| 1 | Best short story I’ve ever read A hard one this. ‘The Dead’ – James Joyce; ‘To Tempt a Woman’ – Claire Boylan; ‘Where The Carpet Ends’ – Shena Mackay. And all the linked short stories in Alice Monro’s Lives of Girls and Women. |
| 2 | Book I was forced to read at school which no child should have to study I liked all the books we read at school but not at uni (Pope, Dryden etc).
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| 3 | Best film of the book I’ve seen ‘The Dead’ directed by John Huston. |
| 4 | Book I loved getting back to: Brick Lane by Monica Ali; An Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler, The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd. |
| 5 | Book I would blush to be seen reading on public transport: Any Mills & Boon. |
| 6 | The book that grabbed you at 14: The answer is: Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence, and also Wild Palms by Faulkner —I was a romantic then!
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| 7 | My favourite novel that no-one else seems to have heard of Living by Henry Green. |
| 8 | My favourite bookshop East West Bookshop in Baroda, Gujarat, India – a proper bookshop full of surprises.
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| 9 | Author I’d like to nominate for the Nobel Prize for Literature Rohinton Mistry |
| 10 | Deceased author I’d most like to resurrect Carol Shields because I miss her novels – I can’t believe I’ll never read any new ones. |
