Whatever It Is, I Don't Like It, By Howard Jacobson

This book delivers a delight that is very rare in collected journalism. Not only do Howard Jcobson's fiercely funny Independent columns work wonderfully even though the event that prompted them is long gone, they also read well in bulk.

His combination of Swiftian indignation (on authority and bohemianism: "Either way, it's tosh, all of it"), verbal felicity (Dudley Moore "was the convulsed sea to Peter Cook's controlling moon") and rebuttal of cant (pondering US gun laws, he insists we have no moral superiority: "Cars kill") generates as much pleasure as his novels.