The OED

My family didn't get this at all when I enthusiastically shared how I now had access to the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the definitive guide to the largest language in the known universe, and it hides behind a paywall. But I found I can access it for free by using my library card -- our local library subscribes to it.

So now when I want to look up:

hi-hat

or

scrip

as I needed to two days ago or discover whether the word 'luck' is derived from the word 'Lucifer,' I can. (It isn't).

It's like getting the keys to the linguistic universe. What a resource. What a discovery. So why do my family look at me so strangely?

Persepolis: Marjane Satrapi

What a gem of a book.

'Guns and knives may break our calves, but we won't wear your silly scarves!'

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is a insider story of:

• the Iranian revolution,
• the Gulf (Iran-Iraq) War (about which we in the West were so cruelly complacent),
• how fugitives to the West are mostly welcomed by the alternative cultures, not the mainstream ones
• Teenagerhood
• Freedom and its contradictions
  

and with a walk on part by

• God.

It's all told in cartoon form. It's the best thing I've ever read on Iran and one of the best books I've read about living under an Islamist regime.

I found it the sort of book you have to put down while you walk around and try to think about it. Things like:

• Why don't we understand Iranians as victims of totalitarianism, quite as much as people in Mao's China or Stalin's Russia? Surely they are.
• How much teenagers need surrogate parents and grandparents;
• How people can end up on the streets; and get off them again.

>

Scoop: Evelyn Waugh

My ideal of the comic novel. Funny, but not crude or malicious. Improbable but just probable enough to keep your disbelief suspended. Gentle but not soggy or woolly. Satirical but not bitter. Every character is funny, but each in a different way. None is irritating. A pert prose style devoid of any self-indulgence. Endlessly quotable, like a Monty Python sketch. Long may the questing vole, feather footed, pass through the plashy fen.

Lucky Jim: Kingsley Amis

Unfortunately, I haven't managed to get too far into others of Amis' books before chucking them aside. Nor have I re-read Lucky Jim recently. Perhaps I will have outgrown it. Given the rate at which as I mature as a person, this is perhaps unlikely. Anyhow, at the time I read it, I loved this comic yarn of an unsuccessful lecturer and human being.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams was a fan of Wodehouse and science fiction: what's not to like? The original radio series burst upon the scene (for me) like one of those things that burst upon the scene. A firework maybe.

The book became that much-devalued thing, a number one bestseller. It is about as far from beiing a work of literary fiction as a book can possibly be, which is delightful. Our moment in the sun. Take that at the Hay-on-Wye Festival and smoke it. The Hitchhiker brand got diluted after the second series and second book, but not after it inspired Terry Pratchett (another physicist) to leave the nuclear industry and write for fun.

Here's the book:



Here's the radio series:

Jeeves Omnibus: P G Wodehouse

Impossible to pick a single Wodehouse book, hence an Omnibus. The Blandings Omnibus would be equally fitting for this list. Another teenage staple for me. Don't know how I started with him. I think it's his perfection of style, the comic timing, that is so irresistable: not so much the plots and obviously not the characters. All the books on writing in the world, all the creative writing courses could never manufacture a Wodehouse. A genius.

The collected short stories: Arthur C Clarke

Arthur C Clarke's short stories were the first things I remember reading as a pre-teen. They were published month by month in a boys' magazine called Speed and Power to which I graduated after I finished with The Dandy. Praise God for parents who subscribe to comics and magazines for their children. From this I progressed to his novels, to his science books, to his rivals and peers.

Your brain is still mushy at that age, but solidifying fast. Mine went this way. Physics is beautiful. Technology can make fairy tales true. It's OK to dream of a better world. Writing can be lucid and enlightening. Wouldn't it be fun to study Physics at King's College (Clarke studied Physics and Maths joint honours). Then, be a writer for the rest of your life, simplifying complex things that you study for the fun of learning about them and writing novels. Clarke died a few months ago and I still miss him.

Inconceivable: Ben Elton

A comedy about infertility and IVF. It probes a deep contemporary wound: the question, 'you have so much, why is a baby so important' raises yummy issues about who we are and what happiness is. And it's extremely funny.

England, their England: A G MacDonell

After the First World War a Scot sets out to discover the English. This thin plot allows the writer to set up some set-piece comedy as innocent Scot explores upper class English life in its last flowering. Simple, gentle, boyish comedy. His description of a cricket match remains one of the funniest pieces of writing I've ever read, a classic.

French women don't get fat: Mireille Guiliano

'Nothing is sinfully delicious. If you really adore something, as I adore chocolate, there is a place for it in your life. But we cannot allow guilt-ridden scarfing. Only with cultivated pleasure can you enjoy chocolate in the clear light of day.'

I've been driving my family mad with references to this book which can summed up as: knowing your enemies, drinking lots of water and champagne, and relishing fresh, in-season food in small portions.

I don't know what 'scarfing' means but plan to use it sometime.

The Flood: David Maine

This book is what happens when a novelist gets hold of the Biblical flood account and retells it as literally true. It's subversive, entertaining, thought-provoking. It's about a full-on believer very unlike the dreary and samey European traditions of books about vicars who've lost their faith but carry on anyway.

What is life like living with an extremist who turns out to be right? What do the family think of this God who drowns the world? What does Noah do after the Flood when the words from God stop coming and he has to cope with being an ordinary, lonely old man? What a fabulous, funny read. You might even have to use the phrase 'heart-warming' by the end but don't let that put you off.

Father Joe, the man who saved my soul: Tony Hendra

In a kind of joint biography, Tony Hendra tells the story of his life as would-be Catholic monk, then a famous atheistic satirist (inventor of 'Spitting Image'), and finally, recovering Catholic. The constant in his life is Father Joe, a monk who spends all his days on the Isle of Wight and patiently counsels Hendra through good and bad days.

The language is fruitier than you will find in your average 'Christian bookshop' but Hendra's wit and honesty and Father Joe's wisdom and grace, and the un-theologized clarity of the story, make for an inspiring read. You'll never despair for a prodigal again, even if the prodigal is you.

Barchester Towers: Anthony Trollope

It's the wit that makes this book so wonderful: the waspish insights into character, the leisurely collisions of people and plot, and Trollope sitting in the corner of the book somewhere letting off one fizzing firework after another. I was completely hooked by Trollope's world of desperate power struggles over minor spoils, of unholy thoughts circling beneath posed Victorian religious exteriors like tiger sharks in a village pond. I'm glad he wrote so many books. You wouldn't want to run out of them.