Music & entertainment
17. ‘Coal Black Mornings’ by Brett Anderson (Little, Brown, €23.80) Suede’s frontman tells the story of his unusual upbringing by his hard-up, eccentric parents in a council house and of the formation of the band and their early struggles. It’s revealing, funny and moving.
18. ‘Paul Simon: The Life’ by Robert Hilburn (Simon & Schuster, €21) Music journalist Hilburn charts the highs and lows of Simon’s extraordinary career, including the frequently tempestuous musical partnership with Art Garfunkel that produced so many glorious hits.
19. ‘Unmasked’ by Andrew Lloyd Webber (HarperCollins, €21) It’s 500 pages long but this gossipy, hugely entertaining memoir only gets us up to The Phantom Of The Opera, which opened more than 30 years ago. No one would accuse Lloyd Webber of being humble, but then he’s the most successful composer of musicals ever.
20. ‘Robin’ by Dave Itzkoff (Sidgwick & Jackson, €19.99) Itzkoff explores the psychological make-up of comedian and actor Robin Williams, whose happiness was inextricably linked to his career and his ability to perform but who, despite his success, was insecure about both.
21. ‘To Throw Away Unopened’ by Viv Albertine (Faber, €18.20) The former Slits guitarist had a hit with her debut book, about life as a musician in the punk era, but learned as that memoir was launched that her mother was dying. This frank and fearless book is about what happened next – the unravelling of family myths.
22. ‘On Michael Jackson’ by Margo Jefferson (Granta, €14.99) Published ahead of what would have been the singer’s 60th birthday, this essay is a cultural critic’s attempt to understand the phenomenon of Michael Jackson rather than a straightforward life story.
23. ‘All In The Downs’ by Shirley Collins (Strange Attractor, €23.79) Folk music legend Shirley Collins sailed to America in her youth to record chain gang songs, flirted with Jimi Hendrix and lost her voice for decades before her triumphant comeback.
24. ‘Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor’ by Dave Haslam (Constable, €28) Haslam, the DJ at Manchester’s infamous Factory Records-run nightspot The Hacienda, recalls the club scene of the Eighties and Nineties... and cooking cauliflower cheese for Morrissey.
25. ‘Room To Dream’ by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna (Canongate, €23.80) The auteur behind Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive has become an adjective. ‘Lynchian’ suggests an atmosphere of menace, mystery, obscurity, sensuality and black humour. This entertaining biographymemoir traces the director’s development as an artist.
26. ‘Bruce Lee: A Life’ by Matthew Polly (Simon & Schuster, €18.99) The actor and martial artist died at the age of just 32, before the Kung Fu craze that he had started took hold. Polly interviewed more than 100 people while researching his compelling life story and devotes an entire chapter to the conspiracy theories about Lee’s premature death.