Gary Dexter

Jacques Bonnet is a distinguished French art historian and novelist who has amassed a private library of 40,000 volumes (around double the number contained in the average Waterstones). Phantoms on the Bookshelves is Bonnet’s meditation on a life lived with so many books. Particularly pressing is the matter of classification. ‘Should I put Norbert Elias’s What is Sociology? next to his more historical works?’ he worries. ‘Should Paul Veyne’s Comment on écrit l’histoire be next to his studies of sexuality and euertegism (gift-giving) in ancient Rome? Does Picasso count as French or Spanish? Modigliani as Italian or French? And what am I to do with Michelangelo?

The cover of On Snooker shows the Queen Mother sizing up a shot, making a passable bridge but rather failing to get behind the cue. The book is by Mordecai Richler, the great Canadian novelist and essayist, author of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney’s Version, who died in 2001. On Snooker takes in all the major figures of the late-20th-century game, and is unafraid to bring out its juicier side, particularly the depredations of its bad boys: Alex Higgins trashing hotel rooms, urinating in plant-pots, whaling his cue at the spectators, ending up broke, drinking from left-over beer glasses; Ronnie O’Sullivan and his dad, Ronnie O’Sullivan Sr.

Here are two Alternative Reading Christmas gift ideas: books respectively by Gordon Brown and David Cameron. The Gordonian offering is by an ordained minister who wants to help you with your finances. ‘Gordon Brown’s message is very clear,’ the back cover says. The Cameronian offering is by a poet from Brooklyn, whose poems are ‘false translations’ of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. This he achieves by taking the original French verse and then transmuting it into English via a sort of wilful mishearing: ‘Tout Entière’, for example, becomes ‘Two Ton Chair’, and its first line, ‘Le Démon, dans ma chambre haute…’ becomes ‘Lime demons are out dancing.

Thomas Keneally is the Booker-Prize-winning author of Schindler’s Ark and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Tom Keneally is the author of The Utility Player, a biography of the rugby league player Des Hasler. Naturally Thomas and Tom are the same person. The unashamed idolatry of The Utility Player is difficult to convey here, but can be glimpsed in the following description: ‘Des is an Australian version of an Arthurian knight. His heart was strong because his soul was rigorously aligned . . . he is the Zen practitioner of rugby league, the code’s monk.’ Keneally is one of those people who see a single sport as a template for the clockwork of the universe, and he is not alone among practitioners of fiction in this.

William Tell Told Again was published by A & C Black in 1904 (‘Black’s Beautiful Books for Boys and Girls’), and is now extremely rare. William Tell Told Again was published by A & C Black in 1904 (‘Black’s Beautiful Books for Boys and Girls’), and is now extremely rare. In substance it is a reworking of the Swiss tale from a humorous angle. This was long before Jeeves and Bertie, Lord Emsworth, Mr Mulliner and Ukridge, and before even most of the school stories (Mike only appeared in 1909, five years after William Tell). Evelyn Waugh wrote in 1941: ‘Collectors prize as bibliographical rarities such early works as William Tell Told Again and Swoop, but it is impossible to discern in them any promise of what was to come.

Love Letters of a Japanese begins: ‘These letters are real. Love Letters of a Japanese begins: ‘These letters are real. And like all real things they have a quality which no artificial counterpart can attain.’ They were pseudonymously published by Marie Stopes, the birth control reformer, under the editorship of ‘G. N. Mortlake’, and document a love affair between ‘Mertyl Meredith’ and ‘Kenrio Watanabe’. ‘G. N. Mortlake’ was an invention; Marie herself was ‘Mertyl’; and a married Japanese botanist, Kenjiro Fujii, was the model for ‘Kenrio’. Marie had had a disastrous love affair with him, and Love Letters of a Japanese, in edited form, are their billets-doux.

‘Recipe for a chic murder,’ runs the blurb on the back of Death Likes it Hot. ‘Recipe for a chic murder,’ runs the blurb on the back of Death Likes it Hot. ‘Take a social-climbing dowager; a house-party full of bright, brittle, amoral idlers; let simmer for a long hot summer weekend, and you get the fanciest killing of the season.’ ‘Recommended to all but maiden aunts,’ said the Manchester Evening News. ‘Welcome to another 100 percent thriller by Edgar Box,’ said the Glasgow Evening News. The Spectator joined in the general praise: ‘The relaxed urbanity of Mr Box ensures a smooth surface finish.’ Indeed. Only it wasn’t by Edgar Box. Edgar Box was a pseudonym for Gore Vidal.