Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

All That Is by James Salter (Picador, £8.99)

It’s 1944 in the Pacific. An American ship is hit by a kamikaze attack. Philip Bowman, a young officer, survives. James Salter whisks us through Bowman’s life — Harvard, then a job in New York, then marriage, then an affair... this book is full of poignantly remembered passion. Salter, who is in his late eighties, shows us how episodes from life that seem important at the time fade into the past, to be replaced by new episodes. Every so often Bowman meets a woman in a blaze of hope and excitement. You keep thinking “This is the one!” Like Salter’s Collected Stories (Picador £9.99), it’s subtle and moving.

The Race Against Time by Edward Pickering (Corgi, £9.99)

When he was 13 Chris Boardman, who would later transform British cycling, asked his parents if he could compete in a 10-mile race. They were worried that the “challenge, difficulty and pain” would be too much for the boy. But they were wrong. Chris, a dyslexic who wasn’t enjoying school and who says “I didn’t have a lot of self-esteem”, had found his perfect world. He was stoical and patient. He loved the way he could plan and quantify tiny improvements. Meanwhile, in Scotland, a wild card called Graeme Obree was conducting weird experiments on his bike. Two nerdy misfits, two rivals, two ways of thinking about the world, very nicely told.