Also in Author Recommendations

Helen Gordon

What's on your bedside table? I'm somewhat indulgently re-reading Middlemarch. Eliot is very good on what Rebecca Mead, in an excellent New Yorker article, describes as 'the resignations of middle age...the limitations that are the lot of even the most... More...

H.M. Naqvi

What's currently on your bedside table? I don't ritualistically read before I go to bed (and when I write I rarely read) so there's nothing on my bedside table except a half pack of cigarettes pair and a pair of... More...

Hilary Thayer Hamann

What's currently on your bedside table? I'm an avid reader, so my bedside "table" is actually three completely overloaded tables at the moment. There are the usual suspects, great literature that inspires and reassures me, from Cervantes, Mann, Nabokov, Joyce,... More...

David Prete

What's currently on your bedside table? James McBride's Song Yet Sung. Gutsy characters and beautiful prose that marries the mystical and the dirt. Three plays by Bruce Norris: Purple Heart, The Pain and the Itch, and Clybourne Park. I'm also... More...

Rahul Bhattacharya

What's currently on your bedside table? I'm reading Richard Yates' Disturbing The Peace. I had the chance to be in America recently, and I bought the Yates and James Salter titles which are hard to find in India. I travelled... More...

Bella Bathurst

What's currently on your bedside table? There's always a toppling stack of books on the bedside table - partly because I wait until the pile has got so high that there's a genuine danger of being crushed to death, and... More...

Doug Johnstone

What's currently on your bedside table? There is a massive pile of books next to my bed, at least thirty, but at the top of the pile are: Peter Leonard, All He Saw Was The Girl - this is the... More...

Naomi Wood

What's currently on your bedside table? Hadley, by Gioia Diliberto, a biography of Ernest Hemingway's first wife. It really reveals who had the balls in that marriage! She grounded him enormously; encouraged him when he was down and chivvied him... More...

Sara Shilo

What's currently on your bedside table?The Butterfly Crosses the Road is the Hebrew title of the book of poems by Eeva Kilpi, a Finnish poet.Her poetry describes the human pain with no discounts, but the poems are full of wisdom... More...

Ned Beauman

What's currently on your bedside table?The Way Some People Die by Ross MacDonald, an author who isn't nearly as well known as Hammett or Chandler but is among the finest of the first wave of hard-boiled detective novelists. And American... More...

Hari Kunzru

What's currently on your bedside table? I didn't know the poetry of Frank O'Hara until I came to live in New York. Lunch Poems is the perfect companion to Manhattan. His urbane, disabused romantic voice has taught me a lot... More...

Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton recommends books for the beach, park or plane this summer. More...