Nick Harkaway / ‘I loathed Charles Dickens – it nearly turned me off reading for ever’

 

Nick Harkaway

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Nick Harkaway: ‘I loathed Charles Dickens – it nearly turned me off reading for ever’

This article is more than 5 months old

The author on his secret theories about Tolkien, the most perfect and terrifying Moomin book, and how his father, John le Carré, inspired him

Nick Harkaway

Friday 19 September 2025

My earliest reading memory
I read The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien at seven, in my bedroom in the deep west of Cornwall. I secretly believed that Rivendell was based on that house, which it clearly wasn’t.

My favourite book growing up
Impossible. I’m inconstant, so it was whatever I was reading at the time. Let’s say Finn Family Moomintroll, which is the most perfect of Tove Jansson’s lovely (and occasionally frankly terrifying) Moomin books.

The book that changed me as a teenager
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, at 14. I loathed it. It nearly turned me off reading for ever. Everyone kept telling me it was a masterpiece and I just couldn’t understand why [school would] set a book about being an alienated child for a bunch of teenagers. “Yes, I know adults are incomprehensible and other people make no sense and loneliness is awful. Why do I need to read about it?”

The writer who changed my mind
Tan Twan Eng. The Garden of Evening Mists is a stunning novel – jaw-dropping, beautiful, intricate, elegant, powerful, touching – and made me see how books about terrible things can be uplifting to the point of transcendent. As I type that it seems obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me then.

The book that made me want to be a writer
Ah. That one’s a little bit tricky, because I’ve always been immersed in writing. I can tell you that Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is so good that it infuriated me into starting a new novel, and that everything I’ve read by Michael Chabon has filled me with a furious creative envy that makes me work harder. Jeanette Winterson is some kind of perfect dreamer; Anne Carson and Colson Whitehead always make me feel like I should be wilder, wiser and better. But perhaps the honour has to go to A Murder of Quality by John le Carré. My father gave me a leather-bound copy when I was very young, and the smell of the pages and the beauty of the object itself made me believe in the magic of words.

The book I came back to
We’re back with Great Expectations. It really is a brilliant book, but we shouldn’t force it on teenagers. That’s not to say they shouldn’t read it if they want to. But just because it’s about young people doesn’t mean it’s written for them; it’s written for the rest of us remembering who we were.

The book I reread
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. I read it as a child and scared myself sleepless, then at university and chuckled at my tween fear, and again more recently, conscious at last not of the monstrosity of the hound, but the astounding cruelty of its master.

The book I could never read again
Almost every book I read for fun between seven and 17. I actually don’t remember what they were, so I can’t name and shame, but that is some kind of judgment in itself. To highlight instead some of the notable exceptions: Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising sequence, Patricia McKillip’s harpist trilogy, and all things William Gibson.

The book I discovered later in life
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.

The book I am currently reading
Matt Wixey’s Basilisk. And, with my kids, I’m reading the latest Amari Peters book, Amari and the Despicable Wonders by BB Alston. It’s very tense and I don’t know how she can possibly win through!

My comfort read
Spook Country by William Gibson, who I mentioned earlier, of course, but this is one of his later books and for me it’s just superb. The audiobook, read by Robertson Dean, is also a gem. The texture of the prose, the encounter between mundane and strange, the magic of story … it’s a good place to spend an evening.

 Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway is published by Penguin. 

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Joelle Taylor: ‘I picked up The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in a swoon of nine-year-old despair’

 

Joelle Taylor

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Joelle Taylor: ‘I picked up The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in a swoon of nine-year-old despair’

This article is more than 4 months old

The poet and playwright on queer classics, cinematic TS Eliot and the comforts of a ghost story

Joelle Taylor

Friday 17 October 2025

My earliest reading memory
I was around five when my mum first pulled out Clement C Moore’s The Night Before Christmas, a bumper blue book with vivid illustrations. There was such suspense in the poem, such inexorable music, the sonic possibilities matching the mystery.

My favourite book growing up
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. I used to spend every spare moment in Bacup library, Lancashire, bag of sweets to the right and a book open before me. I had read all of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books, thought Famous Five were all a bit dry, and picked up Weirdstone in a swoon of nine-year-old despair. The darkness was delicious, exciting because many of the landmarks in the story were from my local area.

The book that changed me as a teenager
I was the first of my family to attend university, where I was introduced to books by black female writers for the first time. The one that has influenced my writing the most is probably For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. Its fusion of narrative, poetry and choreography is seismic. Both political and personal, it left its watermark on me, hinting at the sheer possibilities of poetry and literature.

The writers who changed my mind
They were the ones who published in fanzines like Shocking Pink or in the feminist magazine Spare Rib.

The book that made me want to be a writer
There was never a moment when I didn’t want to be a writer but The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich showed me how.

The book I came back to
The Waste Land by TS Eliot. As a young woman I couldn’t understand how anyone could connect with these old white men of poetry – and then a couple of years ago I finally sat alone with it. I was astonished at the immediacy and expansiveness of the world building: it’s cinematic imagery.

The book I reread
Another Mother Tongue by Judy Grahn. I shoplifted this book in the late 1980s, compelled by discovering the etymological origins of the words used to describe the queer community.

The book I could never read again
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, a classic lesbian text (you must read it to get your certificate). While it seemed incredible in my mid-teens to find women like me, the book itself is harrowing, formed mainly of striding across moors and thrilling unhappiness. I’d like us to have more positive introductions to queer culture.

The book I discovered later in life
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

The book I am currently reading
RABBITBOX by Wayne Holloway-Smith, which is out next year and will change everything we believe is possible in poetry.

My comfort read
Strangely, ghost stories of any kind. I’m particularly drawn to the English ghost story, the idea of the phantom as the past constantly intruding on the now, the mythic weather, the intricate architecture, the tweed. I like a story that follows me.

 Maryville by Joelle Taylor is published by Bloomsbury Poetry on 6 November

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Hans Christian Andersen / The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl
 by Hans Christian Andersen

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening--the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.

Sophie Hannah / ‘I gave up on Wuthering Heights three times’

 

Sophie Hannah

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Sophie Hannah: ‘I gave up on Wuthering Heights three times’

This article is more than 3 months old

The crime writer on actor Frances Farmer’s life-changing story of survival, her favourite self help and discovering Agatha Christie’s alter 

Sophie Hannah

Fri 21 Nov 2025 

My earliest reading memory
I was six, and in the lounge in my first home in Manchester. I was sitting cross-legged on the grey carpet, in 1977, when I finished reading whichever of Enid Blyton’s brilliant Secret Seven mysteries contains the mind-blowing (genuinely, for a six-year-old) twist that “Emma Lane” turns out to be a road and not a person.

My favourite book growing up
Up to the age of 12, Blyton’s Secret Seven and Five Find-Outers mysteries; from 12 onwards, it was Agatha Christie. Growing up, I was certain that no other kind of story could ever hope to be as satisfying as the very best mystery story.

The book that changed me as a teenager
When I was 15, my father suggested, forcefully, that I ought to read, as well as the mystery books I loved, other books that were more serious. I found a harrowing memoir in Didsbury library by the actor Frances Farmer, called Will There Really Be a Morning?, about being forcibly committed to an asylum and kept there for years against her will. Her story of how she struggled to survive and make sense of her horrendous experiences was truly inspiring and unforgettable.

The writer who changed my mind
The life coach and self-help writer Brooke Castillo, author of Self Coaching 101 and It Was Always Meant to Happen That Way. I had no idea that my thoughts about facts were a very different thing from the facts themselves, or that we can choose to tell whatever story we want to, and find plausible, about any given set of circumstances.

The book that made me want to be a writer
I remember it vividly: Sisters and Strangers by Helen van Slyke. It’s no accident that the first novel I ever wrote (mercifully unpublished) was called Lovers and Losers.

The book I came back to
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I gave it up three times after finding it too hard-going – now it’s one of my all-time top five novels.

The book I reread
There are two novels – The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch and Coming from Behind by Howard Jacobson – that I reread regularly because I just adore them. They are perfection expressed in fiction. The Jacobson is the funniest book I’ve ever read and makes me weep with laughter, and the Murdoch is her masterpiece – a detective novel wrapped in a bizarre love story. It’s also the best dissection of creative ambition and literary rivalries that I’ve ever read.

The book I could never read again
A Prayer for Owen Meany. For some reason, this breathtaking novel rendered me unable to contemplate reading it again, or reading anything else by John Irving.

The book I discovered  later in life
Agatha Christie’s Mary Westmacott novel The Rose and the Yew Tree – every bit as suspenseful as her “Agatha” novels.

The book I am currently reading
The forthcoming Witch Trial by Harriet Tyce – a bold and unpredictable murder mystery that has a vice-like grip. So suspenseful and chilling – in the best possible way.

My comfort read
The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. My morning routine is: grab phone, look at to-do list, swear a lot … but I love to dream of a day when I meditate, set intentions and recite affirmations instead, and books like Elrod’s enable me to do just that.

 The Last Death of the Year: A Hercule Poirot mystery by Sophie Hannah is published by HarperCollins

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