Page Turners

15 January 09

Books editor Alex Rayner offers up some great new reads for home or abroad

Chill pill
How to be Cool
Will Smith
OK, its hardly Anna Karenina, but British comedian and scriptwriter Will Smith’s handbook for cool male behaviour certainly makes for amusing, dip-in, dip-out reading. Insults like “You chicken sh*t pumpernickels” certainly get the pages turning.

Year of the prat
This Diary Will Change Your Life 2009
Benrik
The list of silly things to do all year, by our friends Benrik, is back. Suggestions for 2009 include “Hire a prostitute for non-sexual purposes” and “Blackmail someone on the internet”. Life changing, but not necessarily in a good way.

Trouble and strife
The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton
Catherine Alliott
One domestic goddess is shaken from the pantheon in this finely crafted girlie novel. Evie Hamilton has the perfect marriage, house and kids until a mysterious letter arrives on her Oxfordshire doormat one morning.

Rock unsteady
Bad Vibes
Luke Haines
Subtitled “Britpop and My Part in its Downfall”, this darkly humorous account of the late 1980s and early 1990s by Haines, singersongwriter in a number of successful indie pop outfits, is both damning and wonderfully revealing.

Cold comfort
Far North
Marcel Theroux
A chilly winter’s tale from Louis Theroux’s lesser-known brother, Marcel. Set in a frozen city on the northern outreaches of a failed state, the book follows Makepeace, a city patrolman, who hears of less-chilly, easier life beyond the snowy wastes.

Swede dreams
The Ingmar Bergman Archives
Edited by Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius
Few auteurs have produced as many memorable cinematic moments as Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. This large-format collection of writings, interviews, stills and movie imagery goes some way to uncovering the workings of his genius.