busker

Ageless wit, definitive spoof on rabble-rousing journalism

First published 1938, this irreverent novel about Fleet Street and its hectic pursuit of hot news figures among so many astute readers' favorite novels, I have no hesitation listing it as mine. Waugh strikes to heart of tabloid journalism, so this gem reads as hilariously relevant today as when it first took literary London by storm.

Shy William Boot writes the Lush Places country column for the Daily Beast, ruled over by the terrifying Lord Copper whose word none of his employees dares even cast doubt on: when Copper is right, the response is "Definitely, Lord Copper", when wrong ("What's the capital of Japan? Yokohama, isn't it?"), it's "Up to a point, Lord Copper."

Boot's style is distinctly bucolic - "Feather-footed through the plushy fen passes the questing vole .." - so it's a bit of a shock when a case of mistaken identity has him chosen...

Meaty magic scurrilous exchanges

At a whacking great 1212 pages, offering 800+ actual letters, it's tantamount to cheating to have this as just one of my top ten.

I met Sir Kingsley on a number of occasions (usually in the role of party PR flack entrusted with producing the bottle of The Macallan rather than subject Sir to the standard muck everyone was imbibing, and hence risk him storming out). As Secker & Warburg's PR, I also had dealings with Amis fils, Martin, in his role as Lit Ed of the New Statesman. None of which has anything to do with my choice of this marvelous (and marvelously edited) collection of letters that I hope I will continue to dip into til my dying day.

Amis achieved fame in 1954 with his glorious first novel, Lucky Jim. His was still a generation that heeded literacy. Indeed, to let a sloppy phrase...

No psycho-babble, please - I'm British.
Gad I needed this book, and if I was sensible I'd dip into it daily. OK, so it's ostensibly about how to finesse that first meeting, but it's also a brilliant checklist on how to maintain your cool. Of course, when one's gone as long as I in blissful ignorance of others' true view, the first few attempts to get into the book are pretty damn'd painful, and the sensible instinct is to toss it in the bin as garbage intended for other less fortunate and charming types. Also, being British and accordingly silent and stiff upper-lipped about these things, I rankled at some of the more touchie-feelie phrase ... but I didn't give in. I'm by no means there - and some of my conversational volte faces in social settings amuse my pals hugely - but at least there's a...

Complete English Poems: John Donne
The great John Donne: b 1572, educ Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, secretly married to Anne More 1601 (and imprisoned by her pa-in-law two months later); ordained priest 1615 with a Doctorate of Divinity at Cambridge the aame year. Dean of St Paul's 1621, which he held til death in 1631. One of the great poets - certainly one of the most quoted and beloved love poets - of them all, and the only reading I ever did at school that I recognized at the time as lasting with me long past those grisly days. You know him well: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." "Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal...

How to Be Good
Because I crave to write like Nick Hornby, I tend to denigrate him as a heavy-weight writer, but I have to admit that he taps eternal verites in me. Katie Carr wants to be "good" - cares about Third World debt and homelessness, struggles to raise her children with a conscience. She also tries to put up with her husband, self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway, and (in my vanity) all too accurate a mirror of me. When Katie sleeps with another man, it starts what I suppose one'd call a "spiritual journey" (ugh). Whatever it is, it provoked me to thought and renewed effort to keep my own relationship(s) in better order. It's generally acknowledged that humor is difficult, written or on-stage, and yet we rarely celebrate the successes. When did a Lodge or Bradbury or Hornby win any significant prize? A story like this, that can...

A Perfect Spy

It may seem strange to list a mere espionovel as a reading to save from the flames, even one by the great John le Carré, but this such an extraodinary tale of loneliness and expertise that I have to place it among the books that have affected me most.

This is not just a linear story of how to wreak treachery from within but a brilliant study of what it takes and costs to pull it off when you're up against professionals and the slightest wrong move or document could prove fatal - not today, not tomorrow, not even next year, but some time.

Each of us dissembles to varying degrees and comes a cropper in equal degrees depending on who we're bamboozling. Le Carré has written a gripping, sad handbook for us all.

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

This excellent volume was a Father's Day gift from my Texas-born elder daughter in a last-ditch bid to save her British dad from that new rung to Inferno reserved for Il Incorrectibile.

Subtitled "Modern Tales for Our Life & Times", this may not be a book I'd wrest from the fires, but I suspect it would prove a God-send to read aloud to fend off those ghastly proponents of political correctitude that are such a pain and growing stronger under the garden gnome, Bush.

A witty intro by author James Finn Garner and a generous 13 refurbs of beloved tales from Little Red Riding Hood, The Emperor's Clothing (relevant!), The Three co-dependent goats gruff, and Cinderella, to Goldilocks, Show White, The Frog Prince, and The Pied Piper.

Dear diary ....

Blogs be damn'd. Here's four centuries of the best of the best, the most articulated tortured souls ever to scratch quill parchment, Underwood to bog paper, Olivetti to vellum.

1400 entries logging hangups, exhilaration, love lost, found and dumped.

Every time I open this lovely fat 495pp volume i find another entry to hold me enthralled.

Boundary-busting work of millennium masterpiece

Tour de force boundary-buster for the millennium I'd seen this novel around, studiously read by wired types whose social skills were amos certainly in inverse proportion to the Chinese takeaway and general grunge in their keyboards. I'd read the reviews and they clearly lacked perspective. Besides, at 900+ pages, no way was I going to bother here.

Then someone who knew me well gave me a copy to snap me out of gloom and if ever there was a literary epiphany, the 21st-century Renaissance savvy of Mr Stephenson delivered it.

Not just because I'm on disbelieving knees to Mr Stephenson's astonishing learning and tale-telling skills, I simply can't think of one aspect to latch onto as a summary.

What? Time-juggling tale that hops between 1942 Enigma-busting math genius and present-day crypto-hacker grandson messing with "data havens" in the...

Wonders of design

Visual elements on the user interface are, as Churchill described military strategy, 'All things ... always on the move simultaneously." At the heart of design is the endlessly contextual and interactive nature of visual elements.

No other book has me both dipping into for pleasure and close reading for further advancement of my own feeble grasp on design.

What a debt we owe the incomparable Edward Tufte for his Visual Display of Quantitative Information and, if I can sneak this in, the equally beautiful and informative partner, Visual & Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Decision Making (ASIN: 0961392134).

Part I covers Graphical Excellence, Graphical Integrity, and Sources of Graphical Integrity and Sophistication.

Part II gets down to business: Theory of Data Graphics: Data-ink and graphical redesign; Chartjunk: vibrations, grids and ducks; Data-in maximization and graphical design; Multifunctioning graphical elements; Data density and small multiples; and Aesthetics and technique...