| The |
Books
0f my
life
Rumaan Alam: ‘Reading JD Salinger now is like running into that particular ex at a cafe’
The US author on his early love of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the genius of Judy Blume, and finding perfection in Agatha Christie and Gustave Flaubert
Rumaan Alam
Friday 5 September 2025
My earliest reading memory
I recall lying in the bath, age seven or eight, reading the final page of Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J Freedman As Herself, then turning to the novel’s opening and beginning again. Memory is untrustworthy, but Blume is a genius who has that effect on her reader.
My favourite book growing up
We’re always growing up; we’re always choosing a new favourite. For me, once, this was Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy. Later I’d have said JD Salinger’s Nine Stories. Later, still, John Cheever’s Collected Stories, Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, my favourite changing as I did. Maybe I’m finally old enough to understand that favourite is impossible to designate. Or maybe I’d say my current favourite is Don DeLillo’s Underworld.
The book that changed me as a teenager
I encountered Salinger at 13. I began with The Catcher in the Rye (as most do) and read through his (too small) oeuvre. I wrote bad stories ripping him off; he somehow made me believe that I could be a writer, too.
The writer who changed my mind
I think reading William Faulkner – I’d have been 16 or so – was the first time I understood that the pleasure one finds in a book might not be in its ease. I think that’s what I most loved (and still value!) about the favourites of my childhood: being swept up in story and character and action. Faulkner showed me that there could be delight in wrestling with a sentence, a pure joy in language itself, a thrill in being challenged and confused by a work of art.
The author that made me want to be a writer
My early writing education was just mimicry. And the first writer I remember imitating was Agatha Christie. How I wanted to write a perfect whodunit, with a stately home, a party of interesting people and a dead body. That’s easier said than done.
The authors I come back to
There’s no shortage of these – Don DeLillo, Anita Brookner, Patrick Modiano, Philip Roth, Willa Cather. These are but a few of the writers I can go back to and be thrilled by whenever I need.
The books I could never read again
My relationship with Salinger was like a heated youthful romance. Reading his fiction now is a bit like running into that particular ex at a cafe. I’d rather remember Salinger’s work as meaningful to my 14-year-old self than actually read it as I tiptoe toward 50.
The book I discovered later in life
I’m all for discovery whenever it happens. Books have no sell-by date. They’re always there, waiting for their readers, and it’s silly to carry around a sense of embarrassment for not having got to Moby-Dick or what have you. This summer I read Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary for the first time. A perfect novel! Why did I wait so long? It doesn’t matter.
The book I am currently reading
Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas. My first time with Stein, and I’m reading it slowly while lying on the beach; a luxury, a joy.
My comfort read
Comfort can be different things. In times of stress, I might want something funny, or I might want something that mirrors the tumult I’m feeling in life. The comfort derives, in large part, from knowing that it’s new, that I’m in search of something, that I might discover something other than what I’m looking for. That’s what I love about books – a journey without a map.
