Best Books

It's Jim's final countdown and he rates the authors from the very best, through to those he wants to read more of, promising authors, those not quite good enough, the unpromising - and the just plain… Audio

Jim agrees with Wallace's love for Disgrace, by South African writer J.M. Coetzee - though Jim says Coetzee's "not brilliant". He describes the Cairo trilogy by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib… Audio

Jim Flynn and Wallace Chapman discuss Australasian literature.

Wallace takes on Jim over Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries - too long, says Jim. Not so, says Wallace. Jim says Catton can write but she… Audio

Jim Flynn tells Wallace Chapman that Italian Umberto Eco's best work is The Name of the Rose but this comes with a warning as Eco "loves to demonstrate his learning. The plot is interrupted by long… Audio

Jim Flynn and Wallace Chapman discuss modern Irish literature. Jim rates John Banville's "wonderful style", but is less enamoured with John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The sex in Edna… Audio

Some of Jim's favourite writers feature in this episode - V.S. Naipaul and Kazuo Ishiguro who, he says, is "perhaps the greatest novelist of our generation. His work is going to make him one of few… Audio

Jim and Wallace discuss South American writers, including the politics and the passion reflected in the great writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez - recommending the memorable Love in the Time of Cholera… Audio