NONFICTION
The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks
The Shepherd’s Life is not a deceptive title. The life of a shepherd and that of his sheep — the shearing, lambing, mating, dipping, the constant year-round graft — is exactly what you get in assiduous, intimate detail over nearly 300 pages. James Rebanks is so fascinated with his Lake District flock, with their individual characters, their relationship to the land, the tendency of the better looking sheep to “show off” (I love the notion of preening sheep and choose to picture a ruminant George Galloway) that when he sells one star tup he misses the aesthetic nourishment of seeing him each day, “as if I once had a Van Gogh on my wall and now it is gone”. Rebanks’s enthusiasm and talent for poetic writing is infectious.
Carol Midgley
The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks, Penguin, 293pp, £8.99. To buy this book for £8.49, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
Elon Musk: How The Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future by Ashlee Vance
As Elon Musk took to the dancefloor with his bride at his first wedding, he pulled her close and whispered in her ear: “I am the alpha in this relationship.” The South African-born founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, PayPal and SolarCity is one of the outstanding innovators of our time: he draws comparisons not only to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates but also to Thomas Edison, Howard Hughes and John D Rockefeller. Yet he is also a gauche, chauvinistic and ruthlessly insensitive individual, according to this fascinating biography by a Bloomberg technology reporter that portrays the 44-year-old billionaire as a man who personifies both the best and worst characteristics of Silicon Valley’s workaholic, testosterone-driven culture.
Andrew Clark
Elon Musk: How The Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future by Ashlee Vance, Virgin, 392pp, £9.99. To buy this book for £9.49, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
FICTION
The Santangelos by Jackie Collins
Jackie Collins, who died last year, was the queen of the vulgar, glitzy, sexy, pacy bestseller. I’m proud to say that I once made the great woman smile, when she read my very unkind review of a crappy book by her sister Joan. There’s good crap and bad crap — and Jackie’s was the good sort, written with total professionalism and skill. Her last novel takes up the saga of the Santangelo family. “Lucky” Santangelo is now a matriarch, with a daughter who is a teenage model and a son being framed for murder. You also get drugs, death, revenge, money, glamour and (of course) tons and tons of sex. Vintage Jackie, in other words — expert entertainment, without an ounce of literary merit. One does not read this sort of thing for any reason except pure fun.
Kate Saunders
The Santangelos by Jackie Collins, Simon & Schuster, 580pp, £7.99. To buy this book for £7.59, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134
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Last Night on Earth by Kevin Maher
Whereas Kevin Maher’s first novel The Fields was very much about boyhood, Last Night on Earth is about men. Specifically Jay, an Irish labourer who comes to London in the early Nineties preparing for a life in hard-hat and boots, but by some stroke of luck (or is it?) finds himself taken up by the Soho media world and making a documentary about the building of the Millennium Dome. One of his new colleagues, Jane, decides to educate him in the ways of the cultural elite, and sets about teaching him what to read, eat and drink and yes, how to flirt and fornicate like a coked-up hipster. As Last Night races to it conclusion, the story unfolds like an action film with the beating heart of an intellectual rom-com. Jay’s journey from young man to proper grown-up is told with tight, witty prose and deeply felt emotion.
Melissa Katsoulis
Last Night on Earth by Kevin Maher, Abacus, 374pp, £8.99. To buy this book for £8.54, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134