Show 7: The fiction writer on his top reads...
Like many people I know, I can’t sleep at night without reading fiction. I’m reading three books at the moment:
Glove Pond: A Novel by Roger Thorpe
He’s a Canadian author. It’s a strange name and has a 19th century domestic interior on the cover; I’m not quite sure why… It’s sort of like Virginia Woolf: you have these two battling academics and they really rip into each other. It’s very funny. It’s probably not a book that will put you to sleep because you’ll come out of it energised and adrenalised, but it’s a good read and I do recommend it.
The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta
This American author is most famous for two things: his novel, Election, that was made into a hilarious movie with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, and his book Little Children, that Kate Winslet was later Oscar-nominated for. The thing about his work is that – I obviously have a preference for humour – he is very, very funny on the page but when it’s turned into film it becomes deadly serious. I guess that indicates a nice dark undercurrent. I very much recommend it: it’s the battle between Secular America versus Religious America which, I think, is the next Civil War.
The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery by DT Max
This is a non-fiction thriller that might keep you awake… A family in Venice that has a genetic prion disease, where, when they reach the age of 45-50, they stop sleeping. Your body literally unravels and you die this hideous death. It’s ghastly. It’s bedside reading, but you should perhaps save it for when you think you might be staying up a bit longer…”