Don't fence me in by Tony Gould a wonderful look at Leprosy in modern times .

Possibly the most important pop music book of the last 20 years?

White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook (Britain in the 60s)

Bad Vibes by Luke Haines

Shakey by Jimmy McDonough (biog of Neil Young)

Darker Than The Deepest Sea by Trevor Dann (biog of Nick Drake)

What's Left by Nick Cohen

Bad Medicine by Ben Goldacre (not for fans of 'Dr' Gillian McKeith)

Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

That should keep you going for a while.

... by Larry "Ratso" Sloman.

by Seb Hunter. Its like a heavy metal version of Lost in Music - not as good but still quite fun in places.

For fiction I can never recommend highly enough Christopher Brookmyre. Try Boiling a Frog first and see if you get hooked. Comedy/satire/thrillers by someone not afraid to throw in loads of casual cultural references.

Just finished "I Found My Horn" by Jasper Rees. He hits forty and decides to take up the french horn again after 22 years and commits to performing solo in 12 months time in front of a paying audience. Very enjoyable.

Hell Bent For Leather. Very entertaining, maybe more so if you were a certain age during the heights of hair metal.

I really like that fella from the Eels' book, Things the Grandchildren Should Know (I think that's the name) despite having never heard any of his music. He's had a very peculiar life.

As to fiction, TC Boyles Drop City is rather good.

by Jonathan Coe is a fantastic growing up story set in the 1970s. If you're the right age to remember IRA bombs, glam rock and picket lines with any clarity, you'll love this yarn. If you only dimly recall those things, or only know of them as history, this book puts you right there; you can almost feel the shag-pile under your Clarks Commandos.

Ian Claytons Bringing it all back home. It should be compulsory for any music fan and will have you laughing and crying in equal amounts.

And for a musical novel Kill your friends is unputdownable.

by Daniel Everett. He's a linguist and used to be a Christian missionary. He spent years living with the Piraha people in the middle of the Amazon trying to translate the New Testament. But, after being exposed to their own beliefs, he gave up God and turned native. It's brilliant.

Louis de Berniers 'Birds Without Wings' is a tremendous novel. Miles better than Corelli.

'Bomb Book and Compass' by Simon Winchester. An account of Joseph Needham, a Cambridge academic who devoted his life to the mysteries and technological achievements of China. Yes, I admit it doesn't sound great on paper but it's actually compelling stuff.

If you need a rant but loathe those "The World According to..." books with a fat bloke on the cover looking incredulous, try "Big Babies" by Michael Bywater.
It's subtitled "Why can't we just grow up?" and it looks at the infantilisation of seemingly every aspect of Western culture. As always, Bywater's thinking is completely original and he uses startling examples to illustrate and support his case.

I'd also recommend "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks - case studies of the effect of music on the mind both good and bad, compassionately described. It doesn't come up with many explanations, but that at least leaves you free to do your own thinking on the subject.

"Cultural Amnesia" is a generous collection of essays on an admirably wide variety of people by Clive James. Growing up in the eighties I only knew him as the presenter of silly TV clips from around the world. I'm only lately discovering his brilliant prose style, his vast knowledge gained from his voracious reading, and his ability to connect such disparate subjects as torture and Terry Gilliam. This book is amazing value.

If you like Pies & Prejudice, and I did, you might want to try his Adventure on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England. It comes out in 33 days.

Anybody read...

That's Me in the Corner: Adventures of an Ordinary Boy in a Celebrity World

by our own Mr Collins? Just wondering.

Where Did it all go Right and it changed my life. Not really , but it was very nice. I must read his other ones.

is also not really life changing

Gig - Simon Armitage

What jusic Is Like For Girls - Lavinia Greenlaw