Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny author Max Porter.
*
Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Max Porter: King Rollo, by David McKee. He’s the guy who wrote Elmer, and Not Now Bernard, but King Rollo is the best. I love a tyrannical child ruler.
BM: Favorite re-read?
MP: Riddley Walker. It’s a different book every time. It’s growing.
BM: A book that blew your mind?
MP: Hoping to have it gently blasted if not fully blown every time, but I remember as a teenager reading Blindness by Saramago and thinking right, the novel is a force. And I was formed politically, mind blown open, by the books of Sven Lindqvist and John Berger.
BM: Last book you read?
MP: I just finished Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson, who has been making important and beautiful work across forms for years and recently he’s won a big prize. He speaks the truth, especially about Britain’s murderous intent towards its immigrant populations.
BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?
MP: The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey. A revelatory and masterfully engineered account of not sleeping, wrestling with what writing is.
BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?
MP: Recently, The Wild Laughter by Caoilinn Hughes. There’s a perfectly deployed c-bomb which had me chuckling.
BM: Favorite book to give as a gift?
MP: Dart by Alice Oswald. The most alive book I’ve ever read.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
MP: A little book called Christian Vikings in Varnhem, published by the Västergötland museum in Sweden, has given me so much pleasure. I might even say it’s the perfect book.
BM: Favorite book of the 21st century?
MP: The first book I ever worked on as an editor was Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. And to this day I’m still reeling from the technical wizardry, intellectual virtuosity and next-level literary artistry of that book.
BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?
MP: Canterbury Tales. Loved all the smut.
BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?
MP: Anders Nilsen’s almost completed series TONGUES is a visionary graphic masterpiece, a really astonishing, weird and innovative piece of storytelling.
BM: Favorite children’s book?
MP: When Marnie Was There by Joan G Robinson, or Angry Arthur by Hiawyn Oram and Satoshi Kitamura, or Simp by John Burningham.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
MP: The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. Would take some guts, but can you imagine?
*
Max Porter is the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers, and Lanny (Faber, Graywolf Press). He was previously editorial director at Granta Books. He lives in England.
Max Porter’s Lanny is out in paperback on April 21 from Graywolf Press
*
