The book I am currently reading
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May We Feed the King <\/a>by Rebecca Perry.<\/p>\n
My earliest reading\u00a0memory
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I have a very clear memory of reading Fun\u00a0With Dick and Jane. I was four years old, and my dad wrote each word on a chalkboard. I memorised them, then opened the book and read them back to him. I couldn\u2019t believe it. It felt like magic! When I was older, I stumbled across the book and was surprised to find Dick and Jane didn\u2019t really have all that much fun.<\/p>\n
My favourite book\u00a0growing up
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Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. Eleven-year-old Harriet Welch wants to be a writer, and her nanny encourages her to keepa notebook so she can practise writing every day. But when the other kids at school find her book (which is filled with her meanest, most vulnerable thoughts), she quickly becomes the school pariah. I must have read this story a hundred times. Harriet Welch was the reason\u00a0I started writing\u00a0stuff down. She was also the reason I understood that no matter how hard it feels, it is imperative to own and apologise for your\u00a0mistakes.<\/p>\n
The book that changed me as a teenager
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To Kill a Mockingbird by\u00a0Harper Lee. Scout\u2019s voice grabbed me from the start. It was a deep dive into racism, poverty, hatred and social justice, and it had a direct impact on how I saw the world.<\/p>\n
The writer who changed\u00a0my mind
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Henry David Thoreau. \u201cI\u00a0went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,\u201d he wrote in Walden, \u201cto front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.\u201d I was 18, loved the outdoors, craved adventure, and desperately wanted to see what I was made of. But it\u2019s hard to get work from a mountaintop, so\u00a0I\u00a0settled for living deliberately in my tiny, overpriced, noisy, too-hot apartment. Survival comes in many forms.<\/p>\n
The book that made me want to be a writer
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Fun With Dick and Jane! Seriously. I was in love with reading from the very beginning, and writing a story seemed like the obvious next step. At age five I wrote my first book. It was a page long and included an illustration. It has not yet been picked up by a publisher. I also wrote an entire novel by 12. For some reason, that, too, remains unsigned. All offers considered.<\/p>\n
The book I came back to
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Little Women by Louisa\u00a0May Alcott. I was\u00a0supposed to love it (I was nine; I fitted the demographic), but it didn\u2019t speak to me. Fast forward 15 years. I was trekking in Nepal\u2019s Annapurna range and found it on a hikers\u2019 bookshelf. I reread it in my tent by candlelight. I\u00a0couldn\u2019t believe how\u00a0great it was. Jo is amazing!<\/p>\n
The book I reread
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The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. The writing is extraordinary, and the point of view is one of a kind. There isn\u2019t a wasted word in the entire book. I also love to read essays and often return to The\u00a0White Album by Joan Didion to study the\u00a0way she crafts sentences. She has an amazing ability to capture the energy of an age, a movement, a fad, just as it begins to slide.<\/p>\n
The book I could never read again
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The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. I loved this when I was a teenager and maybe I would love it again, but I don\u2019t want to run the risk of spoiling my good memories.<\/p>\n
The book I discovered\u00a0later in life
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So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. It\u2019s told from the point of view of a man in his 60s looking back on a childhood upended by murder and the loss of his mother. It\u2019s a brilliant study of\u00a0how impossible it is to\u00a0make sense of our memories, because they\u00a0have a bad habit of\u00a0rewriting themselves.<\/p>\n
The book I am currently reading
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May We Feed the King <\/a>by Rebecca Perry.<\/p>\n
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