Hunter S. Thompson: Where Were You When the Fun Stopped? (Songbook)

Imagine Martyn Turner being asked to pull together his favourite album. Beyond your imagination? Well you won't go far wrong if you include a rake of Neil Young and a few different versions of Dust My Broom, the old blues standard. But they didn't ask Our Martyn; instead the compilers of this series asked illustrators Ralph Steadman, R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton (The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) as well as writers such as Old Gonzo himself, Hunter S. "Music," he writes, "has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of fuel." His fuel is relatively predictable and somewhat dated (like the good doctor) - Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, The Band and Jefferson Airplane - but he throws a few curved balls such as the lethal Warren Zevon, Flaco Jiminez and country legend Hank Thompson (no relation), and his accompanying essay contains faint echoes of his greatness.

Joe Breen

Ralph Steadman: I Like It (Songbook)

Thompson's former collaborator and Rolling Stone gardening correspondent, Ralph Steadman, is more eclectic in his tastes than the Gonzo in Chief. And his typically idiosyncratic notes, bizarre photographic portraits and wonderful drawings which colour the inner sleeve add a distinctive touch which should tickle the fancy of collectors. His musical selection is, like the man, different: from Ronnie Drew's whispered digified version of Brothers In Arms to Beethoven's sombre Kyrie to Making Whoopee by Bob Kerr and his Whoopee Band. There are two real rarities: his own Sweetest Love I Do Not Do (with a little help from John Donne) and a joint effort with Thompson and Mo Dean, unsurprisingly entitled Weird & Twisted Nights. But amid the oddities there is the wonderful God Loves A Drunk by Norma Waterson and Billie Holiday's unforgettable Strange Fruit.

Joe Breen

Various: The History of Opera (Naxos)If you've never been able to sort out your Purcell from your Pergolesi, or your singspiel from your opera seria, you could do worse than tune in as Robert Powell reads Richard Fawkes's illustrated history of opera, striding boldly from prehistoric beginnings in 16th-century Italy as far as Gilbert and Sullivan and Alban Berg. It takes some four CDs and over five hours to get there, mind you - and there aren't many laughs along the way. The illustrations, taken from the Naxos catalogue, are sometimes a tad bizarre - Ascanio in Alba, of all things, featuring strongly on the Mozart menu - and there's far too much operetta; mostly, though, it's stoutly self-improving stuff.

Arminta Wallace