This week's topic unearthed some fascinating connections between books and music. Turns out, for example, that Lindisfarne's Lady Eleanor was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's story Fall of the House of Usher. Serene harmonies, bass gently bubbling like globules in a lava lamp … and a literary pedigree to boot.
On the crest of the Merseybeat wave, Billy J Kramer's backing group the Dakotas had an instrumental hit in 1963 with The Cruel Sea, written by guitarist Mike Maxfield, who took the title from Nicholas Monsarrat's book, a second world war Royal Navy drama. The Ventures remade it for American ears, retitling it The Cruel Surf.
"Dallow, Spicer, Pinkie, Cubitt," sings Morrissey in Now My Heart Is Full, namechecking and romanticising the gangsters in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, concluding with characteristic nonchalance: "And I just can't explain so I won't even try." Moz, of course, has always pinned literary references to himself like badges, deepening his work and his connection to his fans. One of his favourites is Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse's kitchen-sink classic about a fantasist. The song of that title sees the Decemberists go all plinky-plonky, I guess in an anglophile homage to their Britpop forebears. They get it a bit wrong ("he's got his knickers down" … men tend not to wear knickers, Colin) but it's a top tune, so it works.
HP Lovecraft took their name from the cult writer, and their song The White Ship is based on one of his mystical tales, about a vessel sailing on a sea of dreams. Longtime RR commenter SweetHomeAlabama describes it as "baroque, Middle Eastern flavoured psychedelia at its finest".
The title of David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto's beautiful Forbidden Colours comes from a novel by Yukio Mishima. It's a version with added Bowie-ish vocals of the theme from Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, a film (starring Bowie) based on two novels, The Seed and the Sower and The Night of the New Moon, both by Laurens van der Post. So, as nominator SonOfWebcore says, "you get three books for the price of one".
A good title goes a long way, for songs as well as books. The Fall's "country and northern" favourite New Face in Hell took its title from (and its lyrics may or may not be based on) a 1977 pulp novel by one Roger Busby, as robbo100 notes.
Serge Gainsbourg hams it up in his yeh-yeh response to Robert Louis Stevenson, Doctor Jekyll et Monsieur Hyde. It's a snug fit: the subliminal message is I'm amoral, and there's nothing I can do about it.
The 21st-century space age pop of Pepe Deluxé's A Night and a Day takes its inspiration from a mystical 19th-century novel called A Dweller on Two Planets by Frederick S Oliver. It's as crazy as a song based on a book about reincarnation and karma in futuristic worlds might be but it's a real blast. The early days of sci-fi also prompted London teenagers Stray to write Around the World in 80 Days, a sweet plea for togetherness unheeded by the band's one-time manager Charlie Kray, big brother of gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie.
Ray Bradbury's horrific 1962 novel about a travelling carnival shares a title with Barry Adamson's Something Wicked This Way Comes, a deliciously cinematic amalgam of Classics IV's Spooky and Le Temps Des Souvenirs by Françoise Hardy.
The idealised union of man and underpinned Kraftwerk's best work, and is beautiful but terrifying. Abahachi hails Julien Offray de La Mettrie's L'homme machine as "a pioneering work of philosophy that inspired not just a classic song but the whole approach of the band that made it, and then an entire genre in imitation". The 18th-century French writer died after eating too much pâté de faisan aux truffes. Rock'n'roll!
Now My Heart is Full - Morrissey
Forbidden Colours - David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto
Doctor Jekyll et Monsieur Hyde - Serge Gainsbourg
A Night and a Day - Pepe Deluxé
Around the World in 80 Days - Stray
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Barry Adamson
* Listen to these songs on a YouTube playlist
* Read all the readers' recommendations on last week's blog, from which I've selected the songs above
* Here's a Spotify playlist containing readers' recommendations on this theme
* We'll reveal the next Readers Recommend topic at guardian.co.uk/readersrecommend at 10pm on Thursday.
