English language books for the highly literate foreigner

Months ago, I was perusing my friend Martin's bookshelf on a warm night in Buenos Aires. Martin's a native Spanish speaker and enjoys literature, so it ought not have been too surprising that he had "La Idiota" by Dostoyevsky on his shelf. All of his fiction was in Spanish, which surprised me because his English is excellent and there are many wonderful books in English.

All of this triggered a conversation and much thinking, which ended up in a list of files that sat on my desktop. Allow me now to share this list with you.

Here are the books that I would recommend to fluent but non-native English speaker to read in English.

• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
• Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
• Catch 22, Joseph Heller

There are others I could recommend, much of George Orwell and Mark Twain, perhaps some Raymond Chandler or Arthur Conan Doyle. But I think the books above are all excellent books, stylistically and otherwise.

Moving overseas

I'm moving to London, and soon. I hate moving house. I've done it a lot and each time I do it I still hate it.

Here's what I'm aiming for:

• move out of shared accommodation
• ship some of my stuff to the UK
• keep some of my stuff in luggage
• sell or donate the rest of my stuff

I'd dearly love someone to manage all of this for me, and am willing to pay a premium for it. If not, well, I've done it before (except for the UK bit).

More info about the move later.