Our 2017 Zitebooks Christmas feature is our response to questions featured in Saturday’s Guardian’s Literary Review Supplement. Hope you enjoy them.
James Goddard
The book I am currently reading
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Someone at my book group suggested it last month as an ‘extra’ read. Ony about one third of the way through and it seems a bit laboured though the ideas about women’s and men’s roles are interesting. It’s certainly better than Her Turn to Cry by Chris Curran; God only knows what possessed Ron to suggest this dull and cliched potboiler with characters who struggle to reach two dimensions.
The book that changed my life
L’Etranger by Albert Camus.
The book I wish I’d written
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. So good in many ways. Recommended by a student I was teaching years ago. I often read the Christmas nativity play chapter in subsequent years to different groups of students. Read it for yourself!
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
So many; who can tell? Puckoon by Milligan?
The book I think is most under / overrated –
Underrated: Transatlantic by Colum McCann; overrated: Anything by Henry James
The last book that made me cry / laugh Cry
Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild – an account of the abolition of slavery in the UK; Laugh – Her Turn to Cry, though I am convinced this was most definitely NOT the author’s intention
The book I couldn’t finish
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas. Why do we let Ron make book group selections?
The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
David Copperfield
Martin Godleman
The book I am currently reading
Stoner – John Williams
A book from the 60s that so many people told me I had to read that I finally gave in
The book that changed my life
The Catcher In The Rye – J D Salinger
I started reading this in a laundrette and got chucked out when it closed two chapters before the end. I went home and finished it.
The book I wish I’d written
Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolff
Effortless genius; a book that manages to be both hilarious and tragic, often in alternate paragraphs.
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
Incredible that a book written almost two hundred and fifty years ago can seem so contemporary and actually bring me out in loud belly laughs
The book I think is most under/ overrated
Underrated – Mysogynies by Joan Smith – why is this book out of print? It is utterly sublime and vicious in the targets for its humour
Overrated – The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
Badly plotted, unbelievable dialogue, never credible even in an imaginative way. Makes 50 Shades of Grey look like a Booker Prize winner
The last book that made me cry / laugh
Red Dust Road – Jackie Kay
Poignant throughout – an essential writer who can harness emotion with simple phrases
The book I couldn’t finish
Post-Capitalism – Paul Mason
I love it but it’s quite dense in parts
The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Simon Jay
The book I am currently reading
To my Trans Sisters (Edited by Charlie Craggs)
With all the vile transphobia in the mainstream media I feel we all need to educate ourselves about the trans experience as much as possible.
The book that changed my life
Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry
I read his self-lacerating memoir at 14 and realised that intelligence, acceptance and empathy are qualities to cherish in oneself and others.
The book I wish I’d written
Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
This family drama about a father’s breakdown told from the points of view of each member is a perfect novel from the writer of Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
The Story of Tracey Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
All of us owe a great debt to children’s writers, Wilson’s realistic, flawed and creatively brilliant characters fuelled my love of books and writing from an early age.
The book I think is most underrated
A life Discarded by Alexander Masters
Some people (Guardian readers) are quite snooty about Master’s inventive genre of forensic biography. His unpicking of a mystery where he finds 48 volumes of a person’s diary in a skip is utterly compelling.
The last book that made me cry
Straight Jacket by Matthew Todd
An excellent book about how gay people are affected by a deeply homophobic society and how we can strive to love ourselves and each other more.
The book I couldn’t finish
Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion
This doorstop of a tome meticulously details the life of the poet, with analysis behind his most famous poems, fantasies about women’s forearm hair and endless racism and misery. I got half-way through before withering!
The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
Most of the classics evade me, Dicken’s, Thackery, Bronte etc.
Pamela Pickton
I am currently reading
Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn.
But not really. Well, slowly and not with great enjoyment. It is this month`s Book Club book, which I am wading through. So I am resorting, as usual, to my good old fall-back – my guilty secret – the detective books by M.C.Beaton. My escape reading.
The book that changed my life
Well of course whatever I was reading which made me decide that I was a writer;and The Little Book, as in the story with that title. It introduced me to words, rhythm, poetry. And to feelings.
But also How To Be Healthy Wealthy and Wise by M. H. Tester,and given to me by my mother, who had boughtit in a charity shop. It led to one book then another, and many more, and set me on a path of spiritual quest. I don’t have all the answers. I have some which are my answers for now. But it led me to the path whose gate Ihad long been seeking.
The book I wish I`d written
Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell. For in the first sentence who dunnit and why, yet you still want to read it.
The book which influenced the writing of Neverland was I`m The King Of The Castle by Susan Hill because it tells of the inner word of children; of their feelings, sufferings, and sometimes dark side.
Underrated – most detective books. They explore human psychology, and are also great page turners. My escape reading. But also, the writer`s understanding of the horrors in both victim and perpetrator brings a healing sense that someone identifies with you
Overrated – Well a lot of so called great prize wining books. I call it the Empepor`s New Clothes syndrome. Many books and films and plays are loudly applauded and I wonder if we are applauding them because everyone else is. I have seen small budget films, no box office sell-outs which I have felt to be far greater than any award winner. There have been magazine stories and even ones read out in a Local Adult Eduction class, which I remember – sometimes decades on – and will never forget.
I never finished
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, which was a Booker Prize winner.
A friend and I tried it twice before abandoning it. Another friend adored it, and I feel with books it is a case of what draws you in. as my Anthony Quinn is not doing for me right now.
What I am most ashamed of is not to have read more Dickens. When I do read him I think, why would I not want to spend my whole life doing this? Time I guess. But he would be my Desert Island choice.
I don’t laugh out loud or cry very much. But I remember reading a book decades before which made me laugh out loud. It was either Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene, or Round The World With Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis.
Jules Sykes
The book I am currently reading
Hide by Matthew Griffin
The book(s) that changed my life
To Sunset and Beyond by Alec Lea. This is essentially about a boy who gets lost on the Moors and the fear I felt whilst reading it has stayed with me…(I was probably around 7). The fear of what damage you can cause others if you’re irresponsible was a big lesson.
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The poignance and exquisite tenderness of each character portrayed still hurts me to think about.
But there are lots of books that have changed my life, some more than others. Catcher in the Rye for example.
The book I wish I’d written
The Vivisector by Patrick White. The brutal portrayal of a painter who is perhaps the closest I’ll ever get to understanding the human condition.
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
I don’t write much but the styles of Richard Brautigan (The Abortion 1966) and Charles Bukowski (Ham On Rye) inspired me to believe that anything goes, and that you don’t have to be an English professor to write great fiction. These are about peculiarities – in both circumstances and people, and the ridiculousness of the lives we lead. Laugh out loud funny, one minute cry like a baby the next.
The book I think is most under / overrated
(Underrated) Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
(Overrated) most of John Fowles
The last book that made me cry / laugh
The Peculiar Memoirs of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson
If you haven’t read this, you must…embarrassed myself on the tube laughing out loud.
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs – laugh/cry with abandon
The book I couldn’t finish
This is an exhaustive list…
But most recently, London Fields
The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
Any Shakespeare
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