Field Notes From a Catastrophe
Elizabeth Kolbert
Kolbert talks to the scientists who really know what’s going on with our planet, and her conclusions are devastating. A scrupulous, elegant, frightening book.

Samaritan
Richard Price
All of Richard Price’s novels are brilliantly plotted and utterly convincing. This is as gripping as his best, with an ethical dimension thrown in for nothing.

Brilliant Orange
David Winner
A clever, erudite, imaginative book about… football. Yes, it can be done, but you have to be as original a thinker as David Winner.

This Boy’s Life
Tobias Wolff
Funny, moving and entirely without self-pity, this book taught a whole generation of writers how to approach autobiography.

Sweet Soul Music
Peter Guralnick
This was one of the all-time top five favourites of Rob Fleming, narrator of High Fidelity, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. Definitive.

Scenes From a Revolution
Mark Harris
The sharpest book about the movie-making process that I’ve ever read. And like all the best non-fiction, it’s about a lot more than its apparent subject.

Naples ‘44
Norman Lewis
Hilarious, tragic, surreal – a great travel writer’s non-fiction version of Catch 22.

What Good are the Arts?
John Carey
This book, together with the equally brilliant The Intellectuals and the Masses, should help to remove all those stubborn and lazy prejudices you’ve been having trouble with.

Spies
Michael Frayn
A moving, simple, clever, layered novel about the topography of childhood. Michael Frayn is a national treasure and this is, in my opinion, his best book.

Birds of America
Lorrie Moore
I know, I know, you don’t like short stories. How can I convince you that Lorrie Moore’s are as rewarding and as memorable as just about any novel you hold dear?

The Child That Books Built
Francis Spufford
An awe-inspiringly intelligent memoir about our first contact with books – what they did to us, and why they did it.

A Complicated Kindness
Miriam Toews
A fresh, quirky fictional voice, telling us about a community of which we know nothing. What else do you need from contemporary fiction?

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