Books suggested in the article include: Joanna Trollope’s new novel “The Other Family”; “The Slap”, by Christos Tsiolkas, which won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Best Book); Ian McEwan’s “Solar”, which is an amusing tale of a scientist’s trek across the Arctic to research climate change; “Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter”, a memoir by the late dramatist’s wife, Antonia Fraser; and Carol Ann Duffy’s “Love Poems”.

Topping the list is Wilfrid Thesiger’s “The Danakil Diary – Journeys through Abyssinia, 1930 -4″, in which the explorer and historian documents his 1930s trip to the country now known as Ethiopia.

Other books that made it onto the list include Paul Theroux’s “The Great Railway Bazaar”, Laurie Lee’s “As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning”, Bill Bryson’s “Notes From a Small Island” and Colin Thubron’s “The Silk Road: Beyond the Celestial Kingdom”.