by Nobuko Albery

A touching story of religion, politics, theatre, people and love set in 14th-century Japan.

Zeami, boyish and ethereally beautiful, is as heir to the House of Kanzé introduced to the strict disciplines of Japanese noh theatre in a world of rivalry, hatred, and betrayal.

Graham Greene wrote:

It is splendid ... a remarkable novel.

Highly recommended.

by Benjamin Anastas

The story of William who was the first born of identical twins. That, however, was the last time in his life he was going to be first in anything. About growing up with the ability but not the will to succeed:

Underachieving: A Theory

1. Alone in an age of increasing competition and diminished possibilities, the underachiever, when faced with doing battle, will forfeit rather than draw blood in the modern arena. He is powerless, and deliberately weak.

2. The underachiever is misanthropic by default. He will use negativity as his greatest weapon, and reserves the right to criticize all that is exalted in both secular and religious society. He lives at a calculated distance from the mainstream, longing secretly to be included, while at the same time voicing his contempt for those who play by the rules, that is, achievers of the garden variety, and especially his nemesis, the overachiever.

3. Rather than saying "Yes, yes" to life, the underachiever will say "No, thank you." If pressed, he will turn belligerent.

4. Underachievers are not to be confused with younger, slower brothers of southern presidents, like Billy Carter, and Roger Clinton [a late addition-Ed.]. The gentlemen do the best with whatever genetic leftovers they've been given, while the underachiever is entrusted with a master key to opportunity's home office, and misplaced it.

5. If the underachiever were a mixed drink, he would be a dry martini, one part obscurity (vermouth), three parts unhappiness (gin).

Highly recommended.

by Aristotle

Historically one of the most significant works in the philosophy of morals and still relevant to modern man.

The Nicomachean Ethics is also much more readable than for instance The Categories and Physics.

An ok read.

City of Glass

Ghosts

The Locked Room

by Paul Auster

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

Three stories on the nature of identity. Paul Auster's commercial breakthrough. It is somewhat strange that this book should be a bestseller. The stories are strange and the people even stranger.

Literary Review wrote: Seductive metaphysical thrillers ... As stylish, urgent, and unnerving as the best in the detective genre.

A haunting yet compelling book. Highly recommended.

by Paul Auster

My favourite Paul Auster novel and the one that I recommend for people who does not know Auster. It is a typical Auster story with strange characters that do strange things but with a more intringing story line than Auster's other books. Read this book or Leviathan first if you want to know Paul Auster without risking getting scared away.

The story is about a strange, young man in love with a chinese dancer and searching for his lost father and the meaning of life.

… ”Don’t be afraid,” my voice said [Marco Stanley Fogg]. ”No one is allowed to die more than once. The comedy will soon be over, and you’ll never have to go through it again.”

Time Out called it: phantasmagorical.

Highly recommended.

by Paul Auster

One day there is life ... and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.

A double book on fatherhood. The first part, Portrait of an Invisible Man, is Auster's memoories and feelings after the death of his father. The second part, The Book of Memory, is about Auster as a father.

Portrait of an Invisible Man is excellent and better than The Book of Memory.

Highly recommended.

by Paul Auster

The story of the gifted writer Benjamin Sachs who blows up the many copies of The Statue of Liberty that are all over America. Sachs accidently blows himself up and his best friend Peter Aaron starts investigating his life.

Probably the most accessable novel by Paul Auster.

Excellent story. Highly recommended.

by Paul Auster

Nashe is driving back and forth across America waiting for his money to run out. Not much happens until he meets Pozzi - a gambler looking for someone to finance his next great scheme. The scheme goes wrong but Nashe does not care one way or the other.

A story of a man waiting for his life to pass.

A classic Auster novel well worth reading but not among the very best.

A Chronicle of Early Failure

by Paul Auster

In my late twenties and early thirties, I went through a period of several years when everything I touched turned to failure.

The first part of the book is the story of the author as a young struggling writer. A brilliant autobiographical memoir.

”Buck up, lad,” I said, clapping his shoulder. ”Discomfort is good for you. It makes you tough.”

The book also contains three appendixes. The first is three early plays that are interesting reading by the early Auster. The second appendix is Paul Auster's story of his invention of Action Baseball - a baseball card game - and his subsequent attempts to sell his invention. The third appendix is Auster's first published novel - a detective story by Paul Benjamin. The novel was quite a surprise to me. I have never seen it in print but I actually enjoyed it more than some of Auster's later novels like Timbuktu and Mr. Vertigo.

Once you get hooked on Auster should definately get Hand to Mouth.

Highly recommended.

by Paul Auster

Essays, prefaces, and interviews by Paul Auster. The book also contains The Red Notebook.

A book about literature and coincidence. The eassays are on Frantz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Paul Celan, Knut Hamsun and Salman Rushdie among others.

… truth is stranger than fiction. What I am after, I suppose, is to write fiction as strange as the world I live in.

Excellent.

Selected Poems and Essays 1970-1979

by Paul Auster

What can one say about Paul Auster as a poet?

I am your distress, the seam

in the wall

that opens to the wind

and its stammering, storm

in the pural - this other name

you give your world: exile

in the rooms of home

Besides a selection of Auster's early poems this book also contains several essays that are also included in The Art of Hunger and Hand to Mouth.

Unless you know and love Auster's other work you should not go here. It is great, though.

by Paul Auster

I was twelve years old the first time I walked on water.

A novel of levitation, magic, and other things American. Like Timbuktu Mr. Vertigo is an elegant piece of storytelling. The story of the extraordinary childhood of Walter Claireborne Rawley who was taught the wonders of magic by master Yehudi in the late 1920's.

Not one of Auster's greatest novels but well worth reading.

by Paul Auster

Paul Auster is always a pleasure to read. He is a solid writer. It is never really a question of whether one of his novels is good or bad. It is only a question of how much it moves you.

Timbuktu is the story of Mr. Bones - a canine sidekick and confidant of a troubled poet Willy G. Christmas. A story about the world as a dog would see it.

It is a solid piece of literature but maybe it would work better if you were a dog person.

by Paul Auster

Professor David Zimmer having lost his wife and children in a plane crash is slowly drinking himself to death when he late one night watches a slient movie by forgotten comic genius Hector Mann. Zimmer isolates himself studying the films and writing a book on Hector Mann who walked out of his house in 1929 and had never been seen since.

A typical Austerian setting. A desolate man reacting to the unexpected things happening around him.

The Book of Illusions was of all languages first published in Danish. An excellent book.

by Paul Auster

The story of Sidney Orr - a writer recovering from a near fatal illness - who is about to have his life turned upside down by chance, strange events and the magic of a blue notebook.

How red the blood looked against the whiteness of the porcelain sink, I thought. How vividly imagined that color was, how aesthetically shocking. The other fluids that came out of us were dull in comparison, the palest of squirts. Whitish spittle, milky semen, yellow pee, green-brown mucus. We execreted autum and winter colors, but running invisibly through our veins, the very stuff that kept us alive, was the crimson of a mad artist - a red as briliant as fresh paint.

A typically Austerian novel.

Recommended.

by Paul Auster, Sam Messer

The story of Paul Auster's typewriter with paintings by Sam Messer.

So I held on to my old typewriter, and the 1980s became the 1990s. One by one, all my friends switched over to Macs and IBMs. I began to look like an enemy of progress, the last pagan holdout in a world of digital converts. My friends made fun of me for resisting the new ways. When they weren't calling me curmudgeon, they called me a reactionary and a stubborn old goat. I didn't care.

This is the most interesting (written) part of the book. You should only get it if you are interested in Sam Messer's paintings. They are after all quite good.

Actually more of an art book than anything else and it would be more precise to call it The Paintings of My Typewriter since there are hadly any text.

by Paul Auster

Nathan Glass recently divorced and recovering from lung cancer moves to Brooklyn to die but find him cought up in life again.

I had no idea who my neighbors were, and I didn't care. They all worked at nine-to-five jobs, none of them had any children, and therefore the building would be relatively silent. More than anything else, that was what I craved. A silent end to my sad and ridiculous life.

The Brooklyn Follies starts of typically austerian but it soon turns into something quite different - a gentle and optimistic novel, allthough it does contain some Bush and born-again bashing.

Probably Auster's worst book.

An ok read none the less.

by Paul Auster

A manuscript to the film by the same name. An earlier version of this story appears in The Book of Illusions.

I often find manuscripts disappointing. Too much is left to the imagination.

An ok read.

by Samuel Beckett

Four short stories (First Love, The Expelled, The Calmative, and The End) that Beckett first wrote in French after the Second World War. The stories are about the helpless individual consciousness.

The weather was fine. I advanced down the street, keeping as close as I could to the sidewalk. The widest sidewalk is not wide enough for me, once I set myself in motion, and I hate to inconvenience strangers. A policeman stopped me and said, The street for vehicles, the sidewalk for pedestrians. Like a bit of Old Testament. So I got back on the sidewalk, almost apologetically, and persevered there, in spite of an indescribable jostle, for a good twenty steps, til I had to fling myself to the ground to avoid crushing a child. He was wearing a little harness, I remember, with little bells, he must have taken himself for a pony, or a Clydesdale, why not. I would have crushed him gladly, I loathe children, and it would have been doing him a service, but I was afraid of reprisals. Everyone is a parent, that is what keeps you from hoping. One should reserve, on busy streets, special tracks for these nasty little creatures, their prams, hoops, sweets, skates, grandpas, grandmas, nannies, balloons and balls, all their foul little hapiness in a word. I fell then, and brought down with me an old lady covered with spangles and lace, who must have weighed about sixteen stone. Her screams soon drew a crowd. I had high hopes she had broken her femur, old ladies break their femur easily, but not enough, not enough. I took advantage of the confusion to make off, muttering unintelligible oaths, as if I were the victim, and I was, but I couldn't have proved it. They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance. I personally would lynch them with the utmost pleasure, I don't say I'd lend a hand, no, I am not a violent man, but I'd encourage the others and stand them drinks when it was done.

Enter the dark world of Samuel Beckett.

Excellent as an intro to Beckett. Highly recommended.

af Thomas Boberg

Fortællingen om Bobergs rejser fra USA til Peru gennem 20 år. Det er også fortællingen om en søgende Boberg med en mildt sagt unaturlig fascination af Peyote.

Det var godt at møde dem, sluttede den første, og glem nu ikke at skrive om ensomheden. Den der slår ihjel.

Bogen er egentlig udmærket skrevet, men den er for lang, og den bliver derfor ret ensforming.

by Charles Bukowski

A collection of short stories published in his weekly column in a newspaper, Open City, in the late 60's. Bukowski was given free hands by John Bryan and was able to write without "the tenseness or the careful carving with a bit of a dull blade" that was normally needed.

exit guard and prisoner. king leans forward, grins evilly as Vaughn Williams comes on over the intercom. outside, the world moves forward as a lice-smitten dog pisses against a beautiful lemon tree vibrating in the sun.

Highly recommended.

by Charles Bukowski

Mad short stories of being down and out in Los Angeles. About preferring alcohol over sex, the race track over work, and oneself over everybody else.

The night kept coming on in and there was nothing I could do.

Reprint of part I Erections, ejaculations, exhibitions and general tales of ordinary madness.

Recommended.

by Charles Bukowski

A collection of short stories detailing the life of the down and out in LA. Sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, and the insanity of life.

A classic Bukowski. If you already know Bukowski you should also read this book. If you do not know Bukowski you should perhaps start with notes of a dirty old man or Women.

... later, whilst I was drunken barefoot my foot (left) picked up all the glass, and the doctor while slitting my foot open without benefit of a shot, probing for ballsy glass, asked me, "listen, do you ever walk around not quite knowing what you are doing?"

"most of the time, baby."

Reprint of part II Erections, ejaculations, exhibitions and general tales of ordinary madness.

Highly recommended.

by Charles Bukowski

The continued chronicles of low-life writer, full-time alcoholic, and exploiter of women Henry Chinaski, Hank to his friends - if he in fact has any.

I am told that some find bukowski base and vulgar. I think not. I agree what the Los Angeles Times wrote about this book: "a poem about love and pain".

I took my bottle and went to my bedroom. I undressed down to my shorts and went to bed. Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grapped at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yoghurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

Highly recommended.

by Charles Bukowski

Bukowski's semi-autobiographical first novel from 1971.Bukowski's alter ego - Henry Chinaski - is a drunken gambler who works nights a the post office for 12 years to be able to pay for his otherwise sordid habits.

Post Office is not as explicitly sexual as Bukowski's later works.

What I am trying to say is, there is a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored, they don't know what to do, so they play the office romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they do manage to work off a screw or two on the side. But even then, it is just an offhand past-time, like bowling or t.v. or a New Year's eve party. You've got to understand that it doesn't mean anything and then you won't get hurt.

Although I still recommend Post Office you should not read it if you have not read any of his other books. Read notes of a dirty old man or Women first.

by Charles Bukowski

The story of the young Henry Chinaski crisscrossing America working dead end jobs trying to write and get his short stories published.

That was all a man neede: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged man. I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was routed in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey that he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.

Recommended.

by A. S. Byatt

Maud Bailey and Roland Michell are studying two Victiorian writers with supposedly no connection until they discover traces of a love affair in the old letters and dusty journals of university libraries.

A literary mystery.

The poems probably enhance the literary experience. I, however, found them long and tedious and you can most likely do without them.

The Times Literary Supplement wrote:

... intelligent, ingenious and humane, Possession bids fair to be looked back upon as one of the most memorable novels of the 1990s’.

Recommended.

by Albert Camus

Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a succesful lawyer and a good man - or is he?

A novel on the nature of good deeds. Is there any point in doing a good deed if noone sees you doing it?

Recommended.

by Albert Camus

The story of a young man, Meursault, that react to an empty life ending up killing an Arab because the sun was in his eyes.

A story of a world without God or meaning.

Camus' first novel originally published in 1942 in which he presents a new and frightening world. A world that perhaps is not as frightening or surprising today.

Well written. Recommended.

by Albert Camus

The citizens of Oran in Algeria are isolated from the rest of the world as a result of a terrible plague after an invasion of rats.

Dr Rieux tells the story of how the inhabitants react very differently to the isolation.

A metaphoric portrait of the Nazi invation of France.

Recommended.

by Albert Camus

Stories of exile whether mental or physical and of wanting to escape while - sometimes - having to settle with imprisonment. Set in Algeria.

The stories were published in 1957 where Camus also won the Nobel Prize for Literature

Recommended.

by Albert Camus

Camus' diary.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole time.

Highly recommended.

by Bruce Chatwin

The first novel by Chatwin that I read and the book that formed my mental image of Chatwin. A mixture of travel writings and essays.

Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and ... life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.

Paul Theroux wrote:

At its most successful his travels is a search for an unholy grail - something freakish, plainly an excuse - and of he goes, and the piece is a winner.

Highly recommended.

by Bruce Chatwin

Chatwin on nomading Australia and the Aboriginal idea of travelling as a religious duty while "singing the world into being afresh".

John Bayley of the London Review of Books wrote:

The poetry of Chatwin's remarkable pages flitters quietly about, steering a course between William Blake and Dr. Johnson ... a masterpiece.

I most admit, however, that I have never been reminded of neither Blake nor Johnson while reading Chatwin. I do, though, agree that The Songlines is a masterpiece.

'... I suppose that's why I'm here.'

'I was wondering that.'

'What?'

'What you were doing here.

'I ask myself, my dear. Every time I brush my teeth I ask the same question. But what would I do in London? Prissy little dinners? Pretty little flat? No. No. Wouldn't suit me at all.'

Highly recommeded.

by Bruce Chatwin

After reading What I Am Doing Here, The Songlines, and In Patagonia I was quite surprised to learn that Chatwin could write a beautiful book about to brothers who live their intire lives on the same piece of land in England.

A great surprise.

Winner of the 1982 Whitbread Literary Award for Best First Novel.

Highly recommended.

by Bruce Chatwin

Chatwin allegedly resigned his job with a note saying that he had gone to Patagonia for 6 months. His first travel novel.

Paul Theroux wrote:

Pure pleasure - full of incident and anecdote and the oddest facts imaginable. ... vastly enjoyable.

Still, I would recommend that you read In Patagonia only after reading What Am I Doing Here.

A recommended read.

by Bruce Chatwin

A short novel on an East European collector of Meissen porcelains.

Great story with a surprising twist at the end. Again, from reading Chatwin's travel book you would not expect something like this.

Shortlisted for the 1988 Booker Prize.

Highly recommended.

by Bruce Chatwin

If you are familier with Chatwin you most like know that he took lots of photographs on his travels. This is your chance to see those pictures.

Crested larcks and flocks of black parakeets whisking around as they part in flight. Silence but for creaking of saddles. Camel docile and amenable. Sound of women's laughter like water bubbling from a spring.

A book full of Chatwin's wonderful pictures and a series of diary entries from his travels.

Highly recommended.

Uncollected Writings

by Bruce Chatwin

Previously unpulished short stories, travelsketches, essays, articles, and criticism.

In one of his gloomier moments Pascal said that all man’s unhappiness stemmed from a single cause, his inability to remain quietly in a room. ’Notre nature,’ he wrote, ’est dans le mouvement … La seule chose qui nous console de nos misères est le divertissement.’ Diversion. Distraction. Fantasy. Change of fashion, food, love and landscape. We need them as the air we breathe. Without change our brains and bodies rot. The man who sits quietly in a shuttered room is likely to be mad, tortured by hallucinations and introspection.

Highly recommended.

Photographs by Bruce Chatwin

A book of photographs from Chatwin's travels in Nepal, Afghanistan, Far East, USA, and Africa showing his legendary eye for beauty.

All the Great Teachers have preached that Man, originally, was a 'wanderer in the scorching and barren wilderness of this world' - the words are those of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor - and that to rediscover his humanity, he most slough off attachments and take to the road.

...

If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possesssions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgins in prison.

Originally from The Songlines.

Almost 200 pages of wonderful pictures with a small selection of texts from Chatwins other writings. This is the largest collection af Chatwin's pictures to be published. Some of the pictures were also published in Photographs and Notebooks. Photographs and Notebooks also have previously unpublished diary entries which makes it a better buy than Winding Paths - if you can get it that is.

Recommended.

by Kurt Cobain

Don't read my diary when I'm gone

OK, I'm going to work now, when you wake up in the morning, please read my diary. Look through my things, and figure me out.

I think you need to be interested in punk rock or Nirvana to really find Cobain's journals interesting. There are lots of interesting notes but not enough to warrent a read if you like me are not that interested i Nirvana.

Nice touch, though, to print the actual hand written pages of the original journals.

Tales for an accellerated culture

by Douglas Coupland

Coupland's remarkable debut about the lost generation X. The story of Andy, Dag, and Claire - a generation who grow up with divorses, the bomb, Ronald Reagan - living with Ikea furniture and working dead end jobs.

Coupland is a master of coining telling expression (Generation X and Mac Jobs comes to minds).

Now denial: To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.

Highly recommended.

by Douglas Coupland

A story about being young and growing older and especially about not living up to your own expectations.

… "You just wait, young man. Around thirty you'll start loosing interest in meeting new people. Just mark my [Jasmine] words. The thought of creating a new history with a new person will seem so exhausting you simply won't want to be bothered. You'll become too lazy to invent new memories. You'll rather hang around people you don't like simply because you already know them. No surprises."

Coupland said in an interview:

I guess it was just too much of a contrievance. Or there wasn't enough ... hpnesty in it. You do a book and itit's like a protracted trance you're in, and of course you can't see the forest for the trees. And I think a lot of reviewers picked up on that.

I will recommend it anyway.

by Douglas Coupland

A novel about the first generation to grow up without religion to a life of searching for meaning. And about dealing with the apparent lack of meaning.

It was my birthday – I remember that 31, and I also remember that I wasn’t feelling lonely even though it was my birthday and I was alone and I was in the middle of nowhere. A few years previously, as similar situation would have had me sweaty with anxiety, but loneliness had of late become an emotion I had stopped feeling so intensely. I had learned loneliness’s extremes and had mapped its boundaries; loneliness was no longer something new or frightening – just another aspect of life that, once identified, seemed to disappear. But I realized a capacity for not feeling lonely carried a very real price, which was the threat of feeling nothing at all. Perhaps the nothingness outside was trying to seep into the car in whatever way it could. I rolled up my window even though I knew it was rolled up as high as possible already and again pressed the SEEK button.

Coupland is a master of coining expressions and metaphors.

Highly recommended.

by Douglas Coupland

A collection of articles and short fiction pieces.

James Martin wrote:

Polaroids From The Dead sees Coupland at his best and worst: he's very good at capturing the small stuff, and even better with personal recollection, but ambition gets the better of him. Too much theory makes Doug a dull boy.

I agree but read it because you like Coupland.

by Douglas Coupland

A book about the dotcom business before it was called dotcom. As always Coupland precedes his own time.

… The cool thing with e-mail it that when you send it, there is no possibility of connecting with the person on the other end. It’s better than phone answering machines, because with them, the person on the other line might actually pick up the phone and you might have to talk.

Highly recommend.

by Douglas Coupland

The story of Richard whose girlfriend lapses into a coma after seeing a glimse of the future. A story about being young in a strange, scary world.

Linus sipped his drink and said, "You know, from what I've seen, at twenty you know you're not going to be a rock star. Threes are wild this round. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or a professional. … And by thirty, darkness starts moving in - you wonder if you are ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful. Pam, are you folding? Wake up, girl. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing the rest of your life; you become resigned to your fate. God, do I have a shitty hand. My cards, I mean."

Classic Coupland. Biting satire - or truths?

A recommended read.

by Douglas Coupland

The story of Susan Colgate, Miss Wyoming and sole surviver of the crashed flight 802, and John Johnson, action film star and junkie. Both drops out to find themselves again.

Hey, John Johnson, you’ve pretty much felt all the emotions you’re ever likely to feel, and from here on it’s rerun.

Not Coupland at his best but worth reading.

A recommended read.

by Douglas Coupland

A story about what is supposed to be a happy family week.

‘Family’s a good thing, Wade.’

‘You should see my family. Every single one of us is psychotic.’

‘All families are psychotic, Wade. …’

Not Coupland at his best but worth reading if you like Coupland.

A recommended read.

by Dougals Coupland

Hey Nostramus! is the story of four people whose lives are forever changed by the shooting rampage of three misfits.

Cheryl Anway are secretly maried to Jason Klaasen. Her death in the shooting leaves Jason alienated from life and the people he meets.

I suppose I also thought that being a court stenographer hearing it all would somehow inoculate me against crimes occurring to me. Naïve. But then, it was the seventeen-year-old me who made that decision. Imagine leaving your most important life decisions to a seventeen-year-old! What was God thinking? If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, I want the nature of my next incarnation to be decided by a quorum of twelve seventysomethings.

The last few books by Coupland have not been up to his original standard (or perhaps I am somewhere else in my life right now). Hey Nostradamus! is not either. Coupland fans should naturally read it. The rest should read one of his earlier books like Generation X, Shampoo Planet, or Life after God.

by Douglas Coupland

My name is Liz Dunn. I've never been married, I'm right handed and my hair is deep and wilfully curly. I may or may not snore – there’s never been anybody to tell me one way or the other.

So the stage is set for a typical Coupland novel. And it turns out that Liz' life is about to change and suddenly it is not so dull after all.

Recommended.

by Douglas Coupland

Supposedly Microserfs for the Google age.

Perhaps JPod resembles Microserfs a bit but it is far below Coupland's normal standard and a lot worse than Microserfs.

It took almost 200 pages just to get interested in the plot - and it was not that interesting anyway.

And what is the point of wasting almost 100 pages on lists of prime numbers and what have you? Sure geeks have odd interests but that point comes across very clearly in the text and it is not like it is news anymore so why bother?

Well read it if you like Coupland and cannot not read it. New Coupland readers should not start here.

by Michael Cunningham

Cunningham's version of Virginia Woolf's classic Mrs. Dalloway. The story of three women reading, writing, and/or being Mrs. Dalloway.

Hermione Lee, TLS:

Extremely moving, original and memorable.

If you have seen the movie you may find that the book is not that different. So no need to read it unless you really like the movie.

Recommended.