Birds of America by Lorrie Moore - "Funny, moving, beautiful, intelligent. I really, really wish I could write like this."
NB chosen in the St Giles shop, Oxford.
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
I got the title of curious incident whilst browsing through my own copy (look under ‘dog’ in the index if you’re interested). I owe this book a lot of drinks.
The General Prologue (to The Canterbury Tales) by Chaucer
‘Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote. The droghte of March hath perced to the roote...’ I have never read a translation of Chaucer that comes close to showing what a wonderful poet he is. And storyteller. And entertainer. The language is tough sometimes. But so is Shakespeare’s. And, like Shakespeare, it always repays the effort. And the jokes are better.
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Certainly the best collection of short stories by possibly the best living American writer of short stories. Funny, moving, beautiful, intelligent. I really, really wish I could write like this.
The Memory of War and Children in Exile: Poems 1968-1983 (1983) by James Fenton
The first collection of contemporary poetry I read and fell in love with. Coincidentally it also contains a great poem about the Pitt-Rivers Museum.
The Forward Book of Poetry 1997
A collection of poems by the winners and runners up for the annual forward poetry prizes (best collection, best first collection, best single poem). I buy this every year and always discover wonderful poems by poets whose work I’ve not yet read. At which point I head straight back to the bookshop looking for more of their work.
