 | Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Buy used from: £0.01 A nice populist look at philosphy; great to read on long airplane flights.
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| Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy used from: £5.00 One of Nabokov's best books. A bizarre, surreal tale, Kafaka-esque but with Nabokov's wonderful wicked sense of humour.
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| Klingsor's Last Summer (Panther Books) by Hermann Hesse
Buy used from: £0.01 A typical meta-philosophical ramble through the human condition. Good job I bought it second hand because I didn't waste too much money.
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 | One Hundred Love Sonnets: Cien Sonetos De Amor (Texas Pan American Series) by Pablo Neruda
Buy new: £9.16 / Used from: £1.05 Delightful, sensuous and essential in anyone's collection. Declaim it to your lover or your goldfish, but declaim irrespective.
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 | Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, Vol.2 by Ivor Cutler
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £2.61 It helps if you're Scottish to understand Ivor Cutler, but it was never like this for me!
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| The Petty Demon (Encounters) by Fyodor Sologub
Buy used from: £15.75 A lovely portait of a bully descending into madness in mid-19th century Russia.
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 | Borderliners by Peter Hoeg
Buy used from: £0.01 Mind control and educational experiments in 1960s Denmark. I was going to give this away without reading it. I'm very glad I didn't.
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 | Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
Buy new: £5.19 / Used from: £0.01 Forget the hype and don't bother reading this book. Dull in extremis.
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 | The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy
Buy used from: £0.05 This, on the other hand, should be looked on as a modern classic. A very disturbing and beautifully written tale of the breakdown of adolescence.
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| Erl King by Michel Tournier
Buy used from: £1.62 A deep, multi-layered parable which I will have to re-read in order to penetrate a few more layers.
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 | Pollen by Jeff Noon
Buy used from: £1.30 An odd, very enjoyable punk-pulp rush through hyperreality in future Manchester. Easy and fun reading.
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 | House of the Dead (World's Classics) by F.M. Dostoevsky
Buy used from: £0.23 Dostoevsky tells it like it is. To be honest, it isn't much better these days...
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| Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation by Marie Darrieussecq
Buy used from: £0.39 An odd little moral tale, with more than a hint of Kafka about it. Prenez garde, prenez garde
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 | Lanark: A Life in 4 Books by Alasdair Gray
Buy used from: £0.89 Life in Glasgow is better than this! Well worth it's being called a classic.
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 | Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass
Buy used from: £0.01 Typical Günter Grass: pithy, funny and very perceptive, and came as a nice introduction to his work.
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 | The Bone People (Picador Books) by Keri Hulme
Buy used from: £0.01 An odd, very readable tale about three strong but immiscible characters (man-woman-child) in South Island, New Zealand. In retrospect, I enjoyed it, but wasn't too sure at the time.
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 | Hunger ("Rebel Inc." Classics) by Knut Hamsun
Buy used from: £1.96 This is the best book I've read for years, and should be distributed free to everyone. Read it if you haven't already!
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 | Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera
Buy used from: £0.01 I didn't laugh, I don't love it, and it's gone back to the second-hand book shop from whence it came. Boo!
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 | Emperor of the Amazon (Abacus Books) by Marcio Souza
Buy used from: £0.01 Was history ever like this? A tale taller than trees and as good as Baron von Munchausen, but set in the Amazon.
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| My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
Buy used from: £4.92 The seminal Nigerian story book, crossing the thin line between our reality and that of the spirit world. Eno and Byrne could only follow where Tutuola led, and Okri has become the natural successor.
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