For high-octane reading pleasure, you can’t beat a Jack Reacher book. It’s impossible to choose just one, but Tripwire puts the squeeze on from the first page and slowly tightens until you can’t breathe. Philip Pullman and Antonia Fraser are fans too.
Moira Young - 09/08/2012 |
Johanna Spyri; Eva Ibbotson HEIDI: Heidi is responsible for many a late-night under-the-covers reading session when I was a child. I admired her compassion for her invalid friend, Clara and her naïve flirting with Peter, the goat herd. It’s the first book I remember where I was completely taken up by the story. I even refused to go to school one morning, claiming to be sick and demanding to be sent to Switzerland! For me, it’s stood the test of time and I still love it.
Sara Sheridan - 19/06/2012 |
Allan Ahlberg; Janet Ahlberg I could pretty much be happy with any Janet and Allan Ahlberg book here, and in fact I’ve just spent a very pleasant hour sat on the floor reading a selection out loud to myself (it’s one of the perks of my job!) I could have chosen any Jolly Postman, and Burglar Bill came close, but in the end I chose Cops and Robbers because I couldn’t resist Grandma Swag . . . who could?
‘Hallo, hallo,’ said Officer Pugh,
‘Now then, what’s going on here?’
‘Not much, young man,’
Said the criminal gran,
‘We’re just having a robbery, dear.’
I was quite glad she got away!
Emily Gravett - 10/11/2011 |
Raymond Queneau; Barbara Wright The Oulipo founder tells a quotidian story of watching a man get involved in an altercation on a bus and later receiving advice about his overcoat, in ninety-nine different ways.
Barry Fantoni - 11/06/2012 |
Marguerite Yourcenar; Paul Bailey;... in this book the Emperor Hadrian comes fully to life as an intellectual, sensualist and wielder of authority. An unforgettable portrait of a mind at work.
Teju Cole - 12/09/2012 |
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 |
Hunter S. Thompson; Ralph Steadman This is pure adrenaline- (and other substances) fuelled literary chaos – the pinnacle of Thompson’s gonzo style that he developed as a journalist for Rolling Stone. It’s theoretically an account of he and his lawyer attending a motorcycle race in Las Vegas, but in reality it’s nothing less than an anarchic, mind-bending peek inside the carnage that Thompson caused wherever he went, full of bad people and worse drugs, hallucinations and violence and destruction, described in some of the most distinctive prose ever committed to a page by a true literary genius. Completely indispensable.
Will Hill - 15/03/2012 |
Francois Rabelais; M.A. Screech Written in the 16th century, before the novel form was domesticated, this book contains everything - bodily humor, philosophical digression, brutality, satire. While reading it, you’re convinced it’s the best thing ever written by anyone.
Teju Cole - 12/09/2012 |
Michel de Montaigne; M.A. Screech You can just dip in at any point and find some thing essential. Heavy to carry around, though. One for the e-reader?
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 |
Glorious wit, knife-edge plotting, and a use of language which puts most writers to shame.
Nick Harkaway - 25/01/2013 |
Also recommended in reference by David Mitchell
David Mitchell - 11/03/2011 |
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 |
James Joyce; Hans Walter Gabler MOLLY BLOOM: Joyce’s creation from Ulysses, Molly Bloom is quite simply the most sensuous woman in literature. Married to Leopold Bloom, she starts an affair with Hugh ‘Blazes’ Boylan. Molly’s bawdy stream of consciousness opens the book though I find myself going back to read just that passage again and again. Joyce allegedly based Molly’s character on his wife Nora Barnacle, which I find particularly fascinating (was he Leopold or Hugh, I wonder?)
Sara Sheridan - 19/06/2012 |
This is a humorous classic that is largely ignored today but which is still as amusing as it was when it was first published. It has a classic first line, never since equalled.
Alexander McCall Smith - 28/07/2011 |
The magnificent twenty-volume OED stands on my shelves, a monument to the English language, but Chambers sits on my desk, ready to hand, the tool of a workman.
John Banville - 18/06/2012 |