Reading's a somewhat sporadic phenomenon for me, as you'll notice below in the lists of books I've read in various years.

• William S. Burroughs - I think I first came across him via Laurie Anderson, and I'm still not quite sure how much I understand Naked Lunch, but I know that's not really the point. Imagery, humour and oddity, not to mention his fantastic voice.

• Douglas Coupland - My geek friends jumped up and down about Microserfs and claimed it as their own, but it was Generation X that I've always felt closer to.

• Murakami Haruki - Found completely by chance in a bookshop one day back in the mid-90's, his work seems to radiate a certain depth of feeling (profundity doesn't come to me that easily, I'm sorry), even after translation.

• Will Self - Some of his work seems a bit impenetrable at first, but it's interesting enough if you can persevere.

• Frank Moorhouse - I've never been particularly good at reading Australian authors, but I picked up The Electrical Experience on a whim somewhere in the mid-to-late 90's, and never looked back.

• Raymond Carver - Nobody chronicled the Great American Despair like Carver did, with his short stories of ordinary people, fighting with their ordinary existences.

2004

• Faster, by James Gleick.
• Meat is Murder, by Joe Pernice.
• Transactions, by Neil Boyack.
• High-Rise, by J.G. Ballard.
• Lights Out For The Territory, by Iain Sinclair.

2003

• Outposts - Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire, by Simon Winchester.
• Do Android Crows Fly Over the Skies of an Electronic Tokyo? The Interactive Urban Landscape of Japan, by Akira Suzuki.
• Serge Gainsbourg - a fistful of Gitanes, by Sylvie Simmons.
• Ready, Steady, Go! - Swinging London and the invention of cool, by Shawn Levy.
• A User's Guide to The Fall, by Dave Thompson.
• The Fall, by Albert Camus.
• pinball, 1973, by Murakami Haruki.
• Journey to the end of the night, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
• Villa Incognito, by Tom Robbins.
• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner.
• Grand Days, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Ham on Rye, by Charles Bukowski.
• Here To Go - Brion Gysin, by Terry Wilson, Brion Gysin and a few extra bits by William S. Burroughs.
• Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.
• fa fa fa fa fa fa - The Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th Century, by David Bowman.
• Needle in the Groove, by Jeff Noon.
• Country - The twisted roots of Rock 'n' Roll, by Nick Tosches.
• Forbidden Colours, by Yukio Mishima.

2002

• Troublesome Words, by Bill Bryson.
• Our Band Could Be Your Life, scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, by Michael Azerrad.
• Go Tell the Mountain, by Jeffrey Lee Pierce.
• The Sharper Word, edited by Paolo Hewitt.
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
• Great Jones Street, by Don de Lillo.
• The reasons I won't be coming, by Elliot Perlman.
• After the Quake, by Murakami Haruki.
• The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton.
• The Box Man, by Kobo Abe.
• Essays in Love, by Alain de Botton.
• Mystery Train, by Greil Marcus.
• ways of hearing: a user's guide to the pop psyche, from elvis to eminem, by ben thompson.
• Lost in Music, by Giles Smith.
• Kangaroo Notebook, by Kobo Abe.
• Secret Rendezvous, by Kobo Abe.
• The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford.
• Where I'm Calling From, by Raymond Carver.
• Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon.
• Ocean of Sound, by David Toop.
• the Diary of a Nobody, by George and Weedon Grossmith.
• The Ultimate Good Luck, by Richard Ford.
• My Uncle Oswald, by Roald Dahl.
• Fierce invalids home from hot climates, by Tom Robbins.
• I was a robot, by Wolfgang Flür.
• The Raymond Chandler Papers - selected letters and non-fiction 1909-1959, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane.
• The Chap Manifesto, by Gustav Temple and Vic Darkwood.
• The Republic of Wine, by Mo Yan.
• The Woman in the Dunes, by Kobo Abe.
• The Inspector-General of Misconception, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The CEO of the sofa, by P. J. O'Rourke.

2001

• All families are pyschotic, by Douglas Coupland.
• Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse.
• Let it Blurt - the life and times of Lester Bangs, by Jim deRogatis.
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• Last Words, The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs.
• Christie Malry's own double-entry, by B.S. Johnson.
• Norwegian Wood, by Murakami Haruki.
• The Elephant Vanishes, by Murakami Haruki.
• Sputnik Sweetheart, by Murakami Haruki.
• Don't tell me the truth about love, by Dan Rhodes.
• Anthropology, by Dan Rhodes.
• Atomised, by Michel Houllebecq.
• Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.
• Cities of the red night, by William S. Burroughs.
• Midnight all day, by Hanif Kureishi.
• Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto.

2000

• Call if you need me - the uncollected fiction and prose, by Raymond Carver.
• Brief interviews with hideous men, by David Foster Wallace.
• Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk.

Yes, that's right. 3 books.

1999

• Cock and Bull, by Will Self.
• Tokyo : a certain style, by Kyoichi Tsuzuki.
• The Priest They Called Him - The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs, by Graham Caveney.
• South of the border, west of the sun, by Haruki Murakami.
• Night Train, by Martin Amis.
• Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland.
• Stay Away from Lightning Girl, by Stephen Cummings.
• Whatever, by Michel Houllebecq.
• Heavy Water and other stories, by Martin Amis.
• Identity, by Milan Kundera.
• Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys, by Will Self.
• Money : a suicide note, by Martin Amis.
• Amrita, by Banana Yoshimoto.
• Are you experienced ?, by William Sutcliffe.
• Great Apes, by Will Self.
• The Joke, by Milan Kundera.
• Into the heart of Borneo, by Redmond O'Hanlon.
• The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, by John Birmingham.
• About a boy, by Nick Hornby.
• A book about things that didn't happen / Hollow days, by Phil Doyle / Joel Spencer.
• Room Service, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Rum Diary, by Hunter S. Thompson.
• Forty-Seventeen, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Everlasting Secret Family, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Audrey Hepburn's Neck, by Alan Brown.
• Conferenceville, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Electrical Experience, by Frank Moorhouse.
• The Americans, Baby, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Futility and Other Animals, by Frank Moorhouse.
• Adventures in Capitalism, by Toby Litt.

• William S. Burroughs :

  • bigtable.

  • InterWebZone.

  • Jamie Zawinski's Burroughs-inspired cut-up machines, DadaDodo and webcollage.

• Douglas Coupland.

• Craig Mitchell's boot.

• Geoff Ryman's 253.

• Haruki Murakami.

• Raymond Carver :

  • Phil Carson's site.

  • Tom Luce's site.