I don’t know why I hadn’t come across it before, but I happened on FiveBooks.Com this week while searching for something else. It’s a site where experts are asked to recommend the five best books on their subject and explain their selection in an interview. Among the 1,000-plus interviewees in the archives are Paul Theroux, Colin Thubron and Tim Mackintosh-Smith on travel books and Amy Liptrot on nature writing. It’s a great resource for travellers (and travel writers) keen to brief themselves in advance of a trip. On Turkey, for example, it has books recommended by the novelist  Elif Shafak; on Pakistan, suggestions from Anatol Lieven, who worked there as a journalist for The Times and is the author of Pakistan: A Hard Country; on the American West, there’s the novelist Jonathan Evison, author of All About Lulu and West of Here. Should you need to get up to speed on Ulster unionism, fairy tales or political economy, you’ll find suggestions on those, too. Highly recommended.