Katherine Rundell

The author on Vladimir Nabokov’s footnotes, James Baldwin’s essays and her Jane Austen party trick

My earliest reading memory

The Brambly Hedge books by Jill Barklem were my first real loves; I was five. They left me with a lifelong yearning for punch made from crabapples.

My favourite book growing up

Charmed Life , by Diana Wynne Jones. She is, I think, one of the finest writers for children; her books are oxygenated by her refusal to talk down to them. You could recognise her voice at 50 paces.

The book that changed me as a teenager

I fell in love with John Donne’s poetry as a teen. It felt like liberation. So many of the visions of sex and desire we were offered felt bewildering in their restrictive thinness. He was transformative: sexy, funny, wildly strange, galvanic in his refusal to bring anything less than his full intelligence to his days.

The writer who changed my mind

Vladimir Nabokov with Pale Fire . I had not believed, until then, that footnotes could be so funny, that technical innovation could be such a source of joy.

The book that made me want to be a writer

I have no real memory of not hoping to be a writer; as soon as I understood that books were not grown from orchards of papery trees, it was what I wanted.

But Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights shows what can be done with children’s fiction; how bold and sweeping it can be.

The book or author I came back to

I was too young when I first tried to read Toni Morrison’s Beloved .I returned to it as an adult; it’s my vote for the true great American novel.

The book I reread

Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety . It’s not as consistent as the Cromwell trilogy, but the highs are even higher. I love everything she wrote, for its burning generosity; you could read this a dozen times and not come to the end of its originality, its moral intelligence, its gargantuan flair.

The book I could never read again

When I was a teen I was bewitched by Dickens. I can still see that he’s a titan – but, like Oscar Wilde said: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

The book I discovered later in life

I read Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo three years ago. It was like living for a week on champagne.

The book I am currently reading

James Baldwin’s

The Price of the Ticket – the collection of his essays from 1948-85.

It’s staggering. It salutes Black Americans who “were compelled, indeed, endlessly to attack and condemn – and who yet spoke out of the most passionate love, hoping to make the kingdom new”.

My comfort read

Jane Austen’s Emma . It’s my favourite book. I’ve never ceased to find it perfect; so funny, so sharp, and every reading offers something new. My party trick is that if you read me one line, I can usually tell you the next (this is not a party trick that is in great demand).