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Hello Sailor, By Michael Hutchinson

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Choosing a wink-wink, nudge-nudge title puts an author under pressure to deliver the laughs, but Michael Hutchinson rises to the occasion with ease in his tale of a chequered life before the mast.

Me Cheeta, By James Lever

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Scene-stealing co-star of Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan flicks, Hollywood insider over five debauched decades, Cheeta – that chimpanzee prince among primates – has written his tell-all, naming-names memoirs. Or rather, James Lever has crafted a wonderfully witty pastiche of the Tinseltown-unveiled confession.

The Secret Life of France, By Lucy Wadham

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

There is a genre in British publishing which could be called "froglit": the obsessive psychoanalysis or mockery of our nearest and dearest neighbours. There is no equivalent "britlit" genre in French publishing. The French prefer to write about themselves or, a(grave accent) la limite, the Americans.

We are All Made of Glue, By Marina Lewycka

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The madcap world of Marina Lewycka is now familiar to millions of readers as a kind of formula. An engagingly quirky narrator takes us on a journey in which serious themes such as family quarrels, age, war and genocide are given a comic gloss. It more or less ends well. Fans of Woody Allen movies have long been familiar with this kind of thing, but Lewycka's debut, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, became the British equivalent. After her Two Caravans, We are All Made of Glue continues the themes of love, hate and odd titles. Georgie, enraged by her husband's indifference and lonely after swapping Leeds for London, strikes up a friendship with her ancient, rancid Jewish neighbour Mrs Shapiro.

Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, By Matthew Fort

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

In 1973, Fort ate a plate of sausages in Sicily. There were only two, but "they tasted more of sausage than any sausage I have ever eaten, firm, juicy, salty and sweet."

Book Of A Lifetime: Little Dorrit, By Charles Dickens

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

So conscious of his devoted audience, Dickens might have been pleased to learn that I and quite a few fellow New Yorkers have been devotedly reading Little Dorrit. This mini-craze began when a poet friend heard that the novel was going to be a serialised on TV. He decided that he didn't want to watch it but to re-read it; others of us decided to do the same.

Moon Dust, By Andrew Smith

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Smith's notion of finding the men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 is brilliant, necessary (only nine of the 12 are still alive) and wonderfully realised. The ironic thing about this brief adventure is that it was only the straightest of individuals who made the biggest trip of the psychedelic era.

The Pursuit of Laughter, By Diana Mosley

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

"Clever, good company, always ready with a sarcastic witticism." The life and soul of the party being described is Dr Joseph Goebbels.

The Importance of Being Trivial, By Mark Mason

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The clever thing about this is how someone managed to string together an amusing book about trivia, just as the clever thing about QI is how someone managed to make a TV programme about it.

To Heaven by Water, By Justin Cartwright

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

You sometimes wonder if there is much novelty left in Justin Cartwright's novels. The Song Before It Is Sung (2007), a pointed re-telling of the Von Stauffenberg plot to kill Hitler, was a genuine departure, but To Heaven by Water takes us back to Cartwright-land, a vexed and debatable territory awash with angst, pessimism and mid-to-late-life elegy. Everything one has come to expect is here, from the sixtysomething reaching an accommodation with past time (see The Promise of Happiness) to the misty Soho luncheons with old chums (In Every Face I Meet) and the self-finding trips to Africa (Interior, Masai Dreaming). There is even the dangerous animal – not White Lightning's malign baboon, alas, but a rogue elephant brought in to trample the male lead's brother to death out in the Kalahari desert.

Friendly Fire, By Alaa Al Aswany trans. Humphrey Davies

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Excused from games until his day of shame, an obese and bullied schoolboy finally has to squeeze into singlet and shorts. His classmates' mockery intensifies until "we were now laughing simply to cause him pain". Gripped by a jealous rage, a man who has worshipped his wife beats her up; bruised and tearful, she simply asks "May I go now?"

The Fire Gospel, By Michel Faber

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

In writing this playful noir thriller-cum- The Da Vinci Code pastiche, the versatile Faber shows he can pen an off-the-cuff satire, when needed.

Chastened, By Hephzibah Anderson

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

"Only my book in bed/ Knows how I look in bed," laments the narrator of Lorenz Hart's terrific "Why Can't I?" (1929 ). Told that "what you need is romance,/ Something in pants", she realises that "two feet are ever cold; / Four feet are never cold". Some have assumed that Hephzibah Anderson, in eschewing men for a year, donned bedsocks, turned up the electric blanket and slurped Ovaltine with another book against her chest. In fact, Chastened contains much more than at first apparent. A journalist as often in Manhattan as London, Anderson reached a point when she found that "sex and its pursuit seem to have become such blood sports, their rules so confusing... that it is hard not to wonder occasionally whether it's worth it".

Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please, By Julian Norridge

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

If you're bemused by the British mania for sport (watching rather than participating, of course), it is consoling to learn that this is nothing new. In 1824, a crowd of 30,000 watched the 77-round punch-up between Tom Spring and Jack Langan.

Book Of The Week: Moral Clarity, By Susan Neiman

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Moral clarity is something that everyone claims to admire, so it is always useful to find out what they mean by it. In the case of Susan Neiman, one need not look very far. In the first chapter of her "guide for grown-up idealists", discussing the crimes of the last century, she writes: "Arbitrary imprisonment, famine, and murder were not new, though the scale seen in the 20th century was. What was devastating about Soviet crimes was that they were committed in the name of principles most of us hold dear. The rebuttal to this is easy enough: Theoretically speaking, Stalin's Gulags no more undermined the legitimacy of socialist ideals than the Inquisition undermined Christian ones."

Beware Invisible Cows, By Andy Martin

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Perhaps as a surfer you are more in touch than most with the scale of nature. Waves the size of houses can crush you to a pulp or send you gliding into that zonal nirvana of oneness with the higher powers which is the object of all that paddling around watching and waiting.

Kick the Animal Out, By Véronique Ovaldé

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

A first-person novel that pivots on the vanishing of a disturbed teenage girl's flaky mum sounds like a recipe for gritty realism. Yet this sensuous and sinister French récit delivers a more artful punch.

101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, By Chris Smith

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Though its textbook appearance suggests that this is yet another volume from America's burgeoning rock academia, Smith is actually a US music journalist. He can write well and has a keen eye for a good quote. Bono: "Some bands went to art school. We went to Brian Eno."

The Selected Works of TS Spivet , By Reif Larsen

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Jonathan Coe recently claimed that experimental fiction seemed off the literary map now, but every year throws up a novel or two that takes risks.

The Taste of Sorrow, By Jude Morgan

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

"It's writing that makes living tolerable." This sentence is the nub of The Taste of Sorrow, Jude Morgan's absorbing novel about the lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. It occurs at that part of their story where, without distancing themselves, the noisy self-annihilation of their brother, Branwell, could have become intolerable. "Writing" covers being able to escape into the imagination – a capacity the children developed early, in response to the loneliness of the Yorkshire moorland around them, and the accumulation of sorrow. It is not just the taste but a diet of sorrow on which they live.

Turbulence, By Giles Foden

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

By 1944, legendary scientist Wallace Ryman has retired to the seclusion of Kilmun, a coastal hamlet north of Glasgow, where locals fondly refer to him as "the Prophet" for his canny weather divination.

City of Thieves, By David Benioff Sceptre null7.99

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Benioff is a Hollywood screenwriter and the narrative efficiency such a job requires is much in evidence here in this tale of the siege of Leningrad, which zips along at a fair pace – remarkable when the setting is a city gripped tight by its Nazi oppressors.

City of Thieves, By David Benioff Sceptre £7.99

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The Storyteller, By Rabih Alameddine

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Alameddine, his name apparently a derivative of Aladdin, rejoices in the ability to spin a story that lasts for 1,001 nights, while simultaneously describing the effects of Israeli attacks on his homeland, Lebanon, over the past 30 years. With enviable ease, he weaves in the magic of the Arabian nights, the loss of his childhood home so many years ago, and his visit to his slowly dying father, to create something that feels both postmodern and traditional at the same time.

Getting a Grip, By Monica Seles

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

More chuntering about girlie grunting at Wimbledon this year but the player who first broke the sound barrier, Monica Seles, shows in this confessional memoir that she can string words together as well.