J L Blenkinsop

I suppose my favourite books must have had an effect on my own writing. I've been reading since forever - I can't remember when I have not had a book in my hands, except that nowadays it's an e-reader. And five favourites? Impossible.

But, I'll start with the Gormenghast trilogy, by Mervin Peake. It's a whole imagined world, contained within a vast castle. The characters are grotesque, but no wonder - they know nothing except the world of Gormenghast; they are ruled by its rituals and customs, and are powerless to resist the clever, vindictive Steerpike... Read it; you'll love it!

A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K Dick. To my mind his most accomplished novel. You will know his books from the films that were made from them - Bladerunner, Minority Report, Total Recall and A Scanner Darkly (an animated film). I have had for many years a screenplay in my head for this book, but I think it's going to stay there. Why this book? Because it is a brilliant account of a policeman's descent into paranoia and drug-dependence. Love could have saved him; but even love is twisted, and is used by his superiors to bring justice at the expense of his own sanity.

Martin Rattler, written by R M Ballantyne in 1858. Ballantyne is nowadays a forgotten author, but he wrote cracking books for boys. I read Martin Rattler when I was ten - a tip here: If you are a young reader, always keep a comprehensive dictionary by your side. The best books are those that stretch your imagination, and to do that they also have to stretch your vocabulary. Martin is kidnapped and taken to sea at the age of ten, and has adventures all the way to South America and back again. I particularly remember the episode with the vampire bats.

I have two left, and two hundred in my head. I'll have to give mention to Sir Terry Pratchett, whose books I have read since he published his second novel, The Dark Side of the Sun, in 1976, and to Neil Gaiman, who I have only recently rediscovered,

Should I select Gaiman's American Gods as my fourth book? I could choose Neverwhere, or The Graveyard Book - but what the heck; I'll choose Anansi Boys. Why? Because Gaiman does not write with colour. You know that some of his characters are black, and some are white; some are Chinese, some Venezuelan, some are ghosts and some are not. He does not have to be explicit. You just know. And that is a great equaliser. People are just people. And some are gods.

Why is this important to me? Because my wife and daughter are Chinese, because I have friends who are a different colour to me, because it's tedious to say, "You know, the black guy?"... Because we are all just people, even the ghosts. And so I, like Neil, just want to write about people as people, and not trip switches in reader's minds by starting with their colour.

So many books. But now to the last I'm allowed here.

The American writer Neal Stephenson (yet another SF/Fantasy writer) wrote an amazing trilogy, The Baroque Cycle, which is - in the real meaning of the word - awesome. Set at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century it is a wild, sprawling romp through a turbulent period of European history, filled with romance, science, politics, economics, alchemy and mathematics... lots of 'ands', really, far too much, it's a real page-turner, even though it was published in some markets as eight separate full-length books.

It will keep you occupied for a while. And then, when you finish that, read Cryptonomicon, which brings it all up to date.

So; five favourite books. If I could write anywhere near as well as any of those writers could write, I would be the happiest man in the world. Go read at least one of them. You will be inspired.

I read mostly in the SF/Fantasy genre, but I still like childrens' books, and have re-read those from my youth. Books by R M Ballantyne, Enid Blyton, Captain W E Johns (Biggles).

I like the kind of old-fashioned thrillers by Dashiel Hammet (The Maltese Falcon), Raymond Chandler (the Philip Marlowe books) and Leslie Charteris (The Saint). They are just so darn GOOD!

I read factual Scientific literature, too, about Mathematics, Quantum Physics, Relativity and so on. Scientific biographies can be fascinating - read the biography of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo, as an example. And read the books by the scientists themselves, particularly the autobiographical works of the late Richard Feynman, and the not-late Murray Gell-Mann's great book The Quark and the Jaguar.

Charles Dickens can be very very good. Bleak House is my favourite, followed by A Tale of Two Cities. I still have others to read, but I advise against reading Hard Times. It is a very awful book.

Authors recently read and recommended - Charlaine Harris (Lily Bard series), Charles Stross, Lee Child, the late Ian M Banks / Ian Banks, Sir Terry Pratchett, Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Neil Gaiman and E Nesbit.