Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Paul Torday)

Viewed from a distance, it’s difficult to see how this could be a success – a story of fishing in the desert, told through a series of emails, letters, memos, diary entries and interview transcripts. I had to ignore my initial concerns about the style to get through the start, but this was well worth the effort. The book is a sharp exploration of the cynicism of politics and the governing class, viewed through the eyes of a well-intentioned civil servant. Time-serving official Alfred Jones is plucked from his obscurity to aid the Prime Minister’s aids in a heroically futile scheme – to devise a means of introducing salmon into the Yemen desert, and develop salmon fishing as a tourist attraction there. The powers-that-be are aiming for some grand gesture to Western-Arab relations, as witnessed by the world’s press through a camera-stopping moment. The scientific impossibilities of the scheme are mere project hurdles to be overcome in the search for headlines.

While written as a light farce, the book is cunningly incisive in its attack on the culture of media-hungry ministers and bullying senior officials. Alfred Jones is elevated to the highest ranks in the desire to create the mad project, and dropped just as rapidly as plans develop in an unexpected final twist. The perfect ending to a well constructed argument.

God Bless you Dr Kevorkian (Kurt Vonnegut)

This is a collection of short ramblings and comments about life and history, made through interviews with the famous dead. Kurt Vonnegut uses an assisted-suicide to reach heaven and meet the receent- and long-dead, to question motive and challenge assumptions. His suicide-assistant fortunately brings him back just in time to report his findings. Originally broadcast as 90-second monologues on public service radio, these short stories loosely hang together as a collection. They serve as an effective vehicle for Vonnegut's comments on history - from the plight of Aborigines to Hiroshima and Kosovo. The dark humour is typical of Vonnegut's style.

The Men Who Stare at Goats (Jon Ronson)

This is written as a documentary exploration of some truly bizarre forms of research into alternative forms of killing, torture and manipulation by various governments, mainly US and UK. While similar to a Michael Moore exposure, it's also so close to a novel that it's hard to tell whether this is truth or fiction (take Moore's Sicko and add in The Constant Gardener). The book investigates forms of development of the human brain usually associated with the personal development movement, but applied to military and government control. From staring at goats (to kill them) to walking through walls, this covers a number of esoteric development skills. The reporting lists interviews with people purported to be involved in this research, and interweaves well-documented cases that add semblance of veracity to these reports. But the evidence is thin.

As a light-hearted holiday read, this deserves marks for an imaginative overview of potentially crazy investments of public funds. As an investigative journal, this is light on evidence and poorly organised to prove a point. Read it and laugh, and suspend belief.