RECOMMENDED READING


Aharon Appelfeld, Badenheim 1939, trans. Dalya Bilu (1980). Something between a parable and history.

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (1999). The greatest anthology of anything (everything) ever.


William Cowper, Selected Poems (1984). Pronounced ‘Cooper’. Hymn writer and poet.

John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916). Philosophy of education; educational philosophy.

Willem Elsschot, Cheese, trans. Paul Vincent (first published 1933; English edition 2003). Short comic novel about cheese (Edam).

William Fiennes, The Snow Geese (2002). Natural history.

W.S. Graham, Selected Poems (1996). On silence &c.

T.E. Hulme, Selected Writings, ed. Patrick McGuinness (1998). Proto-modernist.

Michael Innes, Appleby’s End (1945). Booksy crime.

Humphrey Jennings, Pandaemonium (1985). English equivalent of Benjamin’s Arcades Project (see ‘B’ above).

Harry Kemelman, The Rabbi David Small mystery series. The title of the series is self-explanatory.

Sven Lindqvist, Bench Press, trans. Sarah Death (2003). Body-building.

Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academe (1952). Satire.

John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864). Spiritual autobiography.

Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke, I Could Read the Sky (1997). Threnody.

Tim Parks, Adultery and Other Diversions (1998). Essays as good as – if not almost better – than his fiction.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Oxford Book of English Prose (1923). Available in all good (second-hand) bookshops.

Gillian Rose, Love’s Work (1995). Philosophical autobiography.

Richard Stark, Point Blank (first published as The Hunter,1962). Existentialism minus the philosophy, plus guns.

Antonio Tabbuchi, Declares Pereira, trans. Patrick Creagh (1995). Moral fable.

Fred Uhlman, Reunion (1971). Another moral fable. With autobiographical elements.

Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Sociology?

Charles Willeford, Pick-Up (1955). Classic American noir.

There is no ‘X’.

Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (1966). Ancient memory systems.

Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home (1997). Meditation on music and art.