He's a writer and freelance journalist, which to mortgage lenders is just as bad. Chaplin's prose is wonderfully alive, and his novel is itself an overlooked but untarnished gem.Rent Boy by Pete May (MAINSTREAM £9.99) This is the memoir of a young man who moved from suburbia to London in 1981, full of optimism and romantic illusions, only to find himself falling between the cracks in Thatcher's Britain and forced to live a hand to mouth existence in some of the city's most run down environs But Pete May wasn't that kind of rent-boy. The tragedy of a generation dulled by economic forces is felt all the more keenly when that youth had such brilliance to begin with. He's an angry young man, but an uncommonly articulate, imaginative and sardonic one. Education is a sieve, and he's stuck looking up at the little hole he's fallen through, surrounded by a workforce that is "either dead or dying.. defeated before they ever made a start". But Chaplin's Arthur is more engaging character than Sillitoe's, and to my mind Chaplin's is the richer novel.Arthur's schooling has done nothing to prepare him for a working life packing sardines or carrying coals in Newcastle, and he knows it. The Day of the Sardine was published in 1961, and was an acknowledged influence on the other regional realist writers of his generation, David Storey, Keith Waterhouse and Stan Barstow.

The story of a disaffected youth called Arthur who finds some respite from crushingly tedious physical labour in boozing and fighting, and who finds himself involved with a young girl and an older woman at the same time, The Day of the Sardine also has obvious parallels with Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, published three years earlier. Boeing's first stewardesses had to be unmarried nurses under 25. And pilots can only fly one sort of plane, and they're not allowed beards.The Day of the Sardine by Sid Chaplin (FLAMBARD £8.99) Sid Chaplin was born in a mining community in Durham in 1916, and worked in the pits for 15 years between leaving school and becoming a writer. He also covers weather systems and turbulence, air traffic control and the mechanics of fuelling, baggage handling, catering, ticket pricing, and the onboard toilets.While it's a fundamentally prosaic book, it contains some fun trivia.

With the basic physics explained, Blatner goes into more detail than you're likely to want about the design, construction and function of an aircraft's major components. David Blatner's fact-filled little book aims to demystify every aspect of commercial flying, and intensify our sense of wonder at the ingenuity and magnitude of the enterprise.The reason 435 tons of metal and cargo can become airborne is all to do with the shape of the wings. But most of them still harbour anxieties about it, and for all they know about the physics of flight it may as well be sorcery keeping them up there. These days commercial airlines carry 1.6 billion passengers into the skies every year, which is about a quarter of the world's population. Roger Bacon declared it a sin to attempt to fly, and it tended to denote sorcery or witchcraft. Then they grew bored."The Flying Book by David Blatner (PENGUIN £7.99) We all know what happened to Icarus.

For most of human history, flight was an impossible dream and the sky remained the domain of gods and angels. It finishes with him celebrating his 30th birthday, out drinking with his friends on the night the wall comes down "They stood there watching for a while. In what passes for drama, Frank survives a visit from his parents, goes to see his grandmother, encounters a dog and argues with his girlfriend. "Fulfilment is utter bullshit."Occasionally the translation seems to render the dialogue a little dated, but Berlin Blues is an otherwise hip, funny and defiantly uneventful novel. Why should a job need to be fulfilling, he asks a girl he falls in love with.

They're discussions that go on for pages, following their own strange logic but only ever going in circles At night Frank goes to work, as a barman. He spends most of his days sitting in bars getting drunk with his friends, who are mostly barmen. A typical discussion might be about the theory of general relativity as it applies to getting drunk ("time definitely goes slower for the drunk") or why the rain stops when it makes bubbles. Frank Lehmann is fast approaching 30 and lives on his own in a trendy district of the city. It's a likeable piece of slacker fiction about nothing very much, which is almost perverse when you consider that it's set in the same time and place - Berlin, 1989 - as one of recent history's more significant moments. This cult debut novel is by the frontman for German art-rockers Element of Crime. Berlin Blues by Sven Regener (VINTAGE £6.99) This cult debut novel is by the frontman for German art-rockers Element of Crime.