Aravind Adiga’s latest book ‘Last Man in Tower’ explores what it takes to turn ordinary respectable middle-class people into evil, devious, greedy beasts prepared to contemplate murder. It looks at how neighbours so emotionally and physically close that they live like extended family can become enemies. I would also say it offers wholly believable insights into the psychology of bullying and persecution – tracking how the perpetrators of abuse can convince themselves that they are in fact the victims despite their abusive behaviour. It’s fascinating stuff; a sort of ‘Lord of the Flies’ for India in the 21st Century but with seemingly sensible, normal, respectable adults instead of schoolboys. It’s the sort of book that has you thinking “That could never happen to me” at the beginning and gradually realising that this type of salami-slicing of morality could probably happen to almost anyone.

Aravind Adiga

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John Diamond was a journalist and broadcaster known for his wit as much as for his marriage to Nigella Lawson and he was by his own admission, a hypochondriac. After decades of seeing every little twinge as a portent of medical doom and waiting almost expectantly for the heart attack for which decades of over-indulgence must surely qualify him, it was as much a self-fulfilling prophesy as a big surprise when a lump in his neck turned out to be more sinister than he’d expected.

In March 1997 he was given a diagnosis of a cancerous lymph node in his neck and the doctors told him with confidence he had a 92% chance of being fine and dandy in no time at all. Sometimes doctors get things wrong – and ‘C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too’ is Diamond’s best selling account of his experience with cancer, based in part on columns that he published in the Times newspaper’s Saturday magazine.

John Diamond

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For someone who loves India and has an interest nearing on obsession with the days of the Raj and the fight for Independence, I could be expected to have an opinion on Rudyard Kipling. Perhaps I do, but it’s one until now based on ignorance because I’d never read any of his books – the odd poem in school, but never an actual book.

Similarly it would seem fair to assume that anyone who has a black cat called Bagheera and a big grey cat called Baloo, must be a fan of the Kipling’s most famous book, The Jungle Book. Sadly I have to confess that despite choosing the ‘man cub’s two best buddies the panther and the bear as names for my kitty-boys, I’d never actually got round to reading the Jungle Book. Even more shamefully I would admit that I can merrily sing all the words to ‘The Bear Necessities’ and ‘I wanna be like you-hoo-hoo’. I am a victim of knowledge by Disneyfication.

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When Shaun Ryder appeared in (and very nearly won) the 2010 TV series of ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, the nation split into two camps. The over 55s and under 35s mostly didn’t have the slightest idea who he was and those whose age lay between knew exactly who Ryder was but were flabbergasted he’d survived the years of drugs and hard living with his mental faculties sufficiently in tact to be capable of doing much more than sitting in a corner talking to himself. As front man of the Happy Mondays, Salford-born Ryder was at the forefront of the late 80′s and early 90′s ‘Madchester’ movement, a major earner for the late Tony Wilson’s ‘Factory’ record label and by his own admission one of the people responsible for introducing the rave drug ‘Ecstasy’ into the UK via the now defunct but at the time notorious club, the Hacienda.

Shaun Ryder

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Around Christmas time the bookshelves of the nation groan under the weight of books targeting the ‘difficult relative’ market; those people you have to buy for but don’t really know well enough to know what to give. People seem to think books are safe but rather boring and that may well be true if you get the wrong one. I’d like to make a recommendation for the perfect book for a friend or relative who’s not the type to sit and read a book from start to finish, who likes a book to dip in and out of and the type who likes lots of pictures and a chance to be fascinated by how other people ‘do’ things. In short, this is the perfect present for the person who likes to do their reading in the ‘smallest room’. Toilets of the World by Morna E Gregory and Sian James will fascinate, horrify and entertain in equal measure and will certainly beat that 15 year old copy of the Guinness Book of Records that’s been stuffed behind the U-bend for the last ten years.

Morna E. Gregory, Sian James

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Sarah Brown’s World Vegetarian Cookbook was given to me by a friend who knows I love to travel and that I don’t eat meat. Clever girl! It looked like she picked a good one. Unfortunately she didn’t realise that I’m a lazy cook who hardly ever follows a recipe. For a cookbook to make an impact on my lazy ways it needs to be pretty special – luckily this one fits the bill.

The book sat on my cookbook shelf for several years before I eventually needed help and inspiration to come up with some tasty ideas during a couple of enforced fortnights of strict vegetarianism. Normally I’m a lazy fishitarian who uses fish as a substitute for imagination or inspiration so going ‘cold turkey’ on not only the seafood but also a whole bunch of other staples was quite a challenge.

Sarah Brown

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Clean Breaks by Richard Hammond and Jeremy Smith is a guide to 500 things you could do around the world without a high environmental impact. The green aspirations of the book make it pretty clear that it’s not going to be the Richard Hammond of Top Gear fame that wrote it – I can’t somehow see him and his co-presenters offsetting their carbon when they head off to burn up the road in the latest super car. This is the kind of book that’s ideal for friends and relatives who love to travel and love to dream about where they might go next. If they suffer at least a basic level of environnmental ‘guilt’ about their travel, this is a nice choice to help them feel better about themselves.

Jeremy Smith, Richard Hammond

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My husband knows I love big lavish picture books that you can dip in and out of at will and a couple of years ago he bought me a big chunky picture book called Egypt – 4000 Years of Art by Jaromir Malek. He got it from the Phaidon shop at Bicester Village outlet centre and swears he didn’t pay much for it. Perhaps he was hoping it would inspire me to book a trip to Egypt but so far it’s not worked its magic on me.

Jaromir Malek is the Keeper of the Archive at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, one of my favourite museums and a place where I always hunt down the mummies and have a good gawp at the Egyptian section.

Jaromir Malek

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In India approximately 11 marriages in every 1000 end in divorce. At a shade over 1%, this is one of the lowest rates in the world. I decided not to look up the statistics on how many wives die suddenly from unexplained accidents in the home as a result of dowry disputes as that’s another issue entirely. Let’s just say that when things go bad, a trip to the lawyers isn’t always the outcome.

In Manju Kapur’s latest novel Custody she addresses the complex issues of the relatively rare business of Indian divorce. It’s not her first time dealing with controversial issues – in fact every one of her four previous books has contained plenty to upset her more conservative readers – and like each of those books there’s a discontented woman at the heart of the story.

Manju Kapur

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Student days are for many people the best days of their lives. Free at last from parental supervision and not yet encumbered by the responsibilities of work, marriage and mortgages, the years at university can be fantastic – more so perhaps in the past before the introduction of massive student loans and tuition fees. Cloyne Court by Dodie Katague is a student ‘coming of age’ novel set in one of the wildest times and settings. As California turned on, tuned in and dropped out in the mid-1970s Berkeley students benefited from the widespread availability of drugs (many of them not yet illegal), access to the pill and plenty of alcohol and made the most of what life had to offer. It was a time before the shadow of AIDS fell across promiscuity and drug use when the sense of ‘anything goes’ was on the increase. At that time there was surely no place wilder or more easy-going than Cloyne Court – a co-ed (i.e, mixed gender) student co-operative.

Dodie Katague

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I suspect that many people think that a ‘sutra’ is a smutty book due to the only one they’ve ever heard of being the ancient guide to sex known as the Kama Sutra. That’s not the case. Sutra is a Sanskrit word which means a wise saying or aphorism or a collection of such things. In the case of the two sutras I’ve read – Gita Mehta’s River Sutra and the book I’m reviewing here, AIDS Sutra – the term is used more broadly to mean a collection of short essays or stories. The closest suggestion I could give for the word would be ‘Anthology’.

AIDS Sutra was published in 2008 and was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and they open the book with an introduction and a ‘thank you’ to the writers whose work follows. In the introductory chapter, written by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, we learn that nobody’s too sure exactly how many cases of AIDS and HIV there are in India but best estimates put the figure at something like 3 million – just imagine 3 million people living under the shadow of a disease which could be treated and controlled if they lived in a country with greater affluence and access to Anti-Retroviral drugs and without the societal constraints that prevent many sufferers from seeking treatment.

Prashant Panjiar

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