My Life in Books

Christopher Brookmyre, novelist

Favourite book you read as child

I was raised on Roald Dahl. I warmly remember my mum reading Charlie And The Chocolate factory to my sister and me last thing at night, and leaving us on cliff-hanger endings, like when Charlie opens the bar of chocolate he got for his birthday. However, the Dahl book I re-read over and over was Danny The Champion Of The World, which I would disappear into on miserable rain-lashed afternoons. It was about prejudice, class and bullies, kindling in my young heart a burning sense of injustice that made Danny and his father’s revenge so sweet. It was also the first heist story I ever read, so the seeds of books such as Want You Gone and The Sacred Art Of Stealing were sown there.

What was the first book that made an impact on you?

I was utterly bereft when I finished The Restaurant At The End Of the Universe, by Douglas Adams. Seriously, I had this profound sense of loss at how it ended and the fact that there was no more to come. I was in love with these characters and with Adams’ galaxy, and at the age of 11 too naïve to realise that another book would be on its way soon enough. This in turn led to a moment of unconfined joy in John Menzies on Princes Street a couple of years later when I discovered a paperback of Life, The Universe And Everything.

Which books have made you laugh or cry?

Long before we were married, I drove my wife crazy on our first holiday together by reading Catch 22. She had never seen someone convulsed with laughter reading a book, never mind had to share a bed with one. Jeff Torrington’s Swing Hammer Swing and Harry Pearson’s The Far Corner also had me helpless with laughter. At the other end of the emotional scale, I was reduced to a blubbering, snottery wreck by the end of Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass.

Favourite character?

Ford Prefect from The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. He was my inspiration for Jack Parlabane. I loved his combination of hedonistic abandon, unflappable equanimity and cynical weariness, often expressed simultaneously. He has a charming ability to wander into perilous situations and effortlessly make them much worse, all the while staying just wary enough of the danger.

Least favourite genre

“Literary fiction”, partly because the type of critic who uses the term would also deny that it is a genre, and partly because I am bemused by the implication that other types of fiction are not literary. Which is not to say that a book being described as literary fiction would put me off reading it, but just because a book does not belong within an easily defined genre doesn’t mean it is without its own tropes and conventions.

Book you wish you’d written

Obviously, having penned a couple of Harry Potters and the Da Vinci Code would be a nice place to be, but I don’t think many writers would ever genuinely wish they had written someone else’s book. It’s like wishing you’d had someone else’s children. At most there are books that I am glad somebody else had to go to the colossal bother of taking on, such as Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. I still find it hard to believe that those three vast and amazing novels were the work of one person.

Book you think is overrated

The Bible. There are far better collections of Bronze-Age myths, and that whole messiah thing has been done to death.

E reader or print?

Does anybody ever say they prefer an E reader? In an age when airlines are charging us extra to take a suitcase on holiday, my Kindle saves a lot of room in my luggage, but it will never be a treasured object.

Where do you like to read?

Ideally, by a swimming pool where it’s 25 degrees centigrade in the shade, but devouring a book indoors when the rain is lashing the windows is still as cosy a feeling as it was when I was a kid.

Last book you read

An advance proof of City Of Windows by Robert Pobi. It is a fantastic thriller about an astrophysicist applying his knowledge of maths and science to the hunt for a sniper who is working through a kill list, pulling off seemingly impossible shots. It takes place against a background of racial tension, conspiracy theories and paranoia, making it The Day Of The Jackal for Trump’s America.

Favourite three novels

This is a near-impossible question, but as an experiment I am going with the first three that leap to mind, to see what that tells me about myself. Swing Hammer Swing, the essence of Glasgow distilled into a single work, like a Billy Connolly routine that lasts for 400 pages. I re-read this every few years because it reminds me to up my game. Espedair Street by Iain Banks. Iain undoubtedly wrote more ambitious and accomplished novels, but this comic and melancholy tale of a Seventies supergroup from Paisley just transports me every time.

The Baroque Cycle. You might say it’s cheating to chuck in a trilogy, especially one whose constituents are each around 1000 pages, but I would argue that the books are indivisible. This is the work I wish I had time to re-read, and one day I will allow myself that luxury.

Favourite three non-fiction

Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer. It is an enlightening history of the golden age of stage magic written lovingly by a man who designs illusions for magicians in Vegas.

The Far Corner by Harry Pearson. This is my favourite book on football because it so warmly captures the relationship between the game and the communities around it. Also, it is rooted in the north-east of England, so those communities are defined by geography, not tribal affiliation. The Universe Next Door by Marcus Chown. I could have picked several books by Chown and by Michiu Kaku, but this is the one that really kicked off my theoretical physics habit, full of dizzying concepts brilliantly elucidated for those of us who don’t speak maths.

Guilty pleasure

I would normally argue that no reading pleasure should be a guilty one, but Pretty In Pink: The Golden Age of Teen Movies by Jonathan Bernstein probably qualifies because it’s about a genre of films that its author himself would describe as a guilty pleasure. Nobody ought to have re-read this book as many times as I have. It is a waspishly funny nostalgia trip, one that gives enough flavour of certain Eighties movies that you don’t need to actually go back and watch them.

Fallen Angel, by Christopher Brookmyre, is published by Little, Brown, priced £18.99. He appears at the Boswell Book Festival on 11 May.

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