Read it in Books....

Those regular readers of my blog will no doubt remember my birthday post of my 50 favourite songs of the past 50 years, which ended up being a list of 100 songs as I couldn’t narrow them down enough. Well, in a similar vein, a request from my mate Paddy Robinson to list my 10 favourite books provoked a lengthy period of furrowed brows and intense contemplation. Unlike last time, I’ve decided to stick with 10 books, but with certain provisos; all of them are novels, 1 per author and they are listed in alphabetical author order. I’ve sought to contextualise each one, but not provide any kind of literary analysis.

Albert Camus – L’Etranger: not the first Camus book I read; that distinction goes to La Peste, but this tale of an individual who struggles to fit in with the world around him, captivated me immediately I read the first page. It was in late 1978 and I’d been made aware of The Cure’s Killing An Arab, but I read this before I heard the song. To this day I love the style of Mersault’s asides and his philosophical musings on an absurd word.

Roddy Doyle – The Van: All my life I’ve been a lover of books driven by characters rather than plots. I prefer people to stories and this superbly written account of two middle-aged, working class Dubs from da Nortsoide running a mobile chipper van during the 1990 World Cup is an absolute classic. In all seriousness, it has so much to say about the nature of friendship and masculinity as well.

James Ellroy – The Cold Six Thousand: I was first introduced to Ellroy in 1998, when I saw L.A. Confidential, which I found to be brilliantly plotted, if labyrinthine and peopled by incredible, amoral characters. Delving into Ellroy’s oeuvre, I found that the film was a simplified version and the massive books a fascinating, addictive insight into the seediest parts of American life. Of more importance than his gore fest police procedurals were the Underworld USA Trilogy that told of incredible malfeasance and astonishing conspiracies in the heart of the American state. The Cold Six Thousand, starting minutes after “Dallas” or “the hit,” as it’s known, is the most brutal, hard boiled and addictive of all Ellroy’s novel. An absolute masterpiece of crime faction.

Franz Kafka – The Trial: Moving on from Camus to Sartre, by way of Hesse, I came across Kafka in the early days of the hot summer of 1979. In my airless bedroom, I read with terror the story of Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis, with utter incomprehension the events of The Castle and eventually found myself addicted to the gripping story of Josef K’s investigation and execution in The Trial, which remains my favourite Kafka book.

Cormac McCarthy – Suttree: I’d never read a word of McCarthy until 2007, when The Road became the novel everyone was talking about. I read it in a sitting and No Country For Old Men, both a brilliant book and a magnificent film, in the next few days. After that, I began to work my way through McCarthy’s collected works and in summer 2012, I read what I consider his finest work, the semi-autobiographical Suttree. In terms of character, place and time, it is unsurpassable in contemporary literature; perhaps one of the few books I’ve thought, around the halfway mark, that I simply didn’t want it to end. A glorious read and highly recommended.

David Peace – GB84: The greatest book of all time, in my opinion. An absolutely heart-breaking account of the doomed Miners’ Strike of 1984/1985 from an unapologetically left wing perspective, which avoids the sermonic, censorious pitfalls of the Liverpudlian Leninist tendency. Peace tells the story of the men involved, their families and communities and contrasts the noble struggle in which they are engaged with the evil machinations of the murderous state apparatus. It is an astonishing read and the book that has made me the angriest in my entire life. Utter genius.

Jean Paul Sartre – Nausea: I’d never understood what it meant to be bored, alienated or isolated, until I read this fascinating account of existential crisis, in the summer of 1980, only weeks after Sartre had died. A book that made me realise that not fitting in with the real world was a pretty good thing.

Eamonn Sweeney – Waiting for the Healer: I read this in the summer of 1998 when staying in an isolated cottage in Bonniconlon, County Mayo, musing over my own writing career. It is ostensibly a murder investigation meets buddy book set in the Irish midlands, but Sweeney’s excellent ear for dialogue and flair for description make it a stunning read. His later book The Photograph is also a brilliant read, but since then he has abandoned fiction for sports journalism and hurling in particular. A shame, as he displayed a rare and precocious talent. He also liked my work as well.

Alan Warner – Morvern Callar:  I read this in 1997, around the time I began to try and write fiction, finding it incredibly instructive. A male narrator writes in the first person as a female character, in a weird, dream like narrative based on the drug and drink sub culture of the isolated Scottish Highlands and the Balearic Islands. A fascinating bildungsroman that convinces and enthrals; unlike the dreadful follow-up These Demented Lands. I also adored The Sopranos, Warner’s tale of a teenage choir down from Oban for a competition in Edinburgh, which flopped because of an injudiciously chosen title.

Irvine Welsh – Glue: He has to be in here somewhere. It was a toss-up which of the novels got in, but in the end I plumped for the least famous of his Edinburgh male bonding books. It has the fewest comedic touches and an almost total absence of trademark grossness, but is all the better for it. A convincing and affectionate portrayal of the nature of Welsh’s major preoccupation; male concepts of friendship.

Of course, having completed this list, which doesn’t contain a single book I studied at university for either my BA or MA, another list jumped out at me of books I simply had to include. So here goes -:

Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim: Hilarious from start to finish.

Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory: Bought it because of an interview in the NME in 1986 and loved it and every other one of his I’ve read.

Samuel Beckett – Murphy: Finally; a book I studied at university! A simply crazy and hilarious account of some of the most oddball characters ever created, with some truly memorable, side-splitting lines.

Charles Bukowski – Ham on Rye: While I much prefer his short stories, this fictionalised account of his early life with his psychopathic father (a cruel, shiny-faced bastard with bad breath) is, in my eyes, far preferable to the episodic Post Office and the misogynistic Women. Bukowski is, of course, more important for what he allowed writers to say than for the way he himself said those things.

James Kelman – A Disaffection: The novel begins Patrick Doyle was a teacher. Gradually he became sickened by it. That, and the fact he takes in Yoker Athletic v Glasgow Perthshire during the game, is more than enough to make it one of my favourite contemporary Scottish novels.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude: I read this over a scorching Easter weekend in Bratislava in 2000 and was captivated by the incredible flights of narrative fancy Marquez concocts in this most magical of magical realist novels. The events relating to the history of Macondo touched a part of me that few books manage to do at such an elemental level. A joy to read.

Magnus Mills – The Restraint of Beasts: The only one on this list I don’t own. Loaned to me by my mate Paul Webb in Bratislava, this is the greatest example of the Marxist concept of a worker’s alienation from the means of production I could imagine. It is also incredibly funny and ridiculous in an absurd way. I love all his books. I wish he’d write another one.

Flann O’Brien – At Swim-Two Birds:  Another book from my university era and a glorious, uproarious read. Perhaps the best book about drinking I’ve ever read. Hilarious from start to finish and superbly intertwined with legends from Irish mythology. I love everything O’Nolan wrote, in all his guises.

Jeff Torrington – Swing Hammer Swing!: Another magnificent Scottish novel. The Gorbals is being pulled down for slum clearance and a whole litany of oddballs, drunks and eccentrics are going to be made homeless. What can they do to save their local area? I adored this novel when first coming across it in 1995.

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse 5:  All of Vonnegut’s novels are a joy to read, but the madness of the imagination, and the real life tragedy behind this one, make it a simply stunning read. Deeply affecting.