Top 10 books - David Almond

Nov 15 2007 by Paul Loraine, The Journal

PRIZE-WINNING North-East author David Almond jumped at the chance to give us his list of favourite books.

David, who was born in Gateshead and now lives with his family near Hexham, has twice won the Whitbread Award for his children’s books, and has seen a number of his novels dramatised on the stage.

His list of favourite books is highly personal and concentrates mainly on classic fiction from around the world.

He said: “Getting the list down to 10 was not easy and it is even harder to order the books within the top 10.

“If I put them in order now it would be a different order to the one I decided on five minutes ago.”

Missing from David’s selections are a number of titles that regularly crop up in list of top books: Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, George Orwell’s 1984, and even The Bible.

Or you may prefer some books with a North-East connection: the classic fiction of Catherine Cookson, the poems of Basil Bunting or the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England.

But it’s hard to argue with many of the inclusion’s in David Almond’s top 10.

1. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky: “This is definitely one of my favourites. I think it’s a powerful read – totally gripping. I went through a big phase when I was 21 when I was eating Dostoevsky. The blend of exterior and interior action and the passion of the thing is incredible.”

2. Moby Dick, Herman Melville: “It really does feel like a great quest across the world but it is also a quest for the writer and the reader. At times it is quite boring but it all feels like part of the journey. Melville is a favourite author of mine. I have read several of his books and have really enjoyed them.”

3. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “I was writing quite seriously by the time I read this. He seemed alive to all the possibilities of being a writer. He would take such huge risks and had such command of the form. For me, as a writer, Marquez was massively influential.”

4. Collected Short Stories, Raymond Carver: “Carver is a writer who shows all the possibilities of the short story form. When I found Carver it was like a revelation. With apparently very limited resources, he creates a whole world. I read him at about the same time I read Marquez and they both seemed to speak through me and to me.”

5. Songs and Sonnets, John Donne: “Donne uses such fantastic language, language with such precision and passion. He is talking about seemingly transcendental subjects but the language is so physical. The words are very sharp and concrete. Coming from a religious background – I was brought up a Catholic – I connected with the Sonnets but what I loved most was the worldly, physical part of it.”

6. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte: It’s the atmosphere and passion she creates but also the northern moorland setting that appeals to me. Also, the poetic language is extremely powerful. It’s certainly one of my favourite English novels and, like all of these books, has had an influence on my writing.

7. Labyrinth, Jorge Luis Borges: Again, I am fascinated by the use of the short form and he is just hugely inventive and opens up all kinds of possibilities for language and storytelling. He treats an imaginary world as if it were very straightforward and realistic. He fills your head with all kinds of astonishing images and thoughts. There is just a huge amount of inventiveness in his work – he never settles on one form and is constantly provoking you to think in different ways.”

8. One Thousand and One Nights, Various: “Within it there are wonderful stories like Aladdin and Sinbad which have stayed with us but it’s also held together by that fantastic notion that storytelling will keep you alive. I actually believe that. I think stories are central to our consciousness.

9. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens: “Dickens is just this huge, all-encompassing storytelling power. For me, Dickens is about the wealth of characterisation and readability. With David Copperfield, it is a whole life story in the space of a novel and it’s evidence of a great imagination at work.”

10. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak: “When I became a children’s writer, this book seemed to me to express so much that is crucial in children’s writing about adventure and challenge and daring to leave home and grow up. The book I want to write is Where the Wild Things Are. It has a mythic shape to it and like so many great children’s books, it takes a character through a time of change and the journey of growing up.”