Cassie McCullagh

Is there an example or two that you can give that sort of explains both your choice of the book and your way of reading it?

Give me another book.

I'm loving the range of books that we're building up in this imaginary bookshelf of yours.

What else would you put on the shelf with the ones you've offered up so far?

One of his very first.

And I should just leap in and say that's Teju Cole, the Nigerian and American writer who writes so beautifully about photography as well as writing fiction and nonfiction.

So when you think about those really influential writers and books, what is it about them that makes you put them on that special top shelf?

What is it that you look for as a reader?

Khalid Wasami, thank you so much for speaking to us on The Bookshelf.

That's V.S.

Naipaul, famously grumpy and unpleasant, but admired as a writer, which has led to some pretty interesting obituaries this week.

You can also hear an interview that Naipaul did with Michael Cascard about 20 years ago.

It was played on this week's Hub on Books.

And the wonderfully titled One Clear Ice Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the 21st Century by Roland Schimmelfennig.

And I'm Cassie McCullough.

And book lovers, today a stack of revolutionary fiction for you.

Novels about uprisings, social change and the promise of different ways of living.

And 50 years ago this month, August 1968, Soviet tanks rolled into the streets of Prague.

Blood on the streets in Simon Moore's novel, Prague Spring.

Hilarious books.