I found this list from high school (20 years ago. Blimey. I must hoard stuff). Anywho, it’s a list I had to keep of all the books I read during the school year when I was 16.  Some of them I don’t recall. Others I still like. Couldn’t be more random. Or maybe it could. Don’t know. I do think reading is formative though. Especially for a writer. I still quote Douglas Adams. I love the work of Alan Garner and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and studied Nathaniel Hawthorne at uni.  And The Snow Goose is a superbly told story.

Required texts: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, To Kill A Mockingbird, Hamlet, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, MacBeth.

Student selected reading, in no particular order

1. Red Limit Planet
2. Captain Bligh and Mr Christian.
3. My Place
4. The Snow Goose
5. Rain Man
6. Waiting for Childhood
7. Magician
8. The Dawning
9. The Railway Station Man
10. The Man in the Tree
11. Ancestral Vices
12. Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
13. Empire of the Sun
14. The Gorgon’s Head
15. One Two Buckle My Shoe
16. A Stranger, And Afraid
17. Dragons of Autumn Twilight
18. Adolf Hitler – My part in his downfall.
19. Great Theatrical Disasters
20. The Rats of NIMH
21. The Owl Service
22. On Acting – Lawrence Olivier
23. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
24. Myths and Legends
25. The Running of the Deer
26. The Legend of Huma
27. Silverthorn
28. Swords and Crowns and Rings
29. A Darkness of Sethanon
30. Woman in White
31. The Unwanted
32. Daughter of the Empire
33. The Anubis Gates
34. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
35. The House of the Seven Gables
36. A Cure for Life
37. The Extraordinary Mr Poe
38. The Giant’s Shadow
39. The India Fan
40. We Die Alone
41. The Choice
42. Starhunt
43. The Rainbow Sword
44. Floodgate
45. To Ride Pegasus
46. Words By Heart
47. Marked By Fire
48. Walk Through Cold Fire
49. Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
50. Restaurant at the End of the Universe
51. Life, the Universe and Everything
52. So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish
53. The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
54. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
55. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
56. Centennial
57. Clan of the Cave Bear
58. The Valley of the Horse
59. Homecoming
60. Treasure
61. The Great Alone
62. Alaska