Best books I never wrote
Especially for Halloween, Alistair Hughes (above), author and illustrator of Infogothic: An Unauthorised Graphic Guide to Hammer Horror, talks us through the books he wishes he’d written.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
A supernatural travelling carnival arrives at Halloween, and Bradbury’s conjuring soon has you queuing at the shadowy turnstile. Someone once tried to explain to me that Shakespeare is meant to be spoken, and heard aloud. I tend to think Bradbury is the opposite, his ‘‘prosetry’’ swirls up out of the printed page and straight into your imagination. The only author I ever plagiarised, I copied a whole passage from one of his exquisite short stories into a school essay. I’m not proud, but at least
I stole from the best.
Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon
This isn’t just one of the books I’d choose to be stuck on a desert Island with, it’s probably THE book. Imagine It’s a Wonderful Life crossed with an engrossing murder mystery, liberally spiced with the supernatural and fantastic. Then gift-wrapped as a moving, suspenseful and joyous coming-ofage story, set in a town and time I wish I could climb through the pages to visit. My own copy is falling apart because I re-live Boy’s Life every year.
E=MC2 by David Bodanis
From dark fiction to illuminating non-fiction. Author David Bodanis was inspired when he read an interview with actress Cameron Diaz, in which she longed to understand what E=MC2 means. So he wrote this, the ‘‘biography’’ of the world’s most famous equation. At school I was forced to mentally bench-press a huge text book called Matter, Energy and Life. Many years later Bodanis split my atomic nucleus by revealing that the clue to E=MC2 had been right there on that cover.
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
I read this during a summery spell in Britain, in a park surrounded by gnarled old oaks and elms. It took little effort to immerse myself in the magic and history of ancient woodland which Holdstock evokes, and then ingeniously blends with modern psychology.
This haunting book about a haunted wood is as irresistible as following a winding forest path – until you realise that it’s getting dark and you might never find your way back again...
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
A book with this title has a lot to live up to – and indeed, this is one of the very few novels which actually scared me. Admittedly, working as an assistant warden in a Highland castle when I first read it didn’t help. Chilling passages were fresh in my mind late at night, when I was the last to turn out the lights in chilly passages. This tale had me nervously eyeing a nearby baronial staircase, while on the page a character cringed from the sound of a malevolent phantom child scampering up and down his steps.