My earliest reading memoryI started with a comic: Valiant. Hardly great literature – but it provided escapism from my prep school. The tales of Kelly’s Eye and the Steel Claw enthralled me and I still dream of them now.
My favourite book growing upI was always a fan of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise. She was a sort of female James Bond, a criminal turned government agent. My parents used to read each new book as it came out and then hand it on to me. It was one of the few things that brought us together as a family.
The book that changed me as a teenagerLP Hartley’sThe Go-Betweenwas my doorway from light fiction – thrillers and adventure stories – to serious literature. It’s such a sad book that it made me question my own sense of melancholy as a teenager and prompted me to take more control of my life. I didn’t want to end up like Leo Colston, its terribly damaged narrator.
Thebook that changed my mindI’d always had a mistrust of short stories, even though I’ve written many myself. They often struck me as insubstantial, unsatisfying. Then, about eight years ago, I readThe Pier Fallsby Mark Haddon, a collection of nine stories, each one outstanding and truly memorable.
The book that made me want to be a writerI was 10 years old when I knew I wanted to be a writer, but when I was given The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, aged 17, I realised that I would be a crime writer. I was living in a quite dull suburb, but Doyle showed me that the tentacles of mystery, intrigue and murder are far-reaching and embrace every walk of life.
The bookI came back toI was given Hard Times at school and it put me off Dickens for about 10 years. But then, staying in Istanbul, the father of my best friend more or less forced me to read Great Expectations and I’ve loved Dickens ever since.
The book I rereadI have reread most Dickens novels twice or three times, usually about 20 years apart. The joy of great literature is that each time you come back to a book, you find something different to enjoy and this teaches you something new about yourself.
The book I could never read againThere are a lot of books I’m nervous of rereading because I enjoyed them so intensely I worry I’ll realise how jaded I’ve become.The Once and Future Kingby TH White is one such book. And, despite the brilliance of Peter Jackson’s films, The Lord of the Rings is certainly another.
The book I discovered later in lifeI’ve only recently started reading serious poetry, and discovered Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings in my 50s. Days and An Arundel Tomb are two of my favourite poems and now I try to read poetry every morning. I’m afraid it’s a better start to the day than the news.
The book I am currently readingI’m immersed inThe Nazi Mindby Laurence Rees – who is the leading authority on the rise of nazism and the Holocaust. This book looks at the psychology and the methodology of the Third Reich and, although he is careful to make no direct comparisons, it sheds horrible light on the way the world, particularly the USA, is heading now. Read it and be afraid.
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My comfort readI have found myself retreating more and more to the 19th century: Jane Austen, the Brontës, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, George Gissing, etc. Not all these stories are happy but there’s a sense that things happen as they should. I’m not sure that’s true of how we live now.
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