The New Torchlight List: Best Books & Authors

It's Jim's final countdown and he rates the authors from the very best, through to those he wants to read more of, promising authors, those not quite good enough, the unpromising - and the just plain awful. He tells Wallace he still loves reading - but he won't do another book like this again: "When you are recommended 400 books you often encounter an author like Knausgard who has been much hailed but you can't damn him without reading about four of his books. So you've read one book and you absolutely hate it and he kills your pleasure in reading for the next fortnight because you now have to go on reading four horrible books and I don't think I could put myself through that again."