4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
'I find something that inspires me in every single book I read'
Authors Byddi Lee, Shane Tivenan and Hannah King tell Belfast Telegraph about their most impactful reads
The childhood book I cannot forget is a book of fairy tales by Hans Christen Anderson, which contained the story 'The Tinder Box'. I don't remember the contents of the story, but I remember the sensation of holding the book and the effect it had on me. It was the first time I experienced an absolute take over by story. The way reading could rip you from your surroundings and place you in an alternative universe.
The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker is my favourite classic read. A hands down masterpiece by an English writer who tracked the flight and habits of the peregrine falcon for 10 years in his home county of Essex. Within a few years he could track the birds based on instinct alone. Becoming so close to them that his mind, and writing, seemed to slip in and out of his own consciousness and that of what he obsessed over. At times he brings you fully inside the perspective of the peregrine, and gives you the felling you are looking back down from the sky at your old self. And the prose — it's at a level I haven't come across since.
