Showing 1-16 of 18 Results.
A captivating biography that reveals Sweden’s greatest writer as a peculiarly lovable polymath.
John Banville - 18/06/2012 |
Even though he didn't actually write it himself, the voice and vernacular are all Keith. Particularly fascinating when describing London after the war.
Dylan Jones - 24/07/2012 |
As with Easton Ellis, I could have put any number of Dahl’s novels on this list – The Witches, Matilda, Danny The Champion Of The World – but this second part of his autobiography (which started with Boy) is utterly joyous. It’s as fantastic and funny and weird and thrilling as any of his fiction, taking in lions, snakes, fighters planes, deserts, and a cast of characters as eccentric as he’s ever had to play with. It’s completely delightful.
Will Hill - 15/03/2012 |
I recently took part in a 48-hour continuous live reading of Stein’s The Making of Americans in Brooklyn, New York. I thought I’d hate reading her aloud, but in fact the section I got was really beautiful. So then I picked this up off my 'should have read it 20 years ago' pile. And it’s so funny and thrilling. What a house they ran together, and what amazing people passed through it: Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Hemingway, Fitzgerald!
Zadie Smith - 10/08/2012 |
The writer recalls his time in Paris in the 1920s, in the company of other expat writers such as F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.
Barry Fantoni - 11/06/2012 |
I've been meaning to read this one for a decade. It’s described in a blurb as "A non-fiction Middlemarch of the underclass" – I don’t think I can do much better than that. Concerning a large, chaotic family in the Bronx during the 1990s, it’s an honest account of street life – from drug dealing to child-rearing. Ms LeBlanc spent ten years embedded, interviewing, living with her subjects, listening to them. An extraordinary feat of research and patience. Reading it you are realize that class is a cocoon and you have absolutely zero idea how anybody else is living. I think this book is a masterpiece.
Zadie Smith - 10/08/2012 |
As zippy and as zingy as one of Sammy Davies Jr's stage routines, full of extraordinary anecdotes. What great fun!
Dylan Jones - 24/07/2012 |
Dylan dips in and out of his own life as though he is calling up clips on Youtube and then writing the back story for them almost as an afterthought. Magnificent. Why can't we have one every Christmas?
Dylan Jones - 24/07/2012 |
Also recommended in reference by David Mitchell
David Mitchell - 11/03/2011 |
Wellum was the youngest pilot to take part in the Battle of Britain - he was just 19. This book, written decades afterwards, is for me the most honest and vivid to come out of those epic weeks in the late summer of 1940. His direct writing style places you in the cockpit alongside the boy he once was.
Richard Madeley - 07/06/2013 |
His illustrations of birds in field guides have always had an unrivalled sense of animation, movement and characteristic jizz. This volume is a selection of his field sketches and watercolours which display his mastery in conveying fleeting impressions of moving subjects in changing light and weather conditions: instants of perception. There are also very intelligent diary notes and commentary.
Jeremy Mynott - 13/03/2012 |
Raymond Briggs; Raymond Briggs I don't think I've ever read this book without my eyes tearing up. How Briggs manages to impart such feeling and generosity towards his parents in this deeply moving and heartfelt yet never overly sentimental memoir amazes me. It reminds me a little in its after-effects of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," though the two works are otherwise completely different. It will make you care more deeply about life and the people you live it with, which is about the best one can say about anything.
Chris Ware - 02/10/2012 |
Wendy Moore; Brenda Kimber David Mitchell writes - Moore has a historian's respect both for the past and for her colourful (and blood-spattered) subject - a founding father of modern surgery - but she also has a novelist's knack at (re)creating a world and framing a narrative within it, peopled with ambiguous heroes and complex villains. (If you enjoy this, try her new one, 'Wedlock'.)
David Mitchell - 11/03/2011 |
Stefan Zweig; Anthea Bell Zweig died by his own hand in Brazil in 1942 and was for a long time almost forgotten, though his books are now enjoying a renaissance. This luminous memoir is one of his best.
John Banville - 18/06/2012 |
A sparkling memoir of the author’s return to the Sri Lanka of his youth. With gorgeous prose, Ondaatje explores the impossibility of regaining the past, and the wistful satisfaction one can take in thus reinventing it. A book I keep rereading.
Teju Cole - 12/09/2012 |
Emmett Grogan; Peter Coyote Not technically a music book, but includes wonderfully evocative passages about the Diggers and the original Haight Asbury scene. By some distance the best book about the original hippie "vibe".
Dylan Jones - 24/07/2012 |