BillF

Another Highsmith.

Nancy Cunard Queen Mary King Pleasure

Pixie and Dixie Eddie South Jeri Southern

Kenny Dorham The Doors Knocker Norton

I've never taken to Amis fils though, but then neither did Dad. Martin said eventually he was able to calculate to the minute just when his latest book would go spiralling across the room after he had given it to the old man to read.

Crazy Horse Marvin the Paranoid Android

Nice!

Fatih Akin Fate Marable Doctor Doom

Sorry you don't like Amis (père), as I have most of his books on my shelves, plus a couple of biographies. Hopelessly politically incorrect nowadays, of course. Anyway, I still rate certain passages in Lucky Jim as among the funniest things I've ever read.

Am I still allowed to say "You've trumped!"? (When appropriate, of course.)

Pree Baird Chan

Vermeer Vernel Fournier Marcel the Furrier

Platinum Blondes Sylvia Plath Anne Sexton

Peter Zak Acker Bilk Balok

You are, of course, being ironic/sarcastic in a very British way, aren't you, Bev?

Herbie Hancock J Fred Knobloch Putte Wickman

The Triffids The Chrysalids The Kraken

Nino Rota Ennio Morricone Bernard Herrmann

I'm interested. What is it?

Anatole France Nancy Spain China Miéville

The Pobble Who Has No Toes Legless Suzi The Headless Horseman

Cary Grant Nuala O'Loan The Boozy Bursar

I was fortunate in my course of English Literature at Leeds University in the 60s to be able to take what nowadays would be called a module on American Literature and so was introduced to Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Melville and Henry James - even had an imported American tutor! - and so I became one of those few Brits to have read Moby Dick, which I thought was a great book, particularly when read in the studious atmosphere of a reference library. It's obviously read - or was read - far more generally by Americans. Discussing his recording contract with Whaling City Sound of New Bedford, MA, I remarked to Greg Abate that I'd read Moby Dick at college. "Didn't we all?" he replied.

John Bunny Johnny Hodges Benson & Hedges