I am currently reading PopCo by Scarlett Thomas. I really loved The End of Mr Y. PopCo was first published in 2004 and has now been reissued. I'm not disappointed (so far); it's very clever and imaginative, and as a woman I love her 'voice'.

I also recently read two Iris Mudoch novels - an early one, The Bell, and a fairly late one, The Message to The Planet. I recommend both. They are actually quite similar and go together very well.

As for other recommendations, I wouldn't know where to begin. OK, for a start, John Fowles's The Magus; anything by Haruki Murakami; anything by Margaret Atwood; David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars and East of the Mountains; both of Donna Tartt's novels... and hundreds more.... I will have to give this some thought.

How I envy you. I read nothing but useless memos (written by people to avoid doing anything) and technical manuals. I read Murdock's 'The Sea, The Sea' many years ago after it won the Booker Prize. It's haunted me ever since. About once a year I dream of the 'hero's' house by the sea.

Baz

I don't know why, but I didn't really get along with The Sea, The Sea. It's a very fine piece of work but I found the protagonist very unsympathetic. I know it's a bit immature to want characters to be loveable, or admirable, but it helps. I think if I was reading it for the first time now, rather than five years ago, and having read some of her other books, I might enjoy it more.

Oddly, John Banville's also Booker-winning novel, The Sea, is very similar in setting and, appropriately, about half as substantial.

I have pretty much finished PopCo, which, I am am sorry to say, has a really disappointing ending. I have not felt so let down by a book that started out with such huge promise since I read Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars at university, at the end of which I really did hurl it across the room.

As I entered the last 100 or so pages of PopCo, it started to dawn on me that this wasn't going anywhere. It has all the potential to develop into a massively gripping conspiracy thriller but instead fizzles out into a really sappy happy ending. In fact the last 20 or so pages contained a vegan cake recipe (!), some tables and a preview of a book I have already read (The End of Mr Y). It really feels as though she ran out of time, or money, or steam, or just couldn't be arsed.

Another problem is that Canongate have just reissued this as a new book, but it was written in 2004. There is loads of stuff in it about the internet, new technology, popular culture, marketing, global capitalism and anticapitalism that, five years on, is just cringingly outdated. Many of the things predicted have happened - and become old hat already.

I do really recommend The End of Mr Y, though. It is superb. I just hope Scarlett Thomas has a new work of equal brilliance up her sleeve.

I'll give Murdock another go. I tried when I was a rebelious teenager and found her characters - North London, sensitive, artistic, plenty of money, liable to commit suicide - incredibly irritating. But now I wouldn't mind so much. I saw a documentary about her and her husband, who looked after her when she had Alzheimer's, and they both came over as highly sympathetic people. Philosopher and author is a rare combination, one which the APPALLING Alain "No Bottom" de Botton tried and fails to live up to.


TWAT

Yes, there is always a suicide, and always pretty much the same revolving cast of characters, but there are also observations and passages of great philosophical depth and beauty, which you don't get in most Islington-set writing.

And I think Alain de Bottom is rather sweet.

AHHHHHH I want to put him in my pocket, take him home, and polish his head with Mr Sheen!!!