Yes, you guessed it, another Twitter-inspired list. Books this time.
I think over the years I've mistaken reading a lot for being well-read seeing as how I appear to have read very few acknowledged classics.
I stuck to novels, meaning Julian Cope's Head On/Repossessed autobiography missed out, and also left out children's books, meaning Dr Seuss's Green Eggs And Ham is sadly ignored.
I did consider including Graphic Novels just so that I could put Art Spiegelman's Maus in there, but decided against it.
So here it is, a list of 15 books that I like. Comments just copied from the original tweets...
15 DBC Pierre - Vernon God Little. Bought on a whim for a holiday read and was blown away. By the book, the weather was fine.
14 Patrick Süskind - Perfume: The Story Of A Murder. You wouldn't think a story about smells would work so perfectly.
13 Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood. Maybe I was just swayed by the fancy edition I had but I'm pretty sure it was the story.
12 Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. Ingeniously written. I love a concept like this...
11 Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five. You know this surely?
10 Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory. Even though I guessed the ending I still loved it. Should really read more of his.
9 Nick Hornby - High Fidelity. From back when music lists didn't give me a cold sweat! Need to re-read to reignite the spark.
8 Donna Tartt - The Secret History. A murder mystery where they tell you the ending at the start. Brilliantly written.
7 Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett - Good Omens. I love Pratchett but here Gaiman brings out the best in him.
6 Douglas Coupland - Microserfs. Coupland tends to disappoint me, especially recently, but this one's a peach.
5 JD Salinger - The Catcher In The Rye. An obvious one I guess. I read it at the right age, which I'm sure helps.
4 Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated. This book is so clever, so thoughtful, so happy/sad, so funny. Perfect.
3 Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting. I remember cramming this in before I saw the film. Wasn't a problem - couldn't put it down.
2 Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Laugh-out-loud funny and SO FAR ahead of its time. Genius.
1 Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird. The only thing that made O level EngLit bearable. Really haven't got the words for it.
2 comments:
Only read 6 of these - as Head of English I imagine that is pretty poor! Will look out for some of these. Have you read 'Touching the Void'? Not my type of book usually but bloody brilliant. 'Into the Wild' is another corker.
To be honest, I doubt whether some of mine are on the syllabus so I'm sure you're forgiven!
As for "Touching The Void" and "Into The Wild", I haven't read either but have seen the films of both, and they're both excellent.
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