Books like White Knight Black Swan — picked by fans

When I left university, I wanted to know why journalists bother working in jobs where they are frequently abused, badly paid, and work long hours. I never considered journalism a career until I saw an advert for a post in the Chatham News.

I wanted to know more, so I found a second-hand copy of Journey Into Journalism by Arnold Wesker. He'd been allowed to spend a year at the Sunday Times, then edited by the legendary Harold Evans, to help him write his play The Journalists. He had so much leftover that he wrote this book, which answered the question I had: "Why do journalists do it?" He answered it correctly, but you must read it to know why.

As a foreign correspondent based in Vienna, I'm often asked to arrange interviews for reporters flying in from London. I remember a journalist from the Sun newspaper who flew in and wanted a translator. I found a local book author, but he canceled when he found out it was for the Sun. The journalist asked him why, and he said, "You wouldn't understand."

But that journalist had a first-class honors degree in literature from Oxford. Of all the types of journalism, tabloid is reviled, yet it attracts the best journalists. It starts the ball rolling on the best stories, and in its purest form, it is never about fake news; it's about taking on the biggest bully in the playground. I love it, and this book is pure tabloid.

I worked in local papers at the start of my career and was always amazed at why a network that had so many talented writers produced so few books about the hilarious things and the tragic things we experienced. I think it's partly because local newspapers are often seen as a stepping stone, we focus on the famous at the pinnacle of their career, editing a national newspaper for example, when in fact local news careers could and should be an end in themselves.

Roger Lytollis is not only a brilliant writer, but his book is remarkably personal in the way he faces his own demons and how journalism helped him cope with extreme shyness and depression. Coupled with hilarious stories, I couldn't put it down.

The stories my agencies create have probably appeared in some form in every major and most minor publications worldwide. A single-viral story can be repeated thousands of times in the media landscape. But no publication that we work for has paid as much as the Daily Mail. It may be hated by many, but journalists love it. It pays the best rates, and this book was a fascinating insight into my biggest customer.

My work for them was what made me a target of BuzzFeed because not only is it hated in some quarters, but it's the biggest news organization in the world, and many want to see it toppled. The book also featured many people I knew, like the legendary Allan Hall, who once punched the editor.

I read this book when I was just out of journalism school and finding my way in the world of journalism and writing. For me, Maeve Binchy was already an icon because she managed to juggle journalism and writing. All these years later, I am doing the same, but the seeds were grown back then with this book.

I love this novel's depiction of a three-decade-long friendship between two women. The strength of the female characters shines through, and I remember thinking when I was reading it that was Maeve Binchy’s secret weapon; she made her characters so human. 

This is a story of endurance, love, and the power of friendship. I loved it when it first came out in the '80s, and it gave me heart that books about strong women and the bonds of friendship didn’t necessarily have to have a bright pink cover.

For creatives, this book is the move. Many writers who find themselves in reading lulls, also find themselves in writing lulls. Over the last two decades, writing professor Susan Shapiro has taught more than 25,000 students of all ages and backgrounds at NYU, Columbia, Temple, The New School, and Harvard University. And now the content from her wildly popular course “Instant Gratification Takes Too Long” is in this book for everyone who wants to get published fast, and with all the best secrets of the trade.

Byline Bible is full of advice for writers on how to break into publishing, but also includes tons of essays and pieces published by Susan Shapiro’s students, which make for great reading in and of themselves. 

I had the privilege of talking with Angèle at an event and discussing our different book projects.

The wonderful thing about this book it is reveals that the interaction between technology and journalism is incredibly culturally specific. We tend to think that every newsroom engages with technology in the same way, but Angèle shows that long-standing national journalistic cultures influence how technologies are adopted and used.

The book is also an ethnography, which means that it offers a wonderful insight into the day-to-day practices of the newsroom.

A highly perceptive if rather depressing examination of how the British media works, how expensive investigative journalism has largely given way to opinion columns and trivia about so-called celebrities, how stories are often not stories, how papers dress up partisan opinion as fact. In short, an exposure of the falsehoods, distortion, and propaganda that have corrupted the media. Nick Davies was a journalist at the Guardian.

Martha Gellhorn’s blend of reportage and imagination ensnared me when I was barely out of my teens, and her preferred form has come of age in my working life.

Not only do I think Gellhorn is a marvellous writer – at her best, one of the best – but I also identify with Gellhorn the woman. "The open road," she wrote, was "my first, oldest and strongest love." She lived from 1908 to 1998 and was writing the fighting for six decades, and although each conflict was different, her message remained the same: ‘There is neither victory nor defeat; there is only catastrophe." 

Some books center on an argument, some focus on narrative, and some revolve around characters. What impressed me about this book is that it does all three remarkably well.

I was amazed to learn how some of the most powerful publishers in the U.S. and U.K. either dismissed the Nazi threat or (like Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail) openly cheered for Hitler.

It also helps that the five men and one woman included in this “axis” all had fascinating backgrounds and quirky personalities, which Olmsted presents in wonderfully concise sketches.