Ever wondered what your favourite authors read and found inspiring? Who they admire? What other writers and stories they rate as being a must on your bookshelves or ebook reader?
In this blogpost I will look at 10 of my personal favourite authors and mention one or two books they truly enjoyed reading and why. Hope you will find it interesting and inspiring too! And feel free to add yours in the comments :)
DAVID NICHOLLS
One of my all time favourite authors, David Nicholls caught my attention with 'One Day', a truly fine novel about growing up in the 80s, young adult life love and loss. Truly innovative in terms of how the book and its narrative is structured, it moved me to laughter and tears within the space of just a few days with the exceptional storytelling around the two very well drafted characters of Dexter and Emma.
But this post is not about me and my 'personal crush' on David Nicholls, whom I met in person at a literary festival where he gave a truly inspiring talk about his own success and falling into writing by chance. So here we are: One of Nicholls's favourite books is the 'Collected Stories' by John Cheever, which, he described as being very dark and funny high drama filled short stories lying beneath seemingly conventional lives. I haven't read it yet so hope they are as good as he mentions and definitely on my list for the 2022 winter days.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Funnily enough I came across Atwood's work through the TV adaptation of her bestselling novel 'The Handmaid's Tale' (shame on me, really) and never looked back - What a book and what a TV series! Really gripping and so revelatory of our times! Atwood's writing style is a masterpiece of hinting and telling and so essential that you can truly enjoy filling the gaps with your own imagination, fuelled enough by the all-important details she dots around in her stories.
Really loved The Testaments too, so it came as a little but very pleasant surprise, given the nature of her own work, to learn that amongst her favourite books are Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. In her own words, the two are a real must to learn how to choose the right man. And who could disagree with her 😊 - might refresh both in 2022, as haven't read them since graduating in English at Uni a loooong time ago.
OSCAR WILDE
I fell, like lots of other fellow university mates, for Oscar Wilde's witty writing style when I first came across The Importance of Being Earnest, where he explores the theme of switched identities or "bunburying", the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and in the country that allows his protagonists to escape Victorian social mores.
It's difficult to establish who had the greatest influence on Wilde's writing but in his journalism he praises Hawthorne's dark romantic novels (or romances), which explore ancestral sin, guilt and evil as the most inherent natural qualities of humanity. Not a surprise Wilde might have been fascinated with this author's take on his own romance-writing, which he described as "using atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture". Amongst Hawthorne's work, I thought 'The Scarlett Letter, A Romance' should definitely be making an appearance on your bookshelves this year.
SALLY ROONEY
Sally is one of the most recent additions to my list of favourite writers. Her best selling novel Normal People, is one that definitely struck a chord with me, for her immense ability to portray two young characters forming a rather sensual and toxic intimate relationship by never making it read obvious, banal or too dysfunctional.
I am in the process of reading her latest novel and really appreciated 'Mr Salary', one of her short stories, and I was extremely pleased, to say the least, to find out that Rooney loves Natalia Ginzburg, the Italian author whose work explored family relationships and politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II. She likes her so much that she dedicated the opening quote of 'Beautiful World, where are you' to this writer's self reflection on her own talent. Family Lexicon, by Natalia Ginzburg is definitely a must for your 2022 reading list and one that you will certainly enjoy.
NEIL GAIMAN
It looks as though the acclaimed author of American Gods wrote his first poem at the age of 3 😲, when the rest of us were most probably starting to play with Lego blocks for the first time. How incredible! Despite not taking that early an age accomplishments to become a well-established published author, that distinctive something gave Neil's talent the opportunity to manifest and be nurtured since a very young age. And us readers are very thankful for that.
Besides the works of C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle, Gaiman also grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Allan Poe, G.K. Chesterton and a few others, who, he claimed, had a profound influence on his writing style. Difficult to choose just the one, but my personal love for Poe as a young teen made him my 'Gaiman's' choice for your 2022 reading list.
ANNE RICE
Anne caught my attention with her mesmerizing gothic novel 'Interview with the Vampire', which introduced me to her Vampire Chronicles trilogy ending with the epic Queen of the Damned.
Vampires in Anne's work feature as elegant, tragic and sensitive beings, who are destined to live forever but strive to understand their reason to be. A beautiful and incredibly well-crafted Vampire cosmogony ensues in which this author is not only able to capture the tragic struggles of the human condition but also manages to provide her characters with an explanation of where/who they come from and meet their creators.
Claiming that influences on her work predominantly come from reading Dickens, Virginia Woolf, John Milton, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Jean-Paul Sartre, the Brontë sisters and Stephen King's Firestarter, Rice, when interviewed, also mentioned Martin Eden by Jack London as being one of her favourite books. Why? Because it's the best fictional portrait of a desperate and struggling young writer. Anne sadly left us on December 11th 2021 at the age of 80 😌 and I would like to dedicate her a moment here to celebrate how great she was.
NICK HORNBY
I do not like football and therefore really hated reading Fever Pitch but absolutely loved and could really relate to About a Boy and High Fidelity and when they came out I literally devoured them in the matter of just a few hours. And when times got tough I can't deny enjoying Hornby's positive take on suicidal tendencies in A Long Way Down, which I would recommend as a gift to anyone suffering from those much hated lows we call depression, as a heartwarming story of how being or becoming connected to other humans can make a huge difference in how we see and experience ourselves and the world.
Hornby mentioned one of his favourite reads as being Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, an investigative journalist who spent a decade accompanying and recording the lives of a motley crew of Latinos living in the Bronx a couple of decades ago, which she then well summed up in this portrait of love, sex and survival published in 2003. I personally haven't read the book yet and truly can't wait to stick my teeth into it asap.
ZADIE SMITH
If you haven't read Zadie's White Teeth yet, well, abandon this blogpost at once and start searching for it online NOW. But if you have, you will know why Smith features on my list of favourite authors. Sharp and witty, her epic serio-comic debut novel has energy, pace, humour and fully formed characters by, at the same time, being free of the introversion and self-conscious details of many first novels.
Author of many more, Zadie credits her devotion to reading as one of the biggest influences on her writing, as well as her life and mentions Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov as one of her favourite novels. Why? because this caricature of a college professor, invites you to laugh at him to then feel humbled and shamed by your own laughter. Once again, I haven't read it myself and have put it on my list for the coming year and hope you will find it fits your 2022 bookshelf too.
IRVINE WELSH
I have a love and hate relationship with the Scottish writer of Trainspotting. Hate being a big word here but you get the gist.
I loved his writing style, imagination, depiction of real life debauchery and vivid detailing of quite shameful encounters. Laughed at some of his short stories thinking 'how the hell did he end up writing something like that and still get away with it?' However, from time to time, I would have rather picked up another book than read yet another absurd 'acid induced' story. But that's me and although possibly more relatable to a younger version of myself, I still rate him as being an incredible writer and one that made me understand that in fiction all is possible, when you can make people laugh, think or maybe just feel extremely and absurdly entertained.
A writer of which I certainly admire and share the obsession for always wanting something new, better, different and destroying what we have in the process, it comes as no surprise that he mentions 'Cities of the red night' by William Burroughs and 'American Psycho' by Bret Easton Ellis as two of his favourite books. Despite being quite bleak and bitter, I would highly recommend the latter if you haven't flicked through its pages yet.
J.K. ROWLING
Loved by many, criticized by others, one cannot deny that fantasy and imagination are a-plenty in this writer's prolific mind, whose Harry Potter series as well as her latest works have entertained us all, whether in a book format or at the cinema. I personally love her and the way she works, so I wanted to end this blogpost not just with an author I like but with a person and writer I also truly admire.
Rowling mentions 'The Woman Who Walked into Doors' by Roddy Doyle as being one of her favourites and Doyle himself as being her favourite living writer. She rates Jessica Mitford with 'Hons and Rebels' as being her most influential author and 'The Collected Stories of Colette' instead as one of her answers to the question 'If you could bring only three books to a desert island, which would you pack?' However, learning that ' The Diaries of Auberon Waugh' is a permanent feature in her bathroom 'and it's always good for a giggle' has made it my pick for this blogpost. After all, don't we all need a good laugh in 2022 after all that's happened?
I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and that it has provided you with some useful tips on a few books you could put on your low, middle or high shelves, ready for the quiet 'me' times that await you in this promising 2022. Feel free to leave a comment or ask questions. It would be great to read what books have tickled your fancy, the authors you love and what you would recommend for some good times spent reading in the new year.
See you all soon with some more reading or copywriting tips. Have a great start to the new year. Silvia xxx
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