A message from Benjamin...
These are the books that I read for pleasure in 2024 (and therefore doesn’t include research material for future projects.)
I’d also like to take the opportunity to thanks readers and booksellers everywhere, especially for the support shown to Rare Singles, which will be published in paperback in the summer of 2025, and in translation too. It’s very much appreciated. The novel has also been optioned by Class 5 / Warner Music Entertainment so is currently in the very early stages of possible screen adaptation.
Rare Singles will be swiftly followed by a brand-new novel in autumn 2025 on Bloomsbury. It is short and experimental, and set simultaneously in Berlin in 1971 and Yorkshire in 2021. Watch this space for further details.
All the best for the coming year -
Ben
A Touch Of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns
The Horse by Willy Vlautin
Crime by Alix Lambert
A Shining by Jon Fosse
Last Night At The Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards
Bare Fists by Bob Mee
Hollywood Days And Hollywood Nights by Ben Stein
The Bullet by Tom Lee
Love Leda by Mark Hyatt
Smoking In Bed: Conversations With Bruce Robinson ed. Alistair Owen
Head North: A Rallying Cry For A More Equal Britain by Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram
Aliss by The Fire by Jon Fosse
Fan-Dabby-Do-Zi by The Krankies
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Up At The Villa by W. Somerset Maugham
Erasure by Percival Everett
The Story Smugglers by Georgi Gospodinov
Spent Light by Lara Pawson
The One & Only Peter Perrett by Nina Antonia
Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan
Mary And The Rabbit Dream by Noémi Kiss-Deákis
Glam by Mark Paytress
The Kid Stays In The Picture by Robert Evans
To Ease My Troubled Mind by Ted Kessler
Wolf Moon by Julio Llamazares
Mr Palomar by Italo Calvino
Baron In The Trees by Italo Calvino
What Have We Got: The Turbulent Story of Oi by Simon Spence
The Night Climbers Of Cambridge by Whipplesnaith
Notes From An Island by Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietila
The Heart In Winter by Kevin Barry
The Voyage Home by Pat Barker
Pat Barker by Sharon Monteith
Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
A Slipping-Down Life by Anne Tyler
Whatever Happened To Slade? by Daryl Easlea
An Unfortunate Woman by Richard Brautigan
Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino
Businessman As Lovers by Rosemary Tonks
Bear by Marian Engel
The Way Out of Berkeley Square by Rosemary Tonks
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Drugstore Cowboy by James Fogle
Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 by Michael Palin
I Fatty by Jerry Stahl
Haunted: Ghost Stories & Their Afterlives by E. Jay Gilbert
Lawrence: Street Level Superstar by Will Hodgkinson
Never Understood: The Jesus And Mary Chain by Jim and William Red
Haunted Playland: Secrets Of A Forgotten Scandal by Anthony Daly
Open, Heaven by Sean Hewitt
Sonny Boy by Al Pacino
The Ascent Of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman
The Party by Tessa Hadley
Dead Poet’s Society by N.H. Kleinbaum
The Last Bell by Donald McRae
Songs In The MP3 Of Life: The New Icons of the Internet Age by Liam Inscoe-Jones
The North Road by Rob Cowen
The Counsellor by Cormac McCarthy
Dead Man’s Shoes (A Graphic Novel) by Anjan Sarkar
The Haunted Trail: Classic Tales Of The Rambling Weird by Weird Walk
Queens Of The Underworld: A Journey Into The Lives Of Female Crooks by Caitlin Davies
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