THE ONLY SEVEN BOOKS YOU'LL EVER NEED!
I’m often asked if I read when I’m writing a book. It’s such a weird question to me! I write all year round, so if I waited until I wasn’t writing I’d never read again. Books are what I’ve done with my life since I was four. Without one on the go, I spiral. What am I talking about? Without several books on the go, I spiral. I am usually reading at least seven books, each one filling a specific need.
The categories are as follows.
DAY BOOK
We all have a sweet spot in our literary taste. For me it’s books that string the reader a tightrope between wanting to gobble up the plot but also longing to linger over every beautiful sentence. This is what you need to become a Day Book; one I can read on my sofa or in bed or on a train and feel the world around me disappear. I say ‘plot’ but I include non-fiction because the best of anything grips like a thriller. A Day Book is one I read with a pencil in the other hand, underline my favourite sentences. I’ve done this forever and I don’t know why, because unless a line has specific relevance to my work-in-progress, I never go back to it or write it down. I suppose I feel compelled to tell the book I’m paying attention?
CURRENT DAY BOOK (FICTION): The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
CURRENT DAY BOOK (NON-FICTION): The Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold
WORK BOOK
I write immersive novels which often take place in closed, specialised communities or institutions. This means I read a lot for research. My journalistic background means I’m good at becoming a temporary armchair expert in weird little worlds of eg feminist psychiatry or solar eclipse geeks. I read first for inspiration and then, as the manuscript develops, for fact-checking and hole-filling. It’s hard to get the balance right! Sometimes I overdo it and fall so far down a rabbit hole that it stymies my writing. When I was working on Watch Her Fall I read so much about the enmeshed worlds of ballet and Soviet history that I felt compelled to include everything I’d learned, which meant there were loads of indulgent longeurs about eg Stalin’s five year plan and its effect on ballet shoe production. I get to claim all my work books back as expenses which is genuine but will always feel like an absolute scam!
CURRENT WORK BOOK: Venice by Jan Morris
NIGHT BOOK
The night book fills an incredibly specific need. It’s the one that transitions me from my Day Book to the land of nod. It cannot be fiction and must be read on Kindle so that I can fall asleep with it in my hand / on my face. As a lifelong insomniac it must also be funny and easy to follow so that when I wake up at 4am and need something to focus on, I can dip straight back in. This is where the celebrity memoir comes into its own. I have greeted the rosy-fingered dawn in the company of Britney Spears and Jonathan Van Ness this year alone.
CURRENT NIGHT BOOK: The History Gossip by Katie Kennedy
DIPPY BOOK
I turn to short stories when I have too much research to commit to a whole novel but still need a fiction fix. I lean far more literary, and towards 19th & 20th century classics here than I do with my taste in novels. I need density, for the prose to be as packed as a poem. There’s a great Guardian piece by Hilary Mantel, a mistress of the short story, here, and I’m working my way through this list. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/02/bite-sized-leading-authors-recommend-50-great-short-stories)
CURRENT DIPPY BOOK: In The Not Quite Dark by Dana Johnson
BATHROOM BOOK
I’m not going to elaborate on this, you little pervert: suffice to say, a bathroom book must offer short sharp hits of content that can be consumed in under a minute if necessary but also reward a longer perusal. Pictures are a bonus.
CURRENT BATHROOM BOOK (UPSTAIRS):
The Secret Lives of Colours by Cassia St Clare.
CURRENT BATHROOM BOOK (DOWNSTAIRS): York Notes on MacBeth (on the slim, slim chance my GSCE student forgets her phone)
EARS BOOK
I am an incurable fidget and have long held that the only thing wrong with reading is that you have to do it sitting down, so downloadable audiobooks have been a godsend, meaning that at last you can combine reading with walking, cooking or driving. (Yes, I know, audiobooks have been around for donkey’s years, but I never saw the appeal of dragging a suitcase of cassettes or CDs around with me.)
That said, I can’t enjoy fiction this way. Novels just bounce off my eardrums. I think it’s to do with voice and pacing. I don’t want the narrator to take that subtle agency away from me. But history, science, politics, memoir? It’s like having the best writing liquidised and poured into my brain via a funnel. What a time to be alive!
CURRENT EARS BOOK: Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll
UBERBOOK
Not uber as in the sense of something to read in the back of a spotless Tesla, but uber in the sense that it’s so good it surpasses all the others and you end up carrying it from room to room and for a few blissful hours you forget that the real world exists, let alone other books.
CURRENT UBERBOOK: I find myself alas between uberbooks. My last one was with Holly Seddon’s forthcoming 59 Minutes, a beautifully-written thriller about how people behave when the government announces that nuclear destruction is imminent. Its about the very best and worst of humanity. It made an appalling Night Book, because I had dreams about melting skin and mushroom clouds all night, but I was powerless against its pull. The Uberbook wants what the uberbook wants.
I think I’m supposed to ask you to be a paid subscriber here, but I’d rather you bought my book