Page Turners

08 April 09

Books editor Alex Rayner casts his eye over some great new reads for home and abroad

Down to a fine art
Jeff Koons
Published by Taschen
He began trading commodities on Wall Street, stuck a basketball in a vitrine and called it art back when Damien Hirst’s shark was swimming free, and married the Italian porn star-turned-politician, Cicciolina. International art star Jeff Koons is many things, but dull ain’t one of them, as this sumptuous retrospective shows.

Total recall
The Truth About Melody Brown
Lisa Jewell
A childhood fire led Ms Brown to forget everything prior to her eighth birthday. That is until she attends a hypnotism show and has aspects of her childhood shaken back into memory. But can she trust her new-found recollections?

Good figure
2666
Roberto Bolaño
One of the most impressive reads out right now, 2666 was first published in Spanish following the death of the Chilean writer in 2003. Taking a mysterious German author, a Mexican murder spree and a literary festival, 2666 is a modern-day epic.

Job description
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Alain de Botton
The showbiz essayist who brought us Status Anxiety does a little field study in the office, the factory, the fishing fleet and the logistics centre to work out why we work, what we gain from it and why we often say we hate it so much.

Diamond reader
My Name is Daphne Fairfax
Arthur Smith
This London comedian used to open his acts with the line: “My name is Arthur Smith, unless there’s anybody here from Streatham Tax Office. In which case, I’m Daphne Fairfax.” And there are plenty more good jokes in this memoir.

War heroes
Death or Glory I
Michael Asher
Asher calls on his own experiences, as a former member of the SAS and Parachute Regiment. Yet his tale of a rescue behind enemy lines in Libya during 1942 also draws from a wealth of historical record to bring this great war novel to life.