The Great Book Debate

Its fair to say that I am a bibliomaniac by now: when I am not walking I am reading and regularly spend most of the day reading script, not only from books, but also from computers, newspapers, and those weird words on the arses of girls in tracksuits: hence the significant investment I've made in my spectacles. Taking Royston's challenge here is a quaint list of some books that merit mention:

One Book That Changed Your Life

Has to be the wonderful Chants de Maldoror (1868), by the Comte de Lautreamont. I first came across this book while wandering around surrealism in first year arts and I immediately became hooked on the hallucinatory ramblings of Maldoror, a character who roams the world torturing infants, worshipping prostitutes, and shooting shipwrecked sailors - all in order to prove his luciferan notions of absolute freedom. Technically it did change my life as I became fascinated by its mysterious author, who disappeared during the Siege of Paris in 1870, and wrote a dissertation and thesis on the novel and its influence.

One Book That You Have Read More Than Once

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) is a book that I always return to, and I invariably always find something amazingly new in it. Much more than a tale of imperialistic greed, Marlowe's journey through the Congo in search of the almost totemic Kurtz can serve to symbolise the descent of European civilisation itself towards the indescribable 'horror' of the twentieth century.

One Book That You Would Want on a Desert Island

A tough one for any bibliophile! On an impulse I would say Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) because it contains many memorable moments such as Fabrizio's childish disorientation on the battlefield of Waterloo, and as always is deeply infused with Stendhal's wit, sensitivity, and touching pessimism.

One Book That Made Me Laugh

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself actually laughing out loud at a Dickens novel a few years ago, but his Pickwick Papers (1837) is a fucking hoot! A madcap serialised plot involving the travels and titillations of a group of friends and a little funny bastard known as 'fat boy'. Highly recommended.

One Book That Made Me Cry

I think the fiction of Ivan Turgenev has been overlooked by Europeans interested in Russian literature who instinctively head towards Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Chekov, because in many ways Turgenev more accurately traced the dissonance and despair coming out of Russia after the emancipation of the serfs. His little novella Spring Torrents (1872), while it hasn't made me cry, certainly affected me as all good literature should. Being an autobiographical tale about Turgenev's hopeless infatuation with a smart bitch it includes the usual despair, ecstasy and a few duels. I find the author a very sympathetic figure, even though he felt sorry for the uncouth Dostoevsky who touched him for a few bob now and then.

One Book I Stayed Up All Night to Finish

Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials (2000), which I picked up as a bargain in 'Chapters' bookshop, was originally a presnt for my sister. But being an uncultured minx she rejected it and so I had to give it a read to recoup my loss. I found it an addictive read and one which blended High Philosophy with the pure wizardry of children's literature. Although I have opinions against Pullman's opposition to the notion of Original Sin and his unbridled humanism, we share the same enemies in all organised religions and their cohorts.

One Book That Took Me Too Long To Read

Arthur Schopenhauer finished his philosophical masterwork The World as Will and Idea (1819) when he was 31 and just out of university. Judging it to be a work of genius which could not be improved upon he resolved to put down his pen and accept the adulations of Europe. Unfortunately the garlands never really arrived for poor old Arthur who descended even deeper into his pessmistic philosophy, while his bitter rival Hegel rose to unparalelled heights. However his major work is well worth the effort (especially in abridged mode) and its musings on art, love and suicide have influenced many from Nietzsche to Mann.

One Book I am Currently Reading

Just finished Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf (1927) which is a typically German take upon the dialectic between the harsh jolts of modernism and the spiritual heritage of German Romanticism - here figured in the phantom of Goethe. An autobiographical work which predicts another World War if German militarism is not combated, I think it gives the reader an insight into the cultural politics of Weimar.