Friday, September 29, 2017

Books that made me / Philip Pullman / ‘The book I wish I’d written? My next one’

Philip Pullman … ‘I only cry when I stub my toe.’ Photograph: Michael Leckie


Books

that 

made me


Philip Pullman: ‘The book I wish I’d written? My next one’

The Northern Lights author loves John le Carré and William Blake, Anthony Powell not so much

PHILIP PULLMAN
FRIDADY 29 SEPTEMBER 2017

The book I am currently reading
John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies.
The book that changed my life/the world
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
The book I wish I’d written
My next one.
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
Jonathan Swift, Directions to Servants.
The book I think is most under/overrated
Underrated: David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus; overrated: Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time.
The last book that made me cry/laugh
Laugh: Bernard Shaw, Our Theatres in the Nineties; cry: I only cry when I stub my toe.
The book I couldn’t finish
Far too many to list, but including Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men.
The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
James Joyce, Ulysses.
The book I most often give as a gift
Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit.
The book I’d most like to be remembered for
Clockwork, or All Wound Up.


THE BOOKS THAT MADE ME
2017
13 October 2017
Eimear McBride / ‘I can never finish Dickens – it’s sacrilege’
20 October 2017
Shami Chakrabarti / ‘Harry Potter offers a great metaphor for the war on terror’
1 December 2017
Penelope Lively / My debt to roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce

2018
20 January 2018
Kamila Shamsie: ‘It took me 17 years to get round to War and Peace’
25 May 2018
Colm Tóibín / ‘I couldn’t read until I was nine / My first book was an Agatha Christie’
8 June 2018
Carol Ann Duffy / ‘I wish I’d written Harry Potter, obvs’
27 July 2018
Richard Powers: ‘I love sci-fi. The more 10-foot reptilians, the better’
28 september 2018
Robin Robertson: ‘The poetry world is polarised. I’m in the middle, vaguely appalled’

2019

18 January 2019
Margaret Drabble / ‘Lee Child does all the things I could never do. I’m awestruck’

1 February 2019
Leïla Sliman / ‘I’ve always been fascinated by Marilyn Monroe'

8 February 2019
Emma Glass / ‘Game of Thrones is overrated. Give me The Lord of the Rings any day'

1 March 2019
Tom Rachman / ‘Does every author read faster than I do?’

8 March 2019
Ben Okri / ‘I began Don Quixote as one person and finished as another’

2020

17 April 2020
Sally Rooney / 'I want the next thing I do to be the best thing I’ve ever done'

1 May 2020
Edna O'Brien / 'Reading Charles Darwin dislodged my religious education'

24 May 2020
André Aciman: 'I couldn’t finish Moby-Dick. I lacked the patience'

9 October 2020
Neil Gaiman / 'Narnia made me want to write, to do that magic trick'


2021
26 March 2021
Vivian Gornick / 'I couldn’t finish Michelle Obama’s Becoming'
9 April 2021
Emma Cline / ‘Reading anything because you “should” doesn’t make sense to me’

6 August 2021

Damon Galgut / ‘After reading Roald Dahl, the world never looked the same’

9 August 2021
Frank Cottrell-Boyce / ‘I read Adrian Mole every year, it gets funnier each time’

13 August 2021
Anuk Arudpragasam / ‘There’s a lot of laughter in my life, but not when I read’


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