. Through a few short scenes we get a real insight into the quotidian soullessness of the work.

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Lately I’ve been going back to read some classic works that I had, in my zany life-arc, missed, in the (selfish) hope of opening up new frequencies in my work. So: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (the zaniness seems to lack agenda and yet still says something big and political); then on to Speak, Memory by Nabokov, newly reminded that language alone (dense, beautiful) can power the reader along; and, coming soon, The Power Broker by Robert A Caro – a real ambition-inspirer, I’m imagining, in its scale and daring.

From baked beans with a Gujarati twist to billowing Yorkshire pudding with bramley apples, Guardian readers share the dishes that have connected their families across the generations

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A few years ago, I bought my mother a notebook for her recipes. It was a weighty, leather-bound affair that could act as a vault for all the vivid stews, slow-cooked beans and many other family specialities – the secrets of which existed only in her head. Although the gift has basically been a failure (bar a lengthy WhatsApp message detailing her complex jollof rice methodology, she still has an allergy to writing down cooking techniques or quantities), I think the impulse behind it is sound and highly relatable. Family recipes are a form of time travel. An act of cultural preservation that connects us deeply to people we may not have met and places we may not have visited.

Those realities shine through in this week’s gathered compendium of heirloom recipes submitted by readers. Baked beans given a Gujarati twist. An Atlantic-hopping riff on spinach and feta pie. A billowing yorkshire pudding with sticky bramley apples in its base. All of these preparations, particularly when a recipe for anything is a mere tap away, point to the power of human connection and the ingenuity of domestic chefs. And perhaps the best thing about ancestral culinary approaches is that they can be passed from one clan to another, living on even as they are adapted and evolve.

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Ever since my father presented me with a copy of The Unicorn, beautifully translated into my mother tongue, I have been an ardent admirer of Iris Murdoch’s. I went on to read all of her novels, plays and poetry with great enthusiasm. Before Christmas, I returned to her penultimate novel, The Green Knight, having remembered very little of it. Yet from the very first page, I was reminded why I have always loved her work so deeply: the prose is rich, precise, disciplined and meticulously detailed; the many characters are so vividly rendered that none appears two-dimensional; each experiences and processes reality in a way that feels distinct and unmistakably individual; and the pacing of events feels perfectly judged. Although the novel is threaded with philosophical reflections on goodness and love, these never feel laboured or artificially imposed. Rather, they emerge naturally as an integral part of the novel’s dense and intricate tapestry.

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I finally got round to Thoreau’s Journal. It is determinedly down-to-earth and soaring, lyrical and belligerent, humane and cantankerous. Walt Whitman thought Thoreau suffered from “a very aggravated case of superciliousness”, but as Walt also said (of himself) the Journal of this brooding, solitary figure is great; it “contains multitudes.”

Homework by Geoff Dyer is published by Canongate (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson is published by Cassava Republic. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Erik Satie Three Piece Suite by Ian Penman is a daring and endlessly inventive portrait of the iconoclastic composer. Penman’s skill lies in his total disregard for tired cliches and tropes of music criticism, while perfectly combining the highbrow and the lowbrow – a digression on Les Dawson shows why he might just be our greatest writer on music.

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite is published by Atlantic (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.