Books.

I sympathise with both Josh and SFD. I read much more non-fiction (I'm reading a brilliant book called Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh at the moment - highly recommended), but the fiction I do read always stays with me. I've got a lifelong passion for Dickens: my parents always used to listen to an old record of the Christmas Carol every year and I picked it up from that. My dad especially reads everything he can find, and I'm incapable of eating a meal without having something to read.

But as a compulsive book-buyer (hard copies and e-books), I tend to find myself buying much more non-fiction, generally history, travel, sport and politics. I'm a print media junkie too - any newspaper or current affairs magazine I can get my hands on, really.

Peggy makes a very good point about how reading teaches you how to write.

My favourite book of all time: In Europe by Geert Mak. If you have any interest in modern history, or of our continent, buy it immediately and book a week off work.

Two more books by Jack Whyte  Legends of Camelot to finish the series.. We put the series in the book sale table in Devonport Park cafe when finished.

Thanks Cornish I'll check it out. I find the history of the world from Spanish Portuguese dominance of the worlds oceans 1300's? onwards fascinating. The trade routes and the finding of the Magellan straits, the spice trade, the conquest of the South Americas and the industrial revolution and how it moulded modern day politics as we know it. Like a huge game of risk played with real people.

I'm currently halfway through a book called "Wounded Tiger: A History of Cricket in Pakistan".

It's an exceptional text, going into the partition from India, the British Empire, right up to today's struggles, whilst retaining a genuine warmth for the country, and, of course, for nerdy cricket stats and cross references.

It's by Peter Oborne, the chap who resigned from the Torygraph last year because of the unfalteringly uncriticising line it had taken on HSBC - who happened to be the Torygraph's biggest sponsor. He's also written stuff on the western obsession with Iran and nuclear power, Mugabe, Afghanistan and Basil D'Oliveira...

Oborne is an interesting chap. He's a hard-line Tory at heart but has little truck with party politics (if that makes any sense). Says it pretty much how he sees it regardless as to who might, or might not, agree.

Singularly, amongst his ilk, he also shows interest in and empathy with Islam as a whole and his rather curious passion for Pakistani cricket, despite all of its well-documented foibles, has been evident since long before his writing of that book.

Someone somewhere else ( ) once described Pakistan to me as the hipster's cricket team... They are certainly the most unpredictable national side of the lot!

And, as one might expect of a long-standing Telegraph man, Oborne writes beautifully.

Along extremely vaguely similar lines Jonathan Freedland's, another political journo, novels (written under the nom de plume of Sam Bourne) are well worth a look. Thematically they are kind of like Dan Brown with the Catholicism replaced by Judaism except, completely unlike Dan Brown, the prose doesn't make you want to run screaming, naked and ablaze into the the funnel of the nearest wood-chipper. The Final Reckoning is particularly good.

Hmm, I did wonder where I'd been recommended that. I know I'd read a review or two on it before you mentioned it elsewhere (winky wanky nudge nudge, etc), but the excerpts seemed dry. Certainly compared to Osman Samiuddin's romantic prose, it probably is. Two very different books, covering similar subjects, in different ways, but excellently.

I hope England get feckin stuffed in the UAE in a few weeks time.

I'm finishing up The Tigress of Forli, a biography of Caterina Sforza, after having my interest piqued by watching the thingamijig with Jeremy Irons in (as you can tell, I'm not great with names). It's a good read if you're interested in early Renaissance history, and not as dry as it could be.

After that I'm going for a bit of enjoyable fluff - the 4th Sandman Slim book. Think of a supernatural action movie with sharp dialogue (the author seems to be writing this with the lucrative film option in mind) and you've got a good idea. Good, turn-your-brain-off-for-a-bit fun.

And then I might give that Wounded Tiger book a shuftie.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Oborne is an interesting chap. He's a hard-line Tory at heart but has little truck with party politics (if that makes any sense). Says it pretty much how he sees it regardless as to who might, or might not, agree.

Singularly, amongst his ilk, he also shows interest in and empathy with Islam as a whole and his rather curious passion for Pakistani cricket, despite all of its well-documented foibles, has been evident since long before his writing of that book.

Someone somewhere else ( ) once described Pakistan to me as the hipster's cricket team... They are certainly the most unpredictable national side of the lot!

And, as one might expect of a long-standing Telegraph man, Oborne writes beautifully.

Along extremely vaguely similar lines Jonathan Freedland's, another political journo, novels (written under the nom de plume of Sam Bourne) are well worth a look. Thematically they are kind of like Dan Brown with the Catholicism replaced by Judaism except, completely unlike Dan Brown, the prose doesn't make you want to run screaming, naked and ablaze into the the funnel of the nearest wood-chipper. The Final Reckoning is particularly good.

Oborne wrote an excellent biography of Basil D'Oliveira too. I tend to avoid sports biographies and autobiographies but that one comes highly recommended.

There's definitely something about Pakistani cricket isn't there? I saw a Test between them and Australia at Headingley a few years ago after their exile from playing at home began. I see Mohammad Amir is now available to be selected again - I wonder if he'll fulfill the promise he showed before he got caught up in his captain's greed. Amazingly he's still only 23.