Since my last post, the rather sad saga of my addic­tion to books has con­tin­ued unabat­ed. I was unable to say no to four new non­fic­tion books that the Guardian offered me, as well as sev­er­al paper­backs.

Ground Work: Writ­ings on Places and Peo­ple, edit­ed by Tim Dee (Jonathan Cape, £16.99), is a remark­able col­lec­tion of spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned work by aca­d­e­mics, poets, biog­ra­phers, artists, nat­u­ral­ists, nov­el­ists and his­to­ri­ans about the impor­tance of place. “Place-mak­ing is a sig­nal of our species”, says Dee: “any­where can be a some­where”.

These pieces illus­trate how the slow but con­stant accre­tion of expe­ri­ences and sen­sa­tions turn the way-sta­tions of our hum­drum lives – whether in cities, sub­ur­bia, or rur­al – into dense sites of mem­o­ry and sig­nif­i­cance. It’s a won­der­ful mix of schol­ar­ship, his­to­ry and acute obser­va­tion, touch­ing on themes that are at once intense­ly per­son­al and uni­ver­sal. There are stand-out essays by Philip Hoare, Mark Cock­er and Ken Wor­pole.

All the Pieces Mat­ter: The Inside Sto­ry of The Wire by Jonathan Abrams (No Exit Press, £12.99) is a superb col­lec­tion of inter­views about the mak­ing of The Wire, one of my favourite tele­vi­sion series.

The six­ty episodes of The Wire from 2002 to 2008 were ini­tial­ly large­ly ignored by crit­ics and award-givers alike. Now the series is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est tele­vi­sion shows ever made. Its cre­ator was the for­mer Bal­ti­more crime jour­nal­ist David Simon. Togeth­er with his co-cre­ator Ed Burns, who had spent twen­ty years in the Bal­ti­more police, and a team of writ­ers which includ­ed the nov­el­ists Den­nis Lehane, Richard Price and George Pele­canos, Simon craft­ed an immense­ly pow­er­ful series that was char­ac­terised by its remark­able real­ism, its human­i­ty and out­stand­ing writ­ing.

The ini­tial wire­tap sto­ry­line was based on a 1984 inves­ti­ga­tion into the drug king­pin Melvin “Lit­tle” Williams, led by Burns and cov­ered by Simons in the Bal­ti­more Sun.

Despite its nat­u­ral­ism, none of the dia­logue was impro­vised. Accord­ing to Wen­dell Pierce (Detec­tive William “Bunk” More­land), “they were on us about the words, man. Every piece is impor­tant. ‘All the pieces mat­ter’. That was the mantra.”

Com­plex, nov­el­is­tic and pro­found­ly mov­ing, in The Wire Simon took the police dra­ma to a whole new lev­el. Essen­tial read­ing for any­one who loved the series.

Room to Dream, by David Lynch and Kris­tine McKen­na (Canon­gate, £25), fea­tures an approach to life writ­ing “that some might find strange”. This hybrid form com­bines mem­oir and biog­ra­phy: each of McKenna’s chap­ters is fol­lowed by one by Lynch on the same peri­od, “hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with his own biog­ra­phy”. The result is a remark­able por­trait of one of cinema’s great auteurs. And Twin Peaks also hap­pens to be anoth­er of my oth­er favourite TV series.

Those who have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Lynch in front and behind the cam­era have found the expe­ri­ence immense­ly reward­ing. Accord­ing to Sis­sy Spacek: “once peo­ple work with David they want to work with him again and get near the flame”.

His sur­re­al and often dark vision of mod­ern Amer­i­can life always offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of redemp­tion and enlight­en­ment. Lynch is a fer­vent believ­er in the pow­er of med­i­ta­tion to change lives and for Robert Forster – who plays Sher­iff Frank Tru­man in Twin Peaks – there is a tran­scen­den­tal qual­i­ty in his films: “he asks us to find that con­nec­tion to the eter­nal in our­selves”.

At times Room to Dream feels a bit like a vale­dic­to­ry Festschrift, but it undoubt­ed­ly offers a mem­o­rable insight into Lynch’s intense cre­ativ­i­ty, from his paint­ing and music to fur­ni­ture design­ing (“I just don’t see a lot of fur­ni­ture that thrills my soul”). As McKen­na says, “to a remark­able degree his life is an exer­cise in pure cre­ativ­i­ty”.

A part of me (the part that writes reviews) thinks that 900-page books should be banned. I’d make an excep­tion though for A Cer­tain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle, by Julian Jack­son (Allen Lane, £35).

To tell the life of de Gaulle is also to chart the his­to­ry of mod­ern France and in this suit­ably mon­u­men­tal biog­ra­phy, Jack­son por­trays his sub­ject as a com­plex and con­tra­dic­to­ry char­ac­ter. Accord­ing to Jack­son, “he was a sol­dier who spent most of his career fight­ing the army; a con­ser­v­a­tive who often talked like a rev­o­lu­tion­ary; a man of pas­sion who found it almost impos­si­ble to express emo­tions”.

He dis­trust­ed both Britain (“per­fid­i­ous”) and Amer­i­ca (“it has no depth nor roots”). He once quipped that dur­ing the Sec­ond World War the British based the Free French in Carl­ton Gar­dens because it is “a dead end, with the only way out through Water­loo Place”. Through­out de Gaulle’s life, in his writ­ings and in his actions, his belief in the unique­ness of his nation remained undimmed: “France is the light of the world, her genius is to light up the uni­verse.”

Last week I had the plea­sure of read­ing Let­ters to Change the World: From Pankhurst to Orwell, edit­ed by Travis Elbor­ough (Ebury, £14.99). This is an inspir­ing col­lec­tion of more than six­ty let­ters, from the begin­ning of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the present day, which expose injus­tice, chal­lenge per­ni­cious ideas or cel­e­brate the ide­al­ism which is our species’ unique qual­i­ty.

Many are hum­bling. They include Ron Ridenhour’s 1969 let­ter to mem­bers of Con­gress and to Pres­i­dent Nixon expos­ing the My Lai mas­sacre that had occurred the year before. A heli­copter gun­ner in Viet­nam, Riden­hour had heard rumours about the mas­sacre from fel­low sol­diers who had wit­nessed it, con­vinc­ing him that “some­thing rather dark and bloody” took place.

This “con­sci­en­tious cit­i­zen” was so appalled by accounts of hun­dreds of men, women and chil­dren being shot in cold blood that he could not remain silent. In his let­ter he quot­ed Win­ston Churchill: “A coun­try with­out a con­science is a coun­try with­out a soul and a coun­try with­out a soul is a coun­try that can­not sur­vive.”

Writ­ten with deep emo­tion and mea­sured rea­son, these elo­quent, pow­er­ful and coura­geous let­ters speak to essen­tial themes of human­i­ty and jus­tice. At a time of great polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty and indeed when let­ter writ­ing is almost a for­got­ten art, this col­lec­tion – which should have pride of place in every library – demon­strates the vital and endur­ing impor­tance of speak­ing truth to pow­er.

Among the best paper­backs I’ve read recent­ly are these three gems:

Anoth­er Kyoto, by Alex Kerr with Kathy Arlyn Sokol (Pen­guin, £9.99)
Filled with mem­o­rable insights into Japan (from the city’s ubiq­ui­tous gates to the soft tata­mi mats found in near­ly every home), Kerr and Sokol’s book – beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed by Tet­su­ji Fuji­hara – pro­vides an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to the sub­lime city of Kyoto.

Applied Bal­lar­dian­ism: Mem­oir from a Par­al­lel Uni­verse, by Simon Sel­l­ars (Urba­nom­ic, £18.99)
This bril­liant­ly writ­ten aut­ofic­tion is osten­si­bly a mem­oir of the author’s obses­sion with JG Bal­lard and his attempt to write a doc­tor­al the­sis on the sub­ject. The the­sis remains unwrit­ten. Instead we have Applied Bal­lar­dian­ism – a won­der­ful­ly orig­i­nal mix of cul­tur­al the­o­ry, lit­er­ary exe­ge­sis, trav­el­ogue and psy­chopatho­log­i­cal mem­oir. As Bal­lard said, “Dan­ger­ous bends ahead. Slow down.”

The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Cal­cut­ta, by Kushana­va Choud­hury (Blooms­bury, £8.99)
Choudhury’s mem­o­rably evoca­tive book reveals the rich cul­ture of this teem­ing and trou­bled com­mu­ni­ty, offer­ing a won­der­ful­ly vivid and per­son­al account of life in Cal­cut­ta, from adda (“the sweet Ben­gali pas­time of aim­less digres­sive con­ver­sa­tion”) and its addic­tive street food, to the bib­lio­phile delights of Col­lege Street, “not just a street but a labyrinth made of books”. A clas­sic urban read.

Hap­py read­ing, fel­low book addicts…