Sebastian Faulks's Reading List
The author, most recently, of “A Possible Life” and “Jeeves and the Wedding Bells” says literary novels tend to make bad movies: “One form is all inward; the other is two-dimensional.”
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Sebastian Faulks (2013)
NYT By the Book column (2013-12-26).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Robin de Crespigny · Buy on Amazon
"That would be “The People Smuggler,” by Robin de Crespigny. It tells the story of an Iraqi dissident called Ali Al Jenabi. … This is an astonishing story, at times barely credible, but very unsettling."
Norman Lewis · Buy on Amazon
"I read Norman Lewis’s war diary, “Naples ’44,” an account of his time as an intelligence officer in a city where everyone was starving and two-thirds of the women of nubile age were selling their bodies. It is a wonderful book, droll, shocking and humane."
Ian Fleming · Buy on Amazon
"I like the climactic scene in “Live and Let Die” when Bond and the girl are towed behind a speedboat as shark bait."
P. G. Wodehouse · Buy on Amazon
"My favorites are “The Code of the Woosters,” “The Mating Season” and “Right Ho, Jeeves.” But they all have their glories, whether entire plots, set pieces or just single phrases."
P. G. Wodehouse · Buy on Amazon
"My favorites are “The Code of the Woosters,” “The Mating Season” and “Right Ho, Jeeves.”"
P. G. Wodehouse · Buy on Amazon
"My favorites are “The Code of the Woosters,” “The Mating Season” and “Right Ho, Jeeves.”"
Sebastian Faulks · Buy on Amazon
"“Human Traces” is the one I would want to be buried with. It’s long and it has some sticky parts, including a couple of lectures. But I like it because it deals with what to me is the great theme: Why are human beings so odd."
Gustave Flaubert · Buy on Amazon
"Flaubert’s story “A Simple Heart,” perhaps; or “Death in Venice.”"
Thomas Mann · Buy on Amazon
"Flaubert’s story “A Simple Heart,” perhaps; or “Death in Venice.”"
Émile Zola · Buy on Amazon
"For Mr. Cameron, I would recommend Zola’s great coal-mining novel, “Germinal”;"
Hugh Lofting · Buy on Amazon
"Dr. Dolittle, in the Hugh Lofting series, was my favorite character. He had a face like a currant bun but could speak animal languages and was a naturalist who went on stirring adventures to the South Seas."
Dodie Smith · Buy on Amazon
"I also liked Pongo, the main character in “101 Dalmatians,” by Dodie Smith. What a player."
D. H. Lawrence · Buy on Amazon
"It may sound odd, because he is so out of fashion now, but “Sons and Lovers,” by D. H. Lawrence, which I read when I was 14 or 15. There was something about the tenderness he showed towards his characters; he seemed to love them as though they were real people."
D.H. Lawrence · Buy on Amazon
"After I had read “The Rainbow” I tried to write a novel of my own. It was only three pages long, though; I couldn’t think how Lawrence had found so much to say."
Charles Dickens · Buy on Amazon
"The other books I read at the same time that made me want to write were “David Copperfield,” the essays of George Orwell and “The Catcher in the Rye.”"
J. D. Salinger · 1951 · Buy on Amazon
"The other books I read at the same time that made me want to write were “David Copperfield,” the essays of George Orwell and “The Catcher in the Rye.”"
Rachel Cooke · Buy on Amazon
"“Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties,” by Rachel Cooke, which has just come out in London. Cooke is one of the outstanding British journalists of her generation, so I am looking forward to it."