Books with the greatest impact

These are a handful of the books that have had the greatest impact on me during my life. All of these have played a substantial part in inspiring my own literary aspirations.

Roald Dahl - 'Charlie & the Chocolate Factory'

As far as I can recall this was the first 'novel' that I ever read, at the perhaps precocious age of 4 (speaking somewhat immodestly), and in the following formative years I must have revelled in it time and time again. The sense of magical adventure brims with a relentless energy, it races along like the sugar longboat down the chocolate river with Dahl's fervent imagination flailing off into countless avenues that you long for him to stop off at and develop further. The boyhood ecstasy at discovering that mythical 'Golden Ticket' - essentially an exit, an escape route from harsh reality - surely must speak profoundly to everyone.

Stephen King - 'The Shining'

Whilst not being the first King novel I read - that was 'Insomnia' - this was the horror hook on which I was ensnared around the age of 14 until eventually managing to wriggle free almost 2 years later. In the interim period I must have read almost exclusively Stephen King. The film became seared into my brain after being scared senseless by it at age 11 - to this day no film since has had such a profound effect on me. The book had a lot to live up to therefore, and King's constantly imaginative prose and vivid character portrayals didn't disappoint. Indeed the two versions, book and film, are such different entities that each have their merits over the other. Whilst the film is, in my view, a flawless achievement by Kubrick, what I enjoyed about the book was the much more forensic examination into Jack Torrence's troubled past (aggression and alcoholism, essentially human, issues) and consequent damaged psyche that result in his gradual unravelling at the hands of the Overlook Hotel's equally disturbed history.

Irvine Welsh - 'Trainspotting'

This was another book I gravitated to as a result of my fondness for the film adaptation, and again I found there was just as much, if not more, about the novel to appreciate. Given that I'd been gorging myself on Stephen King's often production-line ouevre for so long, first encountering Welsh's gritty, sardonic writing style was - pardon the cliche - a real slap in the face. Instead of ghouls, demonic forces and axe murderers, here was a writer who was seemingly writing from the very gutter; with all the filth and grime of degenerate reality embedded under the fingernails of the prose. Substance abuse, Scottish council estates, scummy pubs, prejudice and violence - it all burned from the pages with a vitriolic wit that I found almost as compulsive as the subject matter. After 3 or 4 revisits, I still find it just as entertaining and now credit it as being the novel that exposed me to harsh fictional realism, wrenched me from my King-induced apathy and made me passionate about literature again.

George Orwell - '1984'

I forget at what age I first read this book, having been pressured to by my father, but I'm certain I failed to understand it. Several re-readings later, I consider this book to be something of a sacred text for me; the sheer weight of the ideas and concepts that come tumbling from every page is staggering, and the pervading sense of despair and hopelessness is more palpable than any other book I can think of. The final 'interrogation' section is as disturbing and visceral as I believe fiction has achieved, and for a book to have had such a lasting impact on society is surely something all writers can only fantasise about.

JG Ballard - 'Crash'

Whilst I don't believe this to be Ballard's most ingenious work (that, for me, is 'The Atrocity Exhibition' or several of his short stories), it was 'Crash' that first introduced me to Ballard and is still perhaps the single strongest influence on my own writing. Indeed, as far as my relationship to literature (and perhaps outlook on society itself) is concerned there is my life pre and post 'Crash'. I can remember precisely where I was and what my frame of mind was as I sat down and began reading the first page. I recall closing the book at the bottom of the first page and sitting back swimming in a very odd sense of dual emotions. On the positive side - I knew just from a single page that I had discovered a writer who's fervent imagination and body of work would captivate and inspire me from then onwards. The same feeling you get when you see a great film or hear a musical artist's work for the first time; that striking sense that your life has just been enriched somehow by that discovery. The other sensation I felt however was a crushing sense of inadequacy - here was a writer who seemed to be saying everything I wanted to say only decades earlier and far better than I would most likely ever be capable of!