| 1 | Best short story I’ve ever read JG Ballard’s ‘Jane Fonda’s Augmentation Mammoplasty’. It’s certainly one of the oddest short stories I’ve ever read. |
| 2 | My favourite opening line of a novel: It was the morning of my eighty second birthday and I was lying in bed with my catamite when Ali told me the Archbishop had come for tea — Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers. (If I’ve misquoted it, maybe I don’t know it as well as I think I do). |
| 3 | Best ‘film of the book’ The Godfather — the book is good, but odd, with an extended musing on vaginal surgery in the middle. |
| 4 | My favourite novel that no-one else seems to have heard of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by GB Edwards. |
| 5 | Best Crime novel Maybe Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard. |
| 6 | The book I’d most like to reread, if I could find it again House Mother Normal by B S Johnson. |
| 7 | Book that should be on the national curriculum If we’re looking for a book that deserves that kind of ‘national’ stature, defining the
nation, maybe something from the Sword of Honour Trilogy. |
| 8 | My favourite bookshop Maxim Jakubowski’s Murder One. |
| 9 | Author I’d like to nominate for the Nobel Prize for literature Geoff Dyer.
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| 10 | Deceased author I’d like to get drunk with The Brontes, something about sisters. |
