Since last summer I’ve been slowly savouring Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion, Harry Sword’s wonderful history of the drone in music. It takes in everything from ancient Mongolian throat-singing, to the Beatles and Ravi Shankar, to Nico and Sunn O))). I’ve been making a playlist as I go – it’s already several hours long.

Recently I read an advance copy of a book from the same publisher (White Rabbit): Adelle Stripe’s Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure, co-written with Lias Saoudi, frontman of the inflammatory godsend of a cult rock band, Fat White Family. The book is a riot, as absorbing and startling as any music book I’ve read.

On a whim I bought a copy of Art of the Extreme 1905-1914, by Philip Hook, for the acutely high price of €38 and was relieved to find it’s worth every cent. The compelling narrative of an astounding decade of precipitous advancement in modern art, the book is also gorgeously illustrated.

Communions by Adam Lehrer recently arrived in the post; it’s published by Hyperidean Press. I’ve only read a few pages so I can’t say for sure how good it is, but the subject matter intrigues me: A history of opiate addiction among artists, including the writer himself. So much of what gets published these days seems safe and anodyne – I’m drawn towards the deviant.

Speaking of which, just this morning I finished rereading, for perhaps the seventh time, Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas. If you forced me to say who I believe is the greatest modern writer, I’d have to say Bolaño. There’s nobody more mysterious – more funny, entrancing, insane.

Rob Doyle’s book, Autobibliography: A trawl through 52 books that shaped him, is published by Swift Press.