This week's paperbacks reviewed
The Flâneur, Edmund White, Bloomsbury, £7.99
"A stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the streets he walks, and is in covert search of adventure." This, according to US novelist Edmund White, is the nearest the English-speaking world can come to an understanding of the uniquely French pastime of flânerie. An avowed Francophile who lived in Paris for 16 years, White shares his insider's knowledge of the French capital with the reader in a style as leisurely as his own wanderings. Jewish Paris, Arab Paris, gay Paris . . . all are revealed as White muses on everything from race and religion to ethnicity and the French national character. Yet for all the book's insights, its tone remains very much that of the foreigner abroad, rather than "un vrai Parisien" - and declarations like "wife-swapping, incest, murder . . . c'est normal" leave the reader wondering whether this is a true portrait of the city, or merely Paris reflected through an Anglophone lens? - Freya McClements
The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicide, Gary Lachman, Dedalus, £9.99
Gary Lachman was a founding member of Blondie, played guitar with Iggy Pop and is a veteran of the New York and LA music scenes of the late 1970s. He also studied philosophy, taught English literature, and managed a metaphysical bookstore, as well as tackling a host of difficult artistic, philosophical and frankly odd issues in print. His latest book, surprisingly given the subject matter, is absolutely absorbing. Lachman brings an incisive intellect to bear on why suicide is the demise chosen by many writers and the book is a breakneck ride through a history of literature, philosophy - and untimely death. This is a genuinely moving if disconcertingly entertaining work, filled with revealing glimpses of the men and women behind some of the greatest books of our age. Don't let the grim theme, or the sometimes overly academic language, put you off. - Laurence Mackin
By Hook or By Crook: A Journey in Search of English, David Crystal, Harper Perennial, £8.99
Unlike David Crystal's more scholarly books, this one's a lively tour through linguistic highways and byways ("the linguistic side roads always prove more interesting"), starting in England and Wales and taking in San Francisco, Kolkata (India) and Lodz (Poland) along the way. Aspects of British, American, Indian, internet and Euro-English are all explored and it's interesting to discover how some of the tricks of the latter two categories have ancient roots in the language. Looking at examples of collective nouns, the author refers to some of the more unusual and beautiful - "a pitying of turtledoves", "an unkindness of ravens" - and then proceeds to coin some of his own: "an absence of waiters", "a rash of dermatologists", "a mucking fuddle of spoonerisms". This is a most entertaining and informative read and the approach never jars as Crystal's meandering mind springs from subject to subject. What a pleasure to be carried along on his "stream of consciousness linguistics". - Brian Maye
David Trimble: The Price of Peace, Frank Millar, The Liffey Press, €15.99
This updated version of Frank Millar's valuable study of David Trimble brings the story right up to 2008. In assessing unionism's "two bitter adversaries" - Trimble and Paisley - Millar rightly emphasises that the Good Friday Agreement would have been impossible without the former, and that the challenge for the DUP will be to redefine itself successfully without the latter. In reflecting on Paisley's latter-day governmental engagement with republicans, the author points out Paisley "could not and would not have done it without Trimble". The major players in achieving the 1998 Agreement - the SDLP and the UUP - ultimately became its political casualties: Trimble's former party was beaten so severely in the 2005 general election that recovery still seems far away. Millar rightly hints at the dangers inherent in this development, and he offers thoughtful observations on the potentially damaging "erosion of the constitutional centre ground" in Northern Ireland in recent years. Essential reading. - Richard English
Travels with Herodotus, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Penguin £8.99
"How does Herodotus work? He is a consummate reporter: he wanders, looks, talks, listens, in order that he can later note down what he learned and saw, or simply to remember better." So writes Kapuscinski of his mentor from two-and-a-half millennia past. Fans of the author will recognise him in that description. The Polish reporter/traveller died last year, and this is his last work, largely an autobiography, the story of how as a young man he came to "cross the border", literally and figuratively, to leave post-second World War, Soviet-era Poland and report on the world he discovered - India first, then China, Asia and finally his great love, Africa. His constant companion was a copy of The Histories of Herodotus, and intertwined in Kapuscinski's personal recollections are retellings of the Greek's epic tales, musings on the life of the master and examinations of what lessons we might take from them. A true delight for Kapuscinski fans. - Joe Culley