What are your five favorite books, and why?
This is always a pleasure to answer. I am reading a tremendous amount right now, and have enjoyed most of the books I've read. Recently, Henry James' The Portrait of a lady, John Fowles' (a hero of mine) The French Lieutenant's Woman; John Williams' Stoner; W.G Sebald's Austerlitz; Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
One favourite of mine, and one I return to every now and then, is E.M.Forster's A Passage to India, one of the greatest books written. Quite different is Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi, one of the best 'travel' books I've read. I particularly liked his Tropic of Cancer. I am a particular fan of Virginia Woolf, and am looking forward to reading most of them again, soon. For quite different reasons, I have always loved Armistead Maupin's Tales of The City series. It has influenced me: characters that are real, funny, succeeding and failing in equal measure.
What do you read for pleasure?
Mainly fiction. I am always keen to extend the range of my reading, especially as I am aware that there are so many great and important books I haven't read. That's why I've just read Henry James for instance. I like to read non-fiction, too. Books about history, art, and architecture, of course, which is my first profession.
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