The Good Book:
How To Read The Bible by Richard Holloway (Granta, £7.99)
Along with the likes of Karen Armstrong and Marilynne Robinson, Holloway is one of the best writers on faith and Christianity today. Here, he explores the different ways to read the Bible: as myth, as intertextual document, as a guide to what it means to be human. As accessible as it should be.
Edinburgh Shorts by Sarah Guppy (Austin Macauley Publishers, £6.99)
The stories in this collection are intelligent enough if not particularly original, but they are seriously marred by appalling editing. The large number of typos, slippages in tense and errors in punctuation are hugely distracting from the potentially intriguing stories of the various lives lived. I hope Guppy thinks twice before using this publisher again.
All That Is by James Salter (Picador, £8.99)
Eighty-seven-year-old Salter does everything younger and newer writers are told not to do: he tells, rather than shows; he doesn't provide specific detail, preferring generic terms where possible; he summarises. Yet for many it works; this life story of Philip Bowman, shown almost in captions from his days in the war onwards, is greatly admired.
Cycle Of Lies: The Fall Of Lance Armstrong by Juliet Macur (William Collins, £8.99)
There can be few more shocking tales of sporting hubris than Lance Armstrong's, exposed as he was for drug-taking and stripped of his Tour de France titles. Why he agreed to have Macur tell his story isn't clear: she is as tough as they come, her prose muscular and direct. She was never going to do him any favours.
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