Thursday, March 26, 2026

Daisy Johnson / ‘I wasn’t a fan of David Szalay, but Flesh is a masterpiece’

The Booker-shortlisted author on a momentous teenage encounter with The Bone People, getting a buzz from Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla, and trying to avoid The Lorax

Daisy Johnson

Friday 13 March 2026

My earliest reading memory
Memories from my childhood are opening up as I read to my own young children at the moment. Something in the pictures of Helen Cooper’s The Bear Under the Stairs or Lane Smith’s The Big Petstakes me back to being four years old and being read to.

My favourite book growing up
I love the Sabriel series by Garth Nix and first read it alongside my father and, later, my younger brother. It was truly a shared joy to be immersed in that world, for a book to give us a new connection to one another.

The book that changed me as a teenager
I don’t remember what age I was when I found The Bone People by Keri Hulme on my parents’ bookshelf, probably too young. I was a swirling hurricane of a teenager and reading about Kerewin alone in her tower felt momentous. There was something about the way that the anger and fear in the book bury into the writing.

The writer who changed my mind
I think my mind is being changed by writing all of the time, but most recently Ed Yong’s book about animal senses, An Immense World, completely changed my perspective on the world around us. Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad is one of the books about the genocide of the Palestinian people that has started to educate me. Women Talking by Miriam Toews showed me what fiction could be capable of.

The book that made me want to be a writer
It probably happened slowly, without my really realising. I think the Alfie books by Shirley Hughes were a beginning – the beautiful domesticity, the pacing. The first time I actually remember having that envious buzzing feeling of “What if I could do this?” was probably with Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg.

The book or author I came back to
In a previous interview I said I was not a fan of David Szalay, but I think that Flesh is a masterpiece.

The book I reread
I reread all of the time. Both as a reader, for love, and as a writer. There is such delight in finding new things, in the writing, in yourself. Both Orlando and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf are books I first read as a literature student and have returned to later and again, very recently.

The book I could never read again
I wish I never had to read Dr Seuss’s The Lorax again; where can I hide it?

The book I discovered later in life
I have only recently picked up A Room With a View by EM Forster, after loving Lucy Honeychurch in the film, and it is so wonderful and funny. I have also just started reading the work of Yōko Ogawa, a brilliant writer.

The book I am currently reading

One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson – and I’m listening to The Poisoned King by Katherine Rundell.

My comfort read
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.

THE GUARDIAN

Ben Markovits / ‘I used to think any book concerned with people falling in love can’t be very good’

Ben Markovits: ‘I used to think any book concerned with people falling in love can’t be very good’

The British-American author on arguing about Jane Austen, the joys of Jerome K Jerome, and revising his opinion of Philip Roth

Ben Markovits

Friday 27 February 2026

My earliest reading memory
I used to read Donald Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown stories with my mother. It’s a classic American kids’ series about a boy detective and his brilliant sidekick, Sally, who protects him as they tackle their arch enemy, Bugs Meany, a kind of high school bully version of Professor Moriarty. We’d sit in the kitchen together and try to solve the crimes. Of course, for me it was also an opportunity to hang out with my mom. I’m one of five kids; attention was hard to come by. But I was also drawn to the picture Sobol paints of small-town all-American life, which I don’t think I ever felt a part of. We moved around too much.

My favourite book growing up
I remember finishing JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings at elementary school and already feeling sad about the fact that I’d never be able to read it again for the first time. I have a dim memory that I was in school, because the feeling has something of the flavour of the school hallway and the bright lights on the shiny tiled floors, and the general sense of being shut in for the rest of the day. Some of my older brother’s friends had already introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, which shaped the next few years of my life. Most of my favourite novels started with the idea of some lonely figure wandering out into the world to see what the world would do to him. (Later, Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers was another favourite.)

The book that changed me as a teenager
Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves. I was 17 and my parents had just moved us to Berlin for the year. Part of the appeal was that Graves had a German background, too, but I think I was also responding to the conversational style. As a book, it was very good company. I had just moved school and didn’t know anybody.

The writer who changed my mind
When I was a dumb kid I used to get into arguments with my big sister about Jane Austen. I think I had just read Pride and Prejudice in school. I thought, any book that’s so concerned with people falling in love can’t be very good. Later, my sister became a professor of 19th-century literature. It was from her that I first heard Austen’s account of her own virtues as a writer, that famous line about the two inches of ivory on which she produced her effects. Most of my favourite writers now work in that tradition.

The book or author I came back to
My wife and I were briefly part of a book group in our 20s; I don’t think either of us often read the books. But somebody picked Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, and for whatever reason, I got through it – even though I didn’t like it. It sounded too much like the academics I knew from my parents’ dinner table, trying to make big statements about America. Later someone suggested I Married a Communist, and I changed my mind – it was just the range of things Roth had thought about, and could speak of with feeling.

The book I reread
Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. In my 20s, I sent it to my mother to cheer her up after she’d just had some bad medical news. Years later, during the pandemic, my son listened to the audiobook endlessly – I think we first played it to the kids on long car rides.

The book I discovered later in life
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. For some reason, I never read it in high school, which is where it usually gets ruined for most American kids. Then, about 10 years ago, I assigned it for a class without having read it on novellas. It turned out to be much longer than I expected, and much, much better. Just a wonderful, tough novel about how to deal with the fact that who you are in the world isn’t who you want to be.

The book I am currently reading
Cousin Phillis, by Elizabeth Gaskell. Another recommendation from my sister, and another writer who works those two inches of ivory.

My comfort read
The World of Jeeves, by PG Wodehouse, my favourite selection of his stories. I’ve been reading it now for almost 40 years. Sometimes I have to leave it alone for a while, because the gum has lost its flavour. It’s always a pleasure to come back to it, though.

THE GUARDIAN

The books of my life / Saba Sams

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life

Saba Sams: ‘I’ve no interest in reading Wuthering Heights again’

The Send Nudes author on rereading Lorrie Moore, finding Dodie Smith at the right time, and the enduring brilliance of Muriel Spark

Saba Sams

Friday 6 March 2026

My earliest reading memory
I remember reading Jacqueline Wilson aloud to my mum in the car. I think it was The Illustrated Mum. My mum couldn’t believe it was a children’s book, and I felt so proud. I always found most children’s books overly virtuous and safe, but Wilson’s never were. I love her for that.

My favourite book growing up
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. I read it again recently, having mostly forgotten it, and loved it just as much. It’s totally alive.

The book that changed me as a teenager
Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker. I read it at university when I was nineteen. I’d never read anything like it. It expanded my mind by making me feel so many things all at once.

The writer who changed my mind
Gwendoline Riley, for repeatedly writing claustrophobic novels from the perspective of an enigmatic female protagonist. I internalised at some point that writers were supposed to leap from book to book showing off their huge range, but I find Riley’s approach far braver and more compelling.

The book that made me want to be a writer
The Whole Story and Other Stories by Ali Smith, particularly a story in the collection called Erosive. The structure is disordered, but the disorder is so considered. Reading it made writing feel like one of the most satisfying and playful things I could attempt to do.

The book I came back to
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector. When I first picked it up it seemed too hard, and I couldn’t make sense of it. I tried again some years later, having just put my baby down for a nap, and I’d read the whole thing by the time he woke up. It was a singular reading experience, totally out of body, and exactly what I’d needed in the moment.

The book I reread
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore. This novel fits every mood for me. At sentence-level it’s so enchanting and funny and chewy, but then it has this wise, melancholic mood hanging over it. And the characters are brilliant. Every time I revisit it, I find something new.

The book I could never read again
I did Wuthering Heights for A-level, and I didn’t mind it at the time. But I’ve no interest in reading it again. There are so many more books out there.

The book I discovered later in life
I just read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I had a lot of fun with it. It’s both more surreal and more predictable than I expected. I half-wish I’d read it as a teenager, but the total naivety of basically every character might be the best thing about it, and perhaps I’d have missed that years ago.

The book I am currently reading
Sail Away Land by Ben Pester. It’s weird and soulful. I love ending my days with it.

My comfort read
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Some might argue this novel is too sad to be comforting, but I’d disagree. At its heart is a call for expansive love, and that to me is the ultimate balm. It’s funny, too.

THE GUARDIAN