Books and Music

châtchun à san goût

To browse a random selection from my bookshelves, click on the book below:

Books

When visiting someone, I find myself browsing their bookshelves to see what sort of reading matter they have. My own bookshelves groan and overflow with the fruits of years of collecting books. I have a special interest in Pelicans and Penguin Specials, but otherwise I like to pick up just about anything - mostly second-hand. I have shelves devoted to art, of course, and dictionaries and grammar, Russian literature and history, Central and East European studies, religion, and then there is general history, environment, travel, poetry and fiction.

What I most enjoy reading for fun is crime fiction. I like classic mysteries rather than hardboiled thrillers, and usually prefer a nice locked room to a psychological study.

Having done a radio programme on which I had to nominate my favourite book, I chose Bulgakov's Master and Margarita - which is amongst so much else a sort of mystery novel itself.

My favourite crime writers are:

• John Dickson Carr (classic locked-room puzzles)

  Suggested Reading: The Hollow Man, The Judas Window, The Black Spectacles

      

  Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason, of course, but the Lam and Cool books written under the nom de plume of A.A. Fair are also very good)

  Suggested Reading: The Case of the Daring Decoy (Perry Mason untangles a seemingly impossibly confusing crime), The Case of the Shapely Shadow (Perry Mason in typically outrageous courtroom fireworks), Lam to the Slaughter (Lam and Cool show how to commit a murder - and get away with it...)

      

  Edmund Crispin

  Suggested Reading: The Moving Toyshop (farcically impossible crime in Oxford)

  Michael Innes

  Suggested Reading: Death at the President's Lodging (more farcically impossible crime in Oxford)

  Josef Skvorecky (the Lieutenant Boruvka stories)

  Suggested Reading: Sins for Father Knox (short stories in which not only the law, but the rules of detective fiction are broken)

  Ellery Queen

  Suggested Reading: The Egyptian Cross Mystery

     

  Sarah Caudwell

  Suggested Reading: The Sirens Sang of Murder (an Oxford professor, law, offshore finance and Jersey - what more could one want?)

  Emma Lathen

  Suggested Reading: Banking on Death

  Rex Stout

  Suggested Reading: Might As Well Be Dead

  Robert Van Gulik

  Suggested Reading: The Chinese Maze Murders (detection and Confucianism in ancient China)

Music

Besides piles of books, I also live among piles of CDs, cassettes and LPs. As might be expected, I have various Russian, Czech, Norman and Breton music - as well as a small collection of Latvian music. I like early music, Baroque and contemporary, but I'm not so keen on the Classical period.

Here are some of my favourite composers:

Dmitri Shostakovich

Suggested listening: Symphony No.7 (The "Leningrad" Symphony)

Philip Glass

Suggested listening: Hydrogen Jukebox

John Tavener

Suggested listening: The Last Sleep of the Virgin

John Adams

Suggested listening: The Wound Dresser

György Ligeti

Suggested listening: Lux Aeterna

Arvo Part

Suggested listening: St. John Passion

Michael Nyman

Suggested listening: Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs

Other music links

• Homepage of the Brave
• Magène