When Judge Teoh takes early retirement from work she’s hiding from her past, her present and even her future. She leaves Kuala Lumpur behind and takes to the hills, returning to a place where she knew emotional and physical extremes – great pain, peace and rebirth, the love of her life and friendships that persisted for decades. Returning to Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands, she goes to the place she loves – an isolated house with a beautiful but by now overgrown Japanese garden. To her friend Frederick, she reveals why she’s retired early and he persuades her to record her past whilst she still has the opportunity. Her story unfolds over 350 pages, seamlessly moving between past and present, through the times and places that made her who she is. It’s fiction but in no time at all I was so caught up in the story that she felt very much like a real woman telling a real story – all the more remarkable that the writer, Tan Twan Eng, is a man.

Tan Twan Eng

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Ben Keller is a dull but dependable chap who runs a safety consultancy in California. His life – both professionally and personally – is characterised by the avoidance of risk but it was not always so. His past as a successful restaurateur was torn apart by the murder of his wife and baby daughters. After years of therapy and following his marriage to his second wife Alex, Ben thinks he has his life under control and believes that he has moved on. Then suddenly he receives a package containing a CD. It has come from a woman he doesn’t know, the daughter of a convicted felon who has recorded a deathbed testimony revealing that he shared a cell with the man who killed Ben’s family. He names that man and Ben has to make a life-changing decision – to try to find the man who ruined his life or to leave his past behind.

Doug Richardson

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When Patrick Swayze’s character Johnny Castle ran his fingers down the arm of Jennifer Grey’s character ‘Baby’ in the 1980s film Dirty Dancing, women watching in cinemas around the world let out a collective groan of pleasure that was probably not matched until decades later when Daniel Craig stepped out of the sea in Casino Royale in ‘those’ swimming trunks. For most of us Johnny was the role that made Swayze a major sex symbol and paved the way for his other great love story, Ghost. What I and many others didn’t realise was that Swayze was already an old hand in the industry with plenty of aggressive he-man adventure films already in the can.

Patrick Swayze

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Are Hedgehogs elegant? I’m not convinced. Cute for sure, riddled with fleas, undoubtedly and pretty handy for getting rid of slugs in your garden but would they be the first animal you’d think of as an archetype of ‘elegance’? I suspect not. But if you’re as prone as I am to grabbing a book on the basis of a silly title, then you’ve probably already got The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery on your bookshelf along with A History of Tractors in Ukrainian and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. I’m a sucker for a provocative title.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is set in Paris, in an exclusive apartment block of lavish luxury homes inhabited by wealthy and largely self-satisfied folk.

Muriel Barbery

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The first few holidays I had in India were organised by tour companies. I vaguely picked a part of the country I liked the look of or a tour that matched our available holiday dates and just turned up, generally without too much idea of what we were going to do or where we were going to go. Then after four trips where we paid over the odds for the convenience of someone else making all the arrangements, I realised that we didn’t need to do that any more. By then I knew enough about how the country ‘worked’ to just get stuck in and do it myself. I also realised I didn’t want the sanitised and buffered protection of a tour company – I we could do it ourselves and that we might well get to see a different side of life in India. For the last 5 years I have booked everything myself – flights, trains, hotels and have done all the research myself.

Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness

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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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