Recommendations, please

This is the page where I ask you to post recommendations for books that I’d love to read, or really ought to read before I die, or really should be embarrassed about getting to the age I have without having read already. So the page doesn’t look embarrassingly blank, here’s a list I’ve been keeping since the start of the year:

  1. Hunting the Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  2. Winter in Madrid – CJ Sansom
  3. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
  4. The Difference Engine – William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
  5. The Secret Life of Houdini – William Kalush and Larry Ratso Sloman
  6. House of Sand and Fog – Andre Dubus III
  7. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
  8. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory – Deborah Lipstadt
  9. Roofworld – Christopher Fowler
  10. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
  11. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
  12. Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby
  13. Coraline and Anansi Boys – Neil Gaiman
  14. Signs of Life – Dave Askwith and Alex Normanton
  15. Saint Morrissey – Mark Simpson
  16. The Roots of Coincidence – Arthur Koestler
  17. Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
  18. Farewell My Lovely – Philip Marlowe
  19. The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami
  20. The Body-brokers – Annie Cheney
  21. On Writing – Stephen King
  22. Just Law and Eve was Framed – Helena Kennedy
  23. Senseless – Paul Golding
  24. The Thought Gang – Tibor Fischer
  25. Jar City, Silence of the Grave, Tainted Blood – Arnaldur Indridason
  26. In the Land of White Death – Valerian Albanov
  27. Metro Maps of the World – Mark Ovenden and Lise Amy Hansen
  28. The Search for the Panchen Lama – Isabel Hilton
  29. Austerlitz – WG Sebald and Anthea Bell
  30. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
  31. The Timewaster Letters – Robin Cooper
  32. Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jane Jacobs
  33. The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
  34. Watchdogs of Democracy – Helen Thomas
  35. His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War – Naomi Novik
  36. Deja Dead – Kathy Reichs
  37. Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
  38. Ghost Map – Steven Berlin Johnson
  39. Bush’s Brain and The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power – by James Moore and Wayne Slater.

- – - – - – - – - -

Now, what else should I be reading? And what did you think of these books? Comments and suggestions to
bookworm@myweeklybook.net…