It's Saturday night at the end of June. Despite predictions of a long, hot summer, inevitably the sky is black, the rain heaving down, the field of dreams has become a waking nightmare. You're washed out again at the Glastonbury festival, and while you dry your socks and wait in your leaking tent until it's time to go for a falafelburger and catch a bit of the Fleet Foxes set, there's nothing to do but read.

But what's the perfect festival book? Specifically, what's the perfect Glastonbury book? If you're one of those who's already bagged a ticket for this year's sold-out event, then most likely you will have already thought through what to throw in the boot of the SUV along with your tipi and chemical toilet. Here's my recommended Glasto reading matter.

If you're going to Glastonbury to…

… jump up and down and sing along to Blur, you need Powder by Kevin Sampson. From 2000, this is like reading a novelisation of the NME in the late 90s. Rising laddish indie bands battle it out for cred, record deals and fans. Sex, drugs and, of course, rock'n'roll.

… wear long leather jackets and throw live mice at squealing emo girls at Echo and the Bunnymen, you need Bad Wisdom by Bill Drummond, outsider pop impresario and half of the KLF, and Mark Manning, aka Zodiac Mindwarp, in which our two authors and heroes go to the north pole to sacrifice an icon of Elvis Presley in search of the lost chord. Maybe.

… watch the Prodigy, stay up all night, inadvisedly hoover up as many pills as possible, sink into your own personal Hades and have some kind of epiphany at sunrise, you need Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It'll help you survive encounters with all those students and trustafarians who have reinvented themselves as edgy crackheads for the weekend. Compare the worst toilet in Scotland with the worst toilet at Glastonbury. Have your own redemptive ecstasy experience.

… wear black, mooch around gloomily and drink snakey and black, you need Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite. A band called Lost Souls. A fey, troubled singer called Ghost. Three vampires who swig blood and chartreuse. Just in case the sun comes out, put the book over your face and dream of a rain-soaked New Orleans night.

… grin like an idiot, wear Converse All-Stars, chase your teenage friends around like a mad muppet, bounce up and down like Tigger, and scoff at anyone over 30 then you need Phonogram: Rue Britannia by Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen. This graphic novel feeds the entire Brit-Pop movement through an achingly cool urban-fantasy blender. Read it alone, weeping, in your tent when you fail to pull that haughty girl from Dorset watching Glasvegas.

… stand at the back watching Neil Young, loudly complaining that Glasto isn't like it used to be; that it's too commercial, too full of middle class people and you can't believe you really have to sleep in that campsite near those people who shout all night, you need High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, the now-classic tale of 30-something angst that can only be soothed – or possibly fuelled – by music, and music on vinyl at that.

… ignore the music altogether and sit in the Green Field, communing with Gaia and perhaps doing a bit of tribal drumming, you need A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys. Let's face it, at more than 1,100 fairly dense pages you aren't actually going to read any of it, but you'll look great with it on your lap as you gaze dreamily in the direction of the Tor.

… actually be the coolest person in the entire field without even trying, then you need Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina, the book that perfectly bridged the Beat 50s and hippy 60s, with one of the most effortlessly wonderful anti-heroes in literature, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, rampaging through campus America at the start of a revolutionary period in history. And with a toilet scene that's a perfect primer for using festival lavvies.