Pandora Sykes - What Writers Read: 35 Writers on their Favourite Book

What Writers Read

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First published in Great Britain 2022

This electronic edition first published in 2022

Introduction Copyright Pandora Sykes, 2022

Various contributions Copyright various contributors 2022

The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work

Many of these pieces were compiled from the transcripts of interviews conducted by Pandora Sykes

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5266-5748-0; TPB: 978-1-5266-6038-1; EBOOK: 978-1-5266-5747-3;
EPDF: 978-1-5266-5746-6

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There is no friend as loyal as a book

Ernest Hemingway

Contents

There is a newspaper slot that I love where authors are asked about the book they wish they had written, that made them laugh, that made them cry, and so on. I read it with a tab open on my favourite online second-hand bookshop, adding to my basket as I read. Knowing an authors favourite book feels like a delicious piece of insider information like peeking behind their brain curtains to see the cogs turning within. Its highly unlikely that reading said book will confer a similar set of writing skills, but being in the same reading space that your favourite author has dwelt in is a lovely sort of alchemy. Why not create a whole book of moments like this? I thought. And so, here we are.

Over 413,000 children and young people in the UK dont own a book. This deprives them of education, but also of a means to escape: into a fantasy world from which they are able to better understand and navigate real life. When I think of myself as a child, I think of myself on my own with a book, filling myself up with the energy to face the world. Alone, but never lonely. Children who have access to books are three times more likely to experience mental wellbeing as adults. Quite frankly, when I consider how much books have given me and, at times, saved me that feels like a conservative estimate.

All the profits and royalties from this book will go to the National Literacy Trust, which works to end literacy inequality. Nearly 800 public libraries have been shuttered in the last 10 years: safe, communal places where young people can gather, read, be . The decline in shared, free spaces is rarely front-page news, but that does not mean it is not an emergency. When we think of a library, we usually think of a huge, vaulted room with floor-to-ceiling books. But a library does not have to be enormous; research has found that just 80 books can make a child feel enriched. Through their Primary School Alliance, the National Literacy Trust aims to create 1,000 new libraries in primary schools, each with their own librarian, to curate and rotate the books. Working with local communities, they have also opened literary hubs in lower-income communities across the UK. National Literacy Trust hubs bring together local partners to tackle literacy issues in communities across the UK where low levels of literacy are seriously impacting on peoples lives.

The beauty of these 35 entries that you are about to read or dip into whenever you have a few spare minutes on the loo/in the bath/in bed before nodding off, which is how I very much hope this book will be consumed, with its pages water-wrinkled and stained with peanut butter is the specific personal detail that each author brings. Elif Shafak writes about the solace and freedom she found in Virginia Woolfs fluid Orlando as a young bisexual woman growing up in conservative Turkey. Nick Hornby writes about escaping into Erich Kstners Emil and the Detectives aged 11, as his father prepared to leave the family home for his other family. Marian Keyes writes about the book that lifted her when she was suicidal. Emma Dabiri marvels at how changed you can find yourself as a reader, to return to a book you were bored by 12 years earlier, and find it so nourishing, so personally resonant.

It was important to me that these contributions are not book reports (theres Goodreads for that), but a snapshot into the writer as a person, told through the book that they were reading at that time. Some of these entries, such as Lisa Taddeo on the book she read during the emotional rollercoaster of first postpartum hangover, will make you laugh out loud. Others, like George the Poet on Malcolm Gladwells influence on the social-academia of his award-winning poetry, will make you think. Some resisted my brief, by which I was delighted: Fatima Bhutto wrote about a bookshelf of books, because it is a fools errand to choose one.

I know what she means. I wrote the brief, so I should surely plant my flag in the sand, but when I think about the books that changed me, my mind crowds with about 10 different highly specific instances. On my single bed aged 10, in floods of tears, reading Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian. On a bus aged 17, shivering, as I got to the twist in We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. In a writing hut, ignoring my book deadline, gobbling When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy over one long insomniatic night.

I have a reputation for reading the wrong thing at the wrong time: the girthy Riders by Jilly Cooper in RE class at my all-girls convent school; Lela Slimanis gut-punching Lullaby whilst heavily pregnant with my first child. (For her contribution to this anthology, Lela has written about another book that cracked open my teenage brain like a walnut: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.) I like reading a frothy summer read in the dead of winter and a serious work of non-fiction on a sun lounger. Books should not be siloed into times of year or personality types. Reading widely benefits all of us, but it should not be didactic. What you enjoy should not be filtered or apologised for. Quite frankly, life is too short to force yourself to finish a book or to stop yourself returning to a favourite. (Surreally, I was re-reading David Nichollss One Day for possibly the tenth time when his entry landed in my inbox.)

A friend of mine recently remarked upon how starry the list was, with its prizewinners and shortlisted authors. Its true that many of these writers are bona fide literary stars and I am still in shock that they all agreed to write a piece, entirely for free, despite their calendars and status. But in this collection, they are simply readers. To go one further, they are writers because they are readers. Which is why we must think of the next generation of readers, many of whom are growing up without as much access to books. As Margaret Atwood said last year, If there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy which many believe goes hand in hand with it will be dead as well.

Thank you for buying a copy of this book and supporting the great work of the National Literacy Trust. I hope you enjoy what you find.