I’d very much like y’all to offer me some recommendations for reading, please – just an author’s name and perhaps a suggestion of the first of their books you think I should read – and so, partly just to give you an idea of the kinds of books I enjoy, and partly because I’d like to offer you some recommendations in return, here’s a selectionette of some of my very favourite books:

Use of Weapons Iain Banks
You’d probably want to have sex with me if I said that my favourite writer was Camus or Chekhov, but for me it’s Banksy every time. Yes, this is sci-fi, but ignore the label; it just gives Banks the chance to work against a different – and awesome – backdrop. This is simply a classic yarn, told with conviction and flair. My copy is well thumbed; it’s one of the few books I can happily re-read, and it’s worth buying just to see the craft of storytelling practised so well. The fact that he shares a surname and beard with one of MacUser’s illustrious columnists and all-round dudes just makes him all the more rockin’.

A David Lodge Trilogy David Lodge
The thing that Lodge does so well is to get you inside the heads of his characters and show you their motivations and neuroses. The clever bit, though, it that he usually alternates between different characters and sometimes an omniscient narrator, so you get to see how a situation looks from different perspectives. OK, not ‘clever’, but at least ‘well done’. Get the trilogy – ostensibly about the world of academia – as you have the added bonus of some characters popping up as cameos in later books. They’re described as the current characters see them, but because you’ve known them from earlier books, you know the stories behind these impressions. It’s basically fiction for nosey people, but done with gentle wit and a kind of very British understated panache.

The Science of Discworld II Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
I’ve given up pretending that I’m too cool to like Pratchett. And besides, at their best his books can be very well-done satire and parody with all the power they have to make you see reality in a different and often more illuminating way. But if the sheer silliness of the Discworld has put you off up to now, try this. Every second chapter is a pretty normal Pratchett tale – featuring the wizards of Unseen University – but alternating with these is a bit of pop science, explaining how the mind works, concepts of phase space, and why storytelling is so important to us as a species. The fiction and fact weave together very well – Christ knows how, logistically, the three authors got everything so neat – and each leavens the other.

And because I can’t stop at just three, you should also check out The Road to McCarthy – the man can out-Bryson Bryson – Raymond Chandler – yes, his books sound like they’re being narrated by Frank Drebin – and anything by David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs or Kyril Bonfiglioli. And now, I have to go and pack for our Carrie-Bradshaw-meets-Jack-Kerouac-meets-Tom-and-Barbara weekend away in London. Oh, and bonus props to anyone who can complete the line that’s the title for this post without Googling it.

Now it’s your turn, dudes and dudettes: I need new books to read!

Wanky disclaimer All the links to books on Amazon contain my affiliate link. (Was that even necessary?)