1. The Ghost Map - Steven Johnson (it's about the cholera epidemic in London in the 1850s, before there was such a thing as a germ theory of disease, and doctors thought you just got sick from being poor or dirty. It's so clever and excellent, and it has lots of things about the invention of the modern idea of a city that I had never thought of before)
2. The Man on Devil's Island by Ruth Harris (I haven't read this but it's about the Dreyfus Affair, and it looks so great)
3. This Arthur Miller biography by Christopher Bigsby (I haven't read this either, but I really want to a lot. All that stuff about Marilyn Monroe and the House Un-American Activities Committee and him having that baby that he put in a home and never let anyone talk about or visit is VERY INTERESTING)
4. All the Rabbit books (you should just read them again. I'm reading the third one again now and it's really just the best thing ever)
5. Troubles - JG Farrell (This just got reissued, for some reason, and there are lots of articles saying that he has finally got his Rightful Place In The Canon or whatever. It's like the siege of krishnapur except better)
6. William Dalrymple has just written a new book, but it looks a bit spiritual.
7. Wolf Hall is really meant to be excellent, and it's so LONG.
8. The Corrections (you should read it again)
9. If I wasn't making this list for a very specific man, who I have never seen knowingly read a book by a woman, I would say that there's hundreds of Alice Munro books to read.
10. The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis (his very nice and Longsuffering ex-wife (the mum of Martin) died last week, and all the obituaries and things uniformly said "aw. what a nice lady who put up with such a lot of Crap.")
11. There's loads more I will think of soon
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