My earliest reading memory I was in my childhood bedroom in Nottinghamshire. I was three or four. I was reading a free catalogue: Massey Ferguson agricultural equipment. Tractors and combine harvesters. Not much in the way of narrative, but I loved it, especially the combine harvesters.
My favourite book growing up The Witches by Roald Dahl. I enjoyed its demented sense of adventure and mischief and transformation. I felt as if I wasn't being educated or made a better person, but that the author was trying to terrify me.
The book that changed me as a teenager SE Hinton's The Outsiders. Susan Hinton wrote about teenagers especially teenage boys so well. It managed to be romanticised and sentimental and honest and gritty all at once. It was a friend to me, that book.
The writer who changed my mind Emily Dickinson. She was about the only writer I could read when I was really ill in my mid-20s and knowing she too was agoraphobic, her words of light amid the dark gave me hope.
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