These days, I still read the London Times, I cherish every classic novel I purchase, but occasionally, just occasionally, I might be found on a tube train, reading a tabloid, totally oblivious to all the shocking headlines.

BBC: A Hamster ate my Granny!

When it comes to fiction, Tim Winton's Cloudstreet is probably the must-read novel, although I thought Breath was brilliant at making sense of the joy and wonder of surfing to people who have never ridden a wave.

BBC: Essential reading for new arrivals in Australia

CoeSo if I tell you that I have read his most recent novel, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, and that my wife is now reading it, please take that as a recommendation in lieu of a more conventional review.

FORBES: On Jonathan Coe: Give Me 27 Films and I'll Show You the Man

My college boyfriend the same one who took me to Niagara once refused to speak to me for a full day because I declined to hike in the Rockies with him and instead read a Russian novel in the car.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Inventing Niagara'

But the plot moves so quickly and smoothly that I read it in a fraction of the time it took to complete his last novel, the slightly shorter (but much heavier) Anathem.

FORBES: Connect

But the novel, initially a flop, was not much read or even appreciated until after World War I, long after Ryder had finished the painting, so it is almost certain, scholars agree, that the biblical tale was the artist's sole starting point.

WSJ: Tale Told by a Modern Romantic | Jonah | Albert Pinkham Ryder | By Sidney Lawrence