reading "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, don't know if it was overlooked or not but is worth a look. Also, Julian Cope's "Head-On/Repossessed" is fantastic, I've read that one a few times. You should also check out "A Fine and Private Place" by Peter S. Beagle, which I read at least once a year!

Any of his novels of London low-life, written in the late 1930s. Full of arcane slang and with a ring of absolute authenticity as regards his depiction of life among the capital's criminal/underclasses, they're a real eye-opener. Interestingly, he basically sides with the criminals against the police (who are depicted as little more than thugs). His first book The Gilt Kid was recently reissued, but they're all worth tracking down (although hellishly hard to find at reasonable prices).
In a similar vein: Wide Boys Never Work by Robert Westerby (a 1937 novel of greyhound gangs, used-car dealers and gay gangsters in London).

by Boston Teran.
Great debut, subsequent novels nowhere near as good.
Kidnap thriller set around the California desert.

Blackburn by Bradley Denton. "Meet Jimmy Blackburn, he kills people .... You'll like him". This one would probably go down withthe author of the current thread about Lunchtime In The High Street.

I've just finished Terence Blacker's biography of his friend William Donaldson, 'You Cannot Live as I have Lived and Not End Up Like This.' Excellent read, certainly better than Russell Brand's My Booky Wook which I read last night and with which it has themes in common.
Donaldson, writer of the Henry Root books and the unimprovable Brewer's Book of Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics, discovered whores when he was in his teens and crack when he was in his 50s. Along the way made and lost a couple of fortunes, produced Beyond the Fringe, was Carly Simon's lover and put on Bob Dylan's first UK performance (this last one may not be 100% true - Donaldson was a notorious fantacist, as if his life hadn't already been extraordinary enough).
Check it out next time you're in the library.

I have been reading Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick. It’s a good book let down somewhat by it’s title (an offhand remark made by one of the characters) which implies something a bit jokey and half-baked. The story is set in 1955 and is essentially a study of the relationship between three people who share a house in the rural area around San Francisco.

Jack Isidore is intelligent and analytical, but also socially dysfunctional and somewhat naïve when it comes to practical matters. When the book opens he has a job in San Francisco regrooving worn-out tires, which are subsequently painted black and sold-on to second-hand car dealers. He has a great interest in pseudo-science and harbours many strange beliefs, one being that there is a secret civilisation living in the centre of the earth.

His sister, Fay is a self-centred, intuitively manipulative woman who lives in an expensive and impractical house built for her by her husband Charlie, whom she has an innate talent for emasculating. Charlie is well aware that, to his wife, he is nothing more than a means to an end, but is constantly outmanoeuvred by her and can only respond with occasional acts of domestic violence.

The novel employs a weird framing device, whereby each chapter is randomly written from the point of view of one of the protagonists. Jack and Fay’s are narrated in the first person. Everyone else’s are written in the third person.

I’ve always thought of Dick as an ideas and concepts man and was surprised how well observed his characters were. You could dress this book up in the silver Penguin Classics livery and I don’t think anyone would raise an eyebrow or say that it didn’t belong.

by William Boyd. Written before his most famous novel, 'Any Human Heart', I think. It's in the same form though, ie a fictional journal. This time of an avant garde British film director. It may have been a bestseller when first published and it may also have been a cult read but I'd never come across it before until I picked it up on a whim a few years ago.

Modelled on Rousseau's 'Confessions' published in the 18th century (news to me at the time) but you don't need that sort of erudition (I certainly don't have it) to get pulled into the narrative. Which is very moving and very entertaining.

right her. Also his earlier novel the Ice Cream Wars.
Everyone that is involved with Word either as an employee or a subscriber will I am sure fall in love with Bringing it all back home by Ian Clayton.
Funny,sad,life affirming and a great document of one mans love affair with music and life.

This is only rated 3 & 1/2 stars on Amazon but I loved it.

Any record collector (and I'm reckon there is one or two on this site) will see themselves in the parade of lunatics this book describes. Reading it I was thinking "I may be crazy, but I'm not THAT crazy!"

The absolute looniest of the lot is the American who spent $2,000.00 buying an ep from Europe because he "Heard it was good". It "got lost in the mail" so he sent another $2,000.00! He did eventually get it.

There's also the "pioneer" type stories of men who (many years ago) would travel the South working their way, street by street, house by house, knocking on doors asking "Do you have any records you don't want any more? I'll take them off your hands if you want." They made out like bandits.

Peter Buck from REM and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth are interviewed as is Robert Crumb the cartoonist.

Satan wants Me by Robert Irvin. Synopsis: London 1967. Peter, a sociology student and shallow hippy, is bored of shagging his girlfriend and drug-fueled shallow intellectual conversations, and so decides that it would be trippy to join the Black Lodge Magick group down the road. Bad Idea. This is a VERY black comedy with guest appearances from Aleister Crowley, Brian Jones and Denis Wheatley, amongst others. Written as a diary, this funny and scary book really is Adrian Mole meets Luis Buñuel.