Some of my favourite books!

[Homer] | Callimachus | Apollonius | Lucretius | Ovid | Lorris/de Meune | Milton | Marvell | Pope | Sterne | Burney | Jean Paul | Edgeworth | Manzoni | E. Bronte | Ch. Bronte | A. Bronte | Gaskell | Dickens | Blackmore | Besant | Scheerbart | Woolf | Milne | Buzzati | Lindgren | Inkpen| Everett

• [Homer]

  • Hymns 1-4 (600-400 BC maybe?!):
    Quite good stories about the gods, in particular the hilarious Hymn to Hermes, which tells of the achievements of tiny baby Hermes, constructing a lyre out of a tortoise (poor thing!), stealing (and skinning!) Apollo's cattle and brazenly lying to everyone he meets (up to his father Zeus...). Great!!! Other divinities featured include Apollo, Demeter and Aphrodite (seducing Anchises and leaving him to bring up Aeneas, once he's past the toddler stage).

  * return to the top of this document

• Callimachus

  • Hymns 1-6 (3rd c. BC):
    Most classicists who know me will have heard me enthusing about these poems already: they're (I keep saying) incredibly modern, ironic, self-conscious and most of all funny poems! They don't take anything seriously, neither the narrators nor the addressees, though it sometimes takes some familiarity with earlier Greek literature to get the point. Still, there are some great moments accesible to all readers: young Artemis playfully tearing out a Cyclops' hair from his chest, a made-up Hermes impersonating a Cyclops to frighten naughty little gods and goddesses (3), regions, rivers and islands taking flight at Leto's approach, looking for a birthplace for Apollo, who finally tells her where to go himself (fully articulate already in utero) (4), a sweaty and horse-mad Athena, being very nasty to her favourite nymph (5).

  * return to the top of this document

• Apollonius

  • Argonautica (3rd c. BC):
    Great Alexandrian epic, full of unexpected twists and turns in the apparently straightforward journey of Jason and Co. to Colchis and back. The introductory catalogue of everyone who comes, and doesn't come, to join in and the brilliant description of the engineering skills necessary not so much for building the Argo as for getting her into the water make for a fun start!
    Otherwise, I was most taken by the last book: to me the Argonautica seem to get more and more Callimachean - ironic, absurd, and all the rest of it - the further we reach the end. Among others, the crew gets stranded in Libya and (despite some supranatural skills on their side, introduced to us already in the catalogue mentioned) just fails to catch up again on Heracles, who's seriously annoyed the Hesperides with his lack of sensitivity, in contrast to that he displayed while he was yet "in" the Argonautica (when his lover was kidnapped by some nymphs in a well...). Then there are the Nereids (including a Thetis still at odds with Peleus, while we've read in book one, again, that Achilles is left under Cheiron's supervision while Daddy goes off on his business) playing throw and catch with the Argo on sea to save it according to Hera's orders. Plus a great ending, which should eventually feature in my thesis... (actually, it won't - sorry).

  * return to the top of this document

• Lucretius

  • De rerum natura (c.50-55 BC):
    Honey-coated Epicureanism, to free our minds from all superstitious fears by expounding Epicurus' doctrines on (basically) everything in life, and the universe. One of my favourite passages is that where the issue of language is tackled (book 5): human language is an entirely natural phenomenon, since animals, too, have different voices - dogs, e.g., sound very different according to their breed as well as the mood they're in. Very convincing.

  * return to the top of this document

• Ovid

  • Metamorphoses (c.AD 9):
    Massive and immensely entertaining work, crossing (playing with?) boundaries of all forms: genre, gender, nature, culture, narrative, empire...

  * return to the top of this document

• Guillaume Lorris/Jean de Meune

  • The Romance of the Rose (13th c.):
    Incredibly interesting famous medieval romance - begun by one Frenchman in a rather courtly-allegorical style, as he describes how he discovers the entrance to a fenced-in garden, in which all the nice things of the world can be found - Beauty, Wealth, Courtesy etc. He also finds a rose in the middle of the garden by which he is enchanted, literally being struck by four of Love's arrows, brilliantly interpreted in symbolic terms (not quite like Apollonius' Medea, but definitely in his tradition!).
    It starts to get much much weirder and entertaining when the second Frenchman takes over, fourty years or so later: he's apparently an academic at the University of Paris, and he manages to ramble on at length, embellishing with realistic (according to medieval standards!!) detail all the nicely set-up allegories of the first part. These interesting details include passages on marital rows, adultery and love (French attitudes seem not to have changed very much over the last 700 years, if one can trust national stereotyping...), and on women, who - to my surprise - appear to have been quite independent in those days.
    He goes off into crazy digressions, e.g. on a comparison of the political moves surrounding a certain king and court to a game of chess. Much of the (obviously not intended) humour comes from his not making some distinctions which seem essential to us: the ancients are used and quoted alongside the bible and the church; and his (still conceptually allegorical) characters, such as False Seeming, Nature and Love, often seem to merge into the author's own voice.
    After having successfully laid siege to the castle in which the rose (after the first kiss) had been hidden by Evil Tongue and similarly unpleasant characters, the final passage is a great allegory of love-making - lots of rather explicitly phallic (and related) imagery!

  * return to the top of this document

• John Milton

  • Paradise Lost (2nd ed. 1674):
    This poem is great fun, especially when read in the tradition of ancient heroic (with God and Lucifer as the two antagonistic heroes, standing in for Achilles and Hector, Aeneas and Turnus...) and cosmological (yes, another brilliant description of the creation of the world after Lucretius and Ovid) epic. The passage on Hell and Lucifer's council with his devils, plus his exit via the Skylla-like gate and flight across space to the Garden of Eden, is truly impressive.
    When it comes to his vision of Eve in the Garden, however, I can do no better than quote Shirley: "It was his cook that he saw; or it was Mrs Gill, as I have seen her, making custards, in the heat of summer, in the cool dairy, with rose-trees and nasturtiums about the latticed window, preparing a cold collation for the rectors, - preserves, and 'dulcet creams' - puzzled 'what choice to choose for delicacy best; what order so contrived as not to mix tastes, not well-joined, inelegant; but bring taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change.'"

  * return to the top of this document

• Andrew Marvell

  • Complete Poetry (1650-78):
    I really like Marvell's poems, even more than those of other Metaphysical poets; especially "The Definition of Love", "The Garden", "A Dialogue between the Body and the Soul", "A Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure" and (of course) "To his Coy Mistress".

    "A Dialogue between the Soul and Body"

    Soul: O Who shall, from this Dungeon, raise
    A Soul enslav'd so many wayes?
    With bolts of Bones, that fetter'd stands
    In Feet; and manacled in Hands.
    Here blinded with an Eye; and there
    Deaf with the drumming of an Ear.
    A Soul hung up, as 'twere, in Chains
    Of Nerves, and Arteries, and Veins.
    Tortur'd, besides each other part,
    In a vain Head, and double Heart.

    Body: O who shall me deliver whole,
    From bonds of this Tyrannic Soul?
    Which, stretcht upright, impales me so,
    That mine own Precipice I go;
    And warms and moves this needless Frame:
    (A Fever could but do the same.)
    And, wanting where its spight to try,
    Has made me live to let me dye.
    A Body that could never rest,
    Since this ill Spirit it possest.

    Soul: What Magick could me thus confine
    Within anothers Grief to pine?
    Where whatsoever it complain,
    I feel, that cannot feel, the pain.
    And all my Care its self employes,
    That to preserve, which me destroys:
    Constrain'd not only to indure
    Diseases, but, whats worse, the Cure:
    And ready oft the Port to gain,
    Am Shipwrackt into Health again.

    Body: But Physick yet could never reach
    The Maladies Thou me dost teach;
    Whom first the Cramp of Hope does Tear:
    And then the Palsie Shakes of Fear.
    The Pestilence of Love does heat:
    Or Hatred's hidden Ulcer eat.
    Joy's chearful Madness does perplex:
    Or Sorrow's other Madness vex.
    Which Knowledge forces me to know;
    And Memory will not forego.
    What but a Soul could have the wit
    To build me up for Sin so fit?
    So Architects do square and hew
    Green Trees that in the Forest grew.

  (More information on the poet's life, other poets of the time, including also texts of all the poems themselves.)

  * return to the top of this document

• Alexander Pope

  • The Rape of the Lock (1714):
    Great surreal comic poem, in the tradition of Callimachus' Lock of Berenice, best read with Aubrey Beardsley's brilliant roccocco illustrations. Some knowledge of the game of Ombre helps...

  * return to the top of this document

• Laurence Sterne

  • Tristram Shandy (1760-7):
    Famous post-modern novel trying to get to grips with the vagaries of conception, both of Tristram himself and of the narrative.
    Introduces inter alios Uncle Toby and his hobby-horse, the re-enactment of battles in the garden, which every lover of Caesar will find esp. fascinating.

  * return to the top of this document

• Frances Burney (M.me d'Arblay)

  • Cecilia (1782):
    This is the novel by Burney which I (so far) like best: Cecilia is not so easily duped as Camilla, though some of the mistakes she gets involved in can be almost as vexing to the reader unable to interfer herself; luckily they are generally cleared up considerably sooner than those which befall Camilla. Nor is she as young - as silent, as much led by others - as Evelina (who still is more to my taste than Camilla!), but mostly judges and then acts following her own good sense; and when she doesn't, there's usually some understandable reason to account for it rather than obnoxious external incidents, plus any desasters following from such misjudgments are never quite so unbearable. The hero is also rather more fetching than the others; less a cipher than Ormond (or what's his name?!) in Evelina, and less boringly virtuous than Edmund(??) in Camilla, instead a perfectly amiable, though a little too impetuous young gentleman - though if he hadn't been rather passionate he wouldn't of course have got round to proposing against his parents' wishes and that would've been the end of the romantic interest!
    By the way, the OUP World's Classics introduction makes much of his being a 'blank' because of the white domino he wears on his first entrance, and the importance of his keeping his family name imposed on him by his parents, which - in addition to a cold he catches - for a while makes him feel unwell: obviously a rather feminine touch, in the eyes of the critic, and further proof of his not really being a person in his own right, i.e. a 'blank'. I'm not quite convinced whether this is not something of an over-interpretation: having a conscience makes you a nobody - or certainly a no-man?? But just to hazard a similarly symbolic interpretation: could we see Cecilia's madness as a coded reparation to society after having offended its notions of female propriety and passivity by acting so well for herself when expelled from her home?! (The same could be said of Gaskell's Mary Barton...) I for one did expect her to succeed in travelling across the channel, but apparently that would have been too daring - maybe I really should go and get The Wanderer now!

  * return to the top of this document

• Jean Paul

  • Siebenkaes (1796):
    Especially famous for its apocalyptic "Speech of the dead Jesus Christ from the top of the world's edifice". The rest is worth reading, too, though, as Jean Paul's idiosyncratic kind of absurd humour is evident throughout the book.
    Its story revolves around Firmian Siebenkaes and his similarly peculiar Doppelgaenger, who in the end helps him in a more or less macabre way (a la Romeo and Juliette, but with better success) to leave behind his wife and achieve a romantic union with the woman he loves.

  * return to the top of this document

• Maria Edgeworth

  • Belinda (1801):
    The book features a number of characters misled (or rather: misleading themselves) somehow or other, with the predictable consequence of living more or less miserable lives. Some of these are very funny, e.g. a cross-dressing and pistol-wielding woman, and an extremely talented young man who doesn't know what to do with all these talents (before he meets the heroine, of course). There are also very moving ones, foremost a Lady who has given up on herself and perseveres in bad habits (such as not communicating with her husband and child, and letting false shame prevent her from consulting a professional doctor) and is slowly brought to reform herself by the heroine. This young woman may sound like a bore, but she actually is a quite refreshingly open, honest and sorted person - a far cry from the run-of-the-mill drooping Victorian heroine!
    Other topics raised are racism (against blacks and West Indian plantation owners!), education of children and the dangers of gambling.

  • Harrington (1817):
    This book was written in answer to a Jewish American lady's query about the consistently negative characterization of Jews in Edgeworth's works. It is a good novel, yet what is interesting is that - despite showing that the humanity and civil courage of a Jewish father and his daughter are superior to those of some cowardly and unfair Christians - at the end the daughter turns out to be (like her dead mother) a Christian herself, thus enabling the narrator of the story to circumvent his religious scruples and marry her.

  * return to the top of this document

• Alessandro Manzoni

  • I promessi sposi (1827):
    A novel set in the 17th century in Northern Italy, following the story of a young couple who are not prepared to accept the customary power of the lord of the region who is trying to get a hold on the bride whom he fancies. The courageous young people find some help in a cleric who is also prepared to run risks in the interests of the peasants and their right to some self-determination.
    It's been quite a time since I read the book, but I still remember how vividly the whole period is brought to life by Manzoni, and how much one is drawn into the story not only through the suspense but also through the atmosphere of the time, which comes across so well in the characters and in the general setting.

  * return to the top of this document

• Emily Bronte

  • Wuthering Heights (1847):
    I suppose I don't need to give a summary of this novel - very forceful, giving the impression of a world very much removed from the ordinary, so secluded and almost incestuous is what happens in and around Wuthering Heights. Heathcliffe in particular (of course) is larger than life, with his obscure origins and demonical charm.

  * return to the top of this document

• Charlotte Bronte

  • Jane Eyre (1847):
    You all know this one (or ought to, anyway!), so I'm not going to waste my breath on it.

  • Shirley (1849):
    This one is my favourite of Charlotte's novels (if not of all the novels I've read...): it features not just two fine love stories, but also explores the problems raised by the industrial revolution and the automatization of labour, set against the background of the closure of much of the foreign market through the Orders of Congress during the Napoleonic Wars, by focussing on one of the mills in the North of England. Besides the politics, it also touches on religious issues, with the Dissenters, too, cashing in on popular dissatisfaction and unrest.
    There's plenty of discussion of the position and role of women in there as well, arguing for education for girls as well as boys, so that women are enabled to support themselves rather than having to try to "get an establishment" at all costs. It makes a (broad) case, too, against hard-edged capitalism and progress without any safeguards to minimize the human cost, with the (young!) women's views appearing better informed and more reasonable than the men's, who are more easily prevented from taking a wider perspective by their own particular interests.
    The "realism" is strangely off-set by the increasing romantic interest (with the concluding double marriage and some almost mystical visionary passages), which some people nowadays might find hard to swallow (in itself as well as in this weird connection), though I love it. Anyway, it's a great book!!

  * return to the top of this document

• Anne Bronte

  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848):
    Very nice story in the frame, about narrowmindedness, prejudice (against single mothers, e.g.!) and love; with a very disturbing story in the inset, about boorish selfishness, a woman's mistaken belief that she can change her husband's character through the power of her love, and alcoholism. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes her sisters' novels; its principle characters are strong (esp. the single mum; she even reverses roles in the end by asking the socially inferior man she loves to marry her, since he does not feel that he can well overstep this conventional barrier to his love) and sympathetic, the background to their romance in the little village with all its various inhabitants, their likes and dislikes, is painted vividly and convincingly, as well as the different setting of Helen's steadily deteriorating married life and the people involved in it.

  * return to the top of this document

• Elizabeth Gaskell

  • North and South (1855):
    Another love story against a background of social unrest during the industrial revolution (as in Shirley), with an added religious interest, too. The heroine, coming from a sheltered childhood in the rural South and a few years in the polite world of gentile London, has to cope with being suddenly moved to the struggle and misery in the "real world" of a Northern manufacturing town. On top of this she has to go through a series of family crises, forced to rely on her own strength and judgement, and learn to reconcile her love for one of the manufactures with her self-reliance.
    The element of social critique in the novel is quite strong, as Mrs Gaskell had first hand experience of the sometimes terrible conditions of the labourers in Manchester. She has her heroine argue for a dialogue between manufacturers and labourers, instead of the confrontational attitudes displayed by the male characters - the manufacturers tyrannically treating their workers like children, and the workers bedevilling the manufacturers without having any real understanding of or concern for larger economic forces. She doesn't claim that this will set everything right, but one has to try and do the little bit one can to improve things!

  • Sylvia's Lovers (1863):
    This novel is rather bleak (though good!), I feel, as it raises a good number of (ethical) problems, without offering any obvious solutions. It's set on the Yorkshire coast, and the landscape is described incredibly well, especially the sea. Basically, it's the story of a young girl and her relations, the problems of growing up, of having to learn how to estimate people's characters and about having to compromise, in order to secure some happiness (she only really understands this when it's too late...).
    There is also quite a lot in there about the problems arising from forced conscription, as there is the continued threat of the British army carrying the local men (sailors in particular) off to serve for a couple of years: it raises the question of how to weigh the good of the individual against the nation, of divided loyalty, and of common-sense views of what is right, as against institutionalized law.

  • Wives and Daughters (1866):
    Her last novel; concerning the domestic fortunes of a couple of neighbouring families, with that of the doctor Mr. Gibson and his daughter Molly at the center of it. Their relationship is one of the nicest features of the novel, though things become difficult with the advent of a second Mrs. Gibson - rather too self-centred and superficial to be the help to Molly in growing up as her father intended. The other families of major importance are the rich aristocrats at the Towers and the old landed gentry of the Hamleys, whose lifes become in many ways interwoven with that of the Gibsons (including also Molly's almost tragically faulty but all the same lovable step-sister).
    It is very different from Elizabeth Gaskell's earlier novels in its exclusive focus on characters rather than economic or religious matters (though there are implicit comments on the value of goodness and knowledge in contrast to inherited social class), but a very good read in its own way.

  (There is an interesting paper on the use of the internet in literary studies, focussing on the present author.)

  * return to the top of this document

• Charles Dickens

  • Little Dorrit (1857):
    Little Dorrit may for a long time seem weak and slight like a child to Arthur Clennam, but in the end it is she who gives him the courage and strength to make a second start, when he's on the brink of wasting the opportunity he has to learn from his mistakes and do things better next time. I don't know whether his determination to remain miserable because he's made mistakes and is too proud to have others help him out, is typical male unflexibility and exaggerated self-reliance, or whether it's a lingering influence of his rigid, so-called "Christian" upbringing (almost bringing about a repetition of the self-righteous suffering of his mother), or whether it's just that his bankruptcy has been the last straw, that wears out the last remnant of his belief in life and happiness which had been tried so hard all through the years... But when he does overcome his self-commiseration, self-accusations and pride to seize the new chances Little Dorrit and other friends offer him, it is for their sakes at least as much as for himself.
    Apart from the interesting characters (and, unusually, a storyline with lots of suspense up to the end) there are some insights into (English) public life that still ring true: first of all the Circumlocution Office, which reminds me not just of government bureaucracy (that's not a specifically English malady, of course), but also the way this university is run... Plus the observations about the way the foreigner Cavaletto is regarded by the Bleeding Hearts; it's amazing how little seems to have changed over 140 years.

  • Our Mutual Friend (1865):
    The novel begins in a short and curt narrative manner, as if Dickens was weary of beginning another one of his epic tales. However as the narrative and his wide set of characters develop this impression fades.
    Instead the characters take a very active role in plotting, with as well as against each other - with the narrator challenging the reader to make out the plots her- or himself, before revealing them explicitly. An interesting counterfoil to this prevalence of strong plots is Eugene Wrayburn, who saunters and ambles through the majority of the novel at a complete loss as to where is going or to what end. Funnily enough he is most active in leading the schoolmaster who is too bent on pursuing only one possible end (turning out to be exactly the opposite of his wants and indeed his literal end) on repeated pursuits through the nooks and crannies of London, with no other end than the chase itself. It seems Dickens was not too sure himself whether Eugene could cope with becoming part of a nicely plotted, traditional novelistic happy end, leaving him suspended between life and death, between continued languor and final discovery of a true purpose in living with and for his new wife.

  * return to the top of this document

• Richard D. Blackmore

  • Lorna Doone (1869):
    The story is set in the 17th century, like e.g. Manzoni's I promessi sposi, revolving around the relations of a village of outlaws (the Doones) and the other villages nearby over more than a decade, narrated by the main character John Ridd. He's said to have more brawns than brains by the other characters (and himself, on occasion), but this is nicely ironized throughout the story, as he deals with the family's farm, his notoriously idle workmen, his rich capitalist uncle and his mother and sisters. He also has to defeat the Doones in the end, rather in spite of himself even though they've been responsible for his father's early death.
    That he isn't quite as dumb as he and the others would have you believe also shines through his courting, and winning, the love of Lorna, an aristocratic heiress, who's been abducted and raised by the Doones. She and he actually emerge as the really clever people (with a few exceptions, such as his cousin Ruth, a major contrast to say his mother and sisters!) in this story, and it's no wonder that they appear destined to get together as indeed happens at the end (though there is a false closure in there, too!). Good story, very nice characterizations!

  * return to the top of this document

• Walter Besant

  • All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1884):
    This is a brilliant socialist novel, set in the East End of London at the time, where the heiress of a local brewery (leaving behind the academic world of Newnham for some action in the "real world"!) introduces more or less radical change, by setting up a dressmakers' coop (anonymously, of course) to improve working conditions. There's also a love story in there, as a young man, brought up as one of the aristocratic West End crowd, returns to his roots in the East End, too, working as a cabinet maker. The two of course fall in love over their discussion of how to build a "Palace of Delight", including library, theatre, music and dancing rooms in which the ordinary people can enjoy and educate themselves. It's also rather nice to see, that he's the one who remains in the dark about her real identity even when he gets to marry her - exchanging his name for hers to boot...
    This might already sound rather ambitious, but it gets even better, as other subjects handled (besides the story of a villanous uncle of the young man's, former factotum of the heiress's father, who gets his come-uppance) are political popular movements such as the workers' movement and the Salvation Army, religious tolerance as demonstrated with regard to Judaism and the Seventh Day Adventists, the snobbery of the scientific establishment shown through a self-made Australian scholar and of English society more generally as shown through the plight of an American couple trying to claim back a title, which they think one of their ancestors relinquished when emigrating.
    It's a gripping novel, I find, plus it makes you think on all these issues as well as giving a great insight into the life of people in the East End in those days. Check it out in the Bod (Bod 256 e.1425, 256 e.11141, 251 k.151-3 3vols.) - if you're in Oxford, that is!

  * return to the top of this document

• Paul Scheerbart

  • Lesabendio (1913):
    Amazing kind-of science fiction novel, whose hero Lesabendio isn't content to stay on his own (brilliantly conceived and described) planet, but sets out to explore another one which has fascinated him for ages. The fictional worlds, including the characters, are described in great detail, but there's all kinds of philosophical questions raised as well ("is the grass greener on the other side?!" being one of them...) which is very interesting.

  * return to the top of this document

• Virginia Woolf

  • Orlando (1928):
    You may have seen the film by Sally Potter, with Tilda Swinton (and Quentin Krisp); if not, go and see it next time it's on show! It's a great adaptation of Orlando's story, from his boyhood in his family's Elizabethan mansion (like a whole town in itself, with the great house itself and all the workshops around it) to her coming of age, so to speak, in the London of the 20's (80's in the film, with her small daughter - and the Japanese tourists staring at her portrait in the old mansion, brilliant!).
    I love the way in which the various atmospheres of all the different periods Orlando goes through are described, including an Oriental escapade in the 18th century (often in terms of the description of a view, like a painting). Orlando's change from male to female sex is also handled in such a way as to make clear, that the change lies not so much in his/her person as in the historically and culturally determined gender.

  * return to the top of this document

• A.A. Milne

  • Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner (1926/28):
    Again, you probably don't need to be told how wonderful these books are - just to let you know that Tigger was always my favourite, and that I still get seriously upset when reading how Piglet's home gets transferred to Owl - I'm sure I couldn't take that if I were Piglet!! But I love the enchanted place in the wood with its (I believe) beech trees at the end.

  * return to the top of this document

• Dino Buzzati

  • Il Deserto dei Tartari (1945):
    Buzzati is one of my favourite Italian writers - I started on the short stories, at school, but recently read this novel which expands on the themes threading through the stories too. A strange atmosphere always seems to prevail, with an uncertain kind of anticipation - whether of something good or bad is not clear either, while he explores the meaning of our lives. Or lack of it, as Il Deserto dei Tartari is all about the antendance of what you believe would give your life its meaning, and how that expectation in itself can make impossible to give it any meaning at all. There is a touch of tragedy as well, not in the choice of the hero to keep expecting, but in the way he never choses himself - you just look back and find the choice has been made by not making others. While a realistic writer I find Buzzati's places and people strangely 'un-sited', not bound to a particular place and time though he uses landscape and buildings masterly to create atmosphere.
    Another treat with Buzzati are his own paintings which are often used for the covers of his books. Not necessarily a great painter, but they give you an insight into his imagination through another medium.

  * return to the top of this document

• Astrid Lindgren

  • Pippi Longstockings (1945-8):
    The first book I read, and re-read again and again. Liking Pippi so much is probably the reason why I still wish to have ginger hair and pig-tails...
    I always loved the story about the beautiful shiny beetle (a "spunk" in the German version), and the one about the "krumulus"-pills stopping you from ever growing up, and and and...

  * return to the top of this document

• Mick Inkpen

  • Nothing (1994):
    This is a really nice picture book, about an old and ragged little toy animal left behind in an attic, who can't remember who it is. It remains convinced that it is "nothing", as everyone it meets spurns it, until it is finally carried off by a cat to its lost family, where the old granddad recognizes it as...

  * return to the top of this document

• Percival Everett

  • Glyph (1999):
    I picked up this book at the airport recently which I don't usually do. However I was intrigued to see that this was different from other books on offer, in that there were quite a few left, and secondly it's got a great cover design - by Lotta Kuehlhorn I think. Lots of circles, very sixties style. The blurb was intriguing too - all about baby Ralph who has some very special qualities and therefore gets co-opted by the authorities to work for them, but doesn't like it.
    It was a joy to read too, absolutely excellent. In fact Ralph narrates all the book, the autobiography of his life during the first couple of years. He refuses to speak or voice any sounds but makes up for it by conversing in writing. Not only that but he takes on, successfully, those interested in narrative theory like Roland Barthes - also featuring. Brilliant structure, thinking, humour, characterization - smashing! If you've read any narrative theory read this to put it all into perspective.