This is not going to be a pretentious list. There will be
no Proust or Aristotle or Borges. There will be no obscure Russian guys that no
one has ever heard of. What follows is a short list of books that, in one way
or another, have spoken to me. Perhaps others will find value in the books on
this list, but I share it more in a spirit of autobiography than of
prescription.
1. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
I wasn’t an especially keen reader as a kid. I often had to
be coaxed into doing it. I discovered the Secret
Diary of Adrian Mole at around the same age as the book’s eponymous hero –
13 ¾ . It made me howl with laughter. Not just smile or smirk, but literally
howl. I used to wake up my family with my laughter. I related to Adrian’s
underdog status, but it must be admitted that the diary format of the book encourages
the reader to laugh at him by enabling us to know more than he does. He is a
pathetic character, but heroic in his attempt to better himself intellectually
in the midst of the stultifying philistinism around him. I have enjoyed
following his journey through adulthood, and particularly enjoyed his Wilderness Years, where he is at his
most pitiable. Adrian’s breakup with Bianca in that book soothed my own breakup
at around the same time.
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
What a clichéd book to have on a list! Blah blah blah – I don’t
care. Many people are apparently made to read this book in Key Stage Three. I
think this is too early to appreciate Holden Caulfield’s sense of alienation
(indeed, perhaps to read it at school in the first place is to spoil the very
point of the book!). I discovered Catcher
at precisely the right time in my life. His disdain for the ‘phonies’ around him
echoed and articulated my own disdain. I felt like he was both speaking for me
and to me, in a very intimate sense.
This is the only book that has ever given me that sense of intimacy. I guess a
lot of people have had a similar reaction, hence the character’s cult status.
When I first read this book it felt like my discovery, and mine alone.
3. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
One of the only science fiction books I have ever attempted
to read (another is Brave New World,
which I also loved), Flowers for Algernon
tells the story of Charlie Gordon, a gentle man with an intellectual disability
who submits to an experiment to make him ‘smarter’. The novel is told in the
form of ‘progress reports’ written by Charlie, and like Adrian Mole this format
offers us a unique glimpse into his journey. We can sense him getting ‘smarter’
as he makes fewer spelling errors and attains greater insights, but we also
sense that something crucial yet intangible is being lost. I was brought up to
think that intelligence is the most important attribute one could possibly
possess, and this book raises important questions: What is intelligence? Does having
more of it make you a better person? What things in life are truly valuable? This
book has made me think harder about these questions than five years of studying
analytic philosophy ever did.
4. When Love Meets Fear by David Richo
In a sense this is a self-help book. It offers practical
tips for how to live a life that is more governed by love and less governed by
fear. But it is so much more than this; it is a work of philosophy and of
poetry, written by a practicing Jungian psychotherapist. A crucial paragraph:
“The foundation of
fearlessness is the realization that this fear is all part of me, a
confrontation with which is what it takes for me to be who I am. These are the
experiences that had to happen in order for me to achieve my destiny. When I
see this, I make an agreement with the universe instead of picking a fight with
it. If fears come my way, I work with them, I deal with them, because they are
part of me. And they would only be coming my way if this were the manner in
which my destiny could be achieved. That is the spiritual foundation of fearlessness:
how fears work to show me my honeysuckle-thistle path.”
Does that seem like mumbo-jumbo to you? A few years ago it
may have seemed like it to me. This book enabled me to open my mind and my
heart to other ways of thinking, and to divest myself of attitudes that were
not serving me well.
5. The
Atlas
I said near the beginning that I wasn’t an especially keen
reader as a kid. This isn’t true. I have always loved to read, it’s just that
it took a while for me to enjoy ‘proper’ books, books with ‘a beginning, a
middle, and an end’, with ‘characters’ and ‘chapters’ and ‘plots’. My main love
was, and is, non-fiction. I have always found atlases beguiling: I love sitting
up in bed, with the lamp on, looking at countries that I have never been to and
will almost certainly never go to (I hate flying and suffer from anxiety, but
those are whole other stories). I love reading the names of strange towns and
imagining what they would be like. I love words, and I love imagining things,
and I have a huge interest in geography and cultures. I have friends who are
avid and intrepid travellers, but I can’t do that. Reading atlases is, for me,
the next best thing. It’s great.
PS
You will notice that there is not much poetry on this list,
which might be strange coming from a professional poet. The main way that
poetry speaks to me is either to make me think “I’m much too stupid to understand
that” or to think “I could do better.” Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings gets an honourable mention as a book that has
spoken to me. Watching Michael Rosen perform at my school when I was in Year 4
was also hugely transformative. My next list might be: five poems that have
changed my life. Stay tuned.
