AUTHOR PICKS

Our authors' favourite books:

SERENA MACKESY, author of The Temp and Virtue chose

MISERY - STEPHEN KING

'I just love this book, because it works on two completely different levels. Not only is it an exemplary thriller - claustrophobic, compelling and quite disgusting in places, as all of King's best novels are - but it's the most articulate dissertation on the process of writing that I have ever come across. The frustration, the boredom, the resentment, the physical symptoms that assail one when things aren't going to plan - they're all there, recorded with dead-on sardonic accuracy. King's device of turning the novelist's neurosis into a walking, talking, monstrous, murderous Harpie who won't let you go until you're done to some arbitrary standard you don't understand is a stroke of absolute genius. I dip into it frequently: it's the best therapy a writer could ask for.'

MARTIN PLIMMER, author of King of the Castle chose

WAR AND PEACE - LEO TOLSTOY

'At 15 I discovered the Cineramascope passion of War and Peace. It was in a different sensory league to the horny-toed folk rabbit tale Lord of the Rings, which my mates were reading. Inspiration: Tolstoy didn't write his first novel until he was an old man of 28 - so I could relax. When I wrote my first, at 49, I discovered he started four years earlier.'

RICK MARIN, author of CAD: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor chose

LUCKY JIM - KINGSLEY AMIS

'When I wrote an advice column on men for Mademoiselle, my pseudonym was Jim Dixon, hero of Lucky Jim. When set out to write a comic memoir about single life from the male point of view, my hero was Jim’s creator, Kingsley Amis - who knew a bit about women, too.'

JOHN KING, author of White Trash and Headhunters chose

BRAVE NEW WORLD - ALDOUS HUXLEY

'This was an important book when I first read it and, sadly, even more relevant twenty-five years on. The world Huxley predicted is taking shape ­ genetic and social engineering is accepted; ecstasy kills protest; bland music keeps people dancing; and the natural world is more marginalised than ever.'

TONY PERROTTET, author of Route 66AD chose

ON THE ROAD - JACK KEROUAC

'I read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" at an impressionable age, and it's still close to my heart. I was fresh out of school, studying literature in Sydney University, working as a clerk in a storeroom of a shoe shop in the mornings and working in a restaurant kitchen at night -- and during short coffee breaks, I would read snippets from this explosive book about hitch-hiking around post-war America, full of drinking, drugs, jazz, poetry and wild sex. Amazing! The sense of freedom, the sheer energy of the writing, the vision of life's possibilities, got into my blood. Inspired, I gave up the stupid jobs, hitched around Australia, and ended up buying a one-way ticket to South America. Later, I realized that Kerouac's adolescent/Boy's-Own lifestyle wasn't exactly a blueprint for life, but if you can forgive it the '50s bias, the sense of irresponsible joy and excitement is still intoxicating.'

ANDREW COLLINS, author of Where Did It All Go Right? chose

THE DEAD ZONE - STEPHEN KING

'I'll always hold a special place in my heart for Stephen King, because he was the first author I devoured: after reading my first King novel (not his), The Dead Zone, I was so knocked out I obsessively worked my way through his entire back catalogue, including short stories and have endeavoured to keep up ever since, only flagging when he gets too prolific! The Dead Zone remains my personal favourite as it combines a compelling human story - Johnny Smith enters a four-and-a-half year coma after a road accident - with supernatural intrigue - he awakes with the gift/curse of ESP. Set in King's beloved New England, it takes in many well-drawn supporting players and wide-ranging sub-plots, one of which turns out to have potentially apocalyptic consequences for the world, putting Johnny in the hero's seat. I still love the ease with which King paints pictures of ordinary lives rent asunder, and I can actually quote lines from the coma passages... It's more than a horror novel; there are no monsters (except for human ones like politician Greg Stillson and the Castle Rock serial killer) and it speaks of everyday things: protecting the family, losing the one you love, the dread of domestic equilibrium shattered by tragedy. And the mystery of the "tiger stripes" explained . . . Fantastic.'

JULIAN BARNES, author of Love, Etc chose

THE GOOD SOLDIER - FORD MADOX FORD

'The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. A tale of operatic and destructive passion narrated by a prosaic bumbler. This is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, subtle, formally inventive, emotionally intense: each pause and omission weighs as importantly as any overt word or deed.'

Also chosen by Ruth Rendell.

KATIE FFORD, author of Highland Fling chose

NATIONAL VELVET - ENID BAGNOLD

'Not anything to do with the film and not really a children's book although that is how it is marketed. It is really one of those magical, between-ages books, like I Capture the Castle, that one remembers forever. The Velvet Brown of the story is not beautiful, instead is surrounded by beautiful sisters. She is the ugly, brave one. But as well as the inspiring tale of how Mick - who helped Velvet's mother swim the Channel - gets Velvet and her horse, The Pie, to Aintree, we get beautiful descriptions of the salt marshes, of family life and of a time long gone. Really worth reading.'

VANESSA COLLINGRIDGE, author of Captain Cook chose

COLD COMFORT FARM - STELLA GIBBONS

'My favourite book is the 1930s classic, Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, which tells the story of Miss Flora Post's arrival and subsequent transformation of a dysfunctional farm. Its dark humour still makes me laugh out loud and the characters are delicious - even though the bossy heroine, Flora Post, is a little too much like me for comfort....'

Also chosen by Lindsey Davis.

JOHN BURNSIDE, author of Living Nowhere chose

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND & THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS - LEWIS CARROLL

'Two books, really, but, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, inseparable. Lyrical, witty, delightfully cruel, they transformed the damp Sunday afternoons of my long and tedious childhood into the world's most elegant game - a game I have never stopped playing, though I am only a sort of thing in the Red King's dream, half-afraid of waking him and absolutely convinced that I am real.'

ROWAN COLEMAN, author of After Ever After chose

JANE EYRE - CHARLOTTE BRONTE

'My best book of all time is Jane Eyre. I first read it when I was about eleven and I was captivated by the first part of the book and Jane's terrible childhood. I wept buckets at the cruelty and humiliation Jane suffered as a child and related to her utterly even though at that stage the worse thing had ever happened to me was having to wear pink NHS glasses. It was only on my second reading at eighteen that I got swept away by the romantic story line and fell head over heels for Mr Rochester which I compared to my own unrequited obsession with my then English Teacher. By my third reading at university I realised what true revolutionaries both Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre were. Jane may be one of English Literature's first heroines to take control of her own destiny and Charlotte was one of the greatest and bravest writers of all time, male or female. I think I read Jane Eyre about once every year or so because for me its the perfect example of what a novel should be.'

DEBORAH MOGGACH, author of Final Demand chose

THE OLD WIVES' TALE - ARNOLD BENNET

'This is an extraordinarily rich and humane novel, ambitious in scope and as fresh as if written yesterday. Spanning half a century, it's the story of two sisters from the Midlands whose lives diverge dramatically as the Victorian era mutates into the twentieth century.'

RUTH RENDELL, author of The Babes in the Wood chose

THE GOOD SOLDIER - FORD MADOX FORD

'There's not much in it about the army and its hero is far from good. Written in 1913, it's about two couples whose lives interact along paths of passion, jealousy, disaster and death. I have read it about 20 times with increasing admiration. I love it above all others novels.'

Also chosen by Julian Barnes.

A L KENNEDY, author of Indelible Acts chose

THE THIRD POLICEMAN - FLANN O'BRIEN

'It stands any number of readings, remains relevant, disturbing, modern and wonderfully written. One of the best descriptions of life/hell you'll come across. It's also unmercifully funny and mentions bicycles, thus pleasing and/or offending the ecologically-minded.'

LINDSEY DAVIS, author of A Body in the Bath House chose

COLD COMFORT FARM - STELLA GIBBONS

'I love this enduringly satirical classic. Flora Poste, the sensible heroine (a townee like me) is forced to depend on country relatives - all of whom are burdened with overwrought sex lives and lurid emotions. She finds each a witty and apt new life - and happiness for herself. It's wonderful.'

Also chosen by Vanessa Collingridge.

CHRISSIE GLAZEBROOK, author of The Madolescents chose

TRAINSPOTTING - IRVINE WELSH

'This revolutionary book was a liberating experience for me as a writer. Welsh's chronicle of the life, times and smack habits of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie, wrenched open the door on Scottish writing and yelled its heid off in its ain words. Magnificent, likesay.'

JANICE GALLOWAY, author of Clara chose

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE - MURIEL SPARK

'I'd single out The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. Immaculately conceived, funny, morally rigorous, light and dark, this single book defines of a kind of Scottishness, a kind of womanliness, a revelation of human nature, indeed, both wholly fresh and wholly real. Spark is a true original and this is a shockingly splendid book.'

NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE, author of Bruce Chatwin chose

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA - GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

'A nineteenth-century novel written with the sensibilities of the millennium. Beneath its conventional frills, it proposes something subversive and affirming. We can have what we want, says Márquez. But we may have to wait a lifetime to appreciate properly its worth. To be worthy of our desire.'

MAX ARTHUR, author of Forgotten Voices of the Great War chose

THE LITTLE PRINCE - ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

'What is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that one can see truly." Forever with me will be the conversation of the wise, but unsmug fox with the little prince who was in love with his rather spoilt rose.'

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