Resident Alien: The New York Diaries, by Quentin Crisp (Flamingo £7.99 in UK)

America was kind to Britain's battiest eccentric, and he achieved celebrity of a sort around the more benign edges of its gossip columns and chat shows. These "diaries" are actually the merry ramblings of a mind firmly attuned to the most frivolous wavelengths of existence, and will carry anyone of like mind - or who can persuade themselves that they are of like mind for an hour or two at a stretch - along with them in a mildly diverting fashion. Since The Naked Civil Servant first appeared Crisp has been out Crisped by a plethora of gay memoirs of the confessional variety and his style now seems unnecessarily coy at still his innate humanity keeps it effortlessly afloat well above the tedium level.