Ben Markovits: I used to think any book concerned with people falling in love can't be very good'

"We'd sit in the kitchen together and try to solve the crimes. Of course, for me it was also an opportunity to hang out with my mom. I'm one of five kids; attention was hard to come by. But I was also drawn to the picture Sobol paints of small-town all-American life, which I don't think I ever felt a part of."

"I remember finishing JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings at elementary school and already feeling sad about the fact that I'd never be able to read it again for the first time. I have a dim memory that I was in school, because the feeling has something of the flavour of the school hallway and the bright lights on the shiny tiled floors."

"Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves. I was 17 and my parents had just moved us to Berlin for the year. Part of the appeal was that Graves had a German background, too, but I think I was also responding to the conversational style. As a book, it was very good company. I had just moved school and didn't know anybody."

Early reading experiences centered on Encyclopedia Brown mysteries shared with mother provided both bonding and glimpses of idealized small-town American life. The Lord of the Rings profoundly impacted childhood, creating lasting melancholy about losing the first-read experience. Dungeons & Dragons and adventure novels featuring solitary wanderers became defining influences. Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That offered crucial companionship during adolescence when relocating to Berlin and changing schools. Books consistently served as emotional anchors during periods of displacement, family dynamics, and social isolation, with literary preferences reflecting attraction to conversational intimacy and exploration of lonely figures navigating unfamiliar worlds.

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