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Sebastian Faulks and the Writer's Table

The Writer's Table is a major promotion at the forefront of The Writer's Year, Waterstone's calendar of monthly initiatives and activities designed to highlight the role of the author. Sebastian Faulks, whose highly anticipated James Bond novel Devil May Care is published at the end of May, has been given an entirely free rein in choosing every single title in the promotion - any book, any author, any subject, so long as the titles were in print in the UK. Faulks has also written about why he chose each book in his selection, and links to his hand-written thoughts can be found below.

"We are thrilled that Sebastian Faulks has agreed to be the very first author to fill Waterstone's Writer's Table. The selection he has come up with offers an incredible insight into the influences that have helped to make him one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed writers working today."

Toby Bourne, Head of Fiction, Waterstone's.

"Quite a few of the books I would have liked on my table are, alas, out of print; but I hope that everyone will find something worthwhile to read or re-read in this list of forty. There are no duds here, only winners."

Sebastian Faulks

The Writer's Choice

Jake's Thing by Kingsley Amis

"Late Amis. A forceful blast in the 1980s battle of the sexes. Rude, prejudiced, unfair, sour and very funny polemic, whose wit was far beyond that of its opponents."

Success by Martin Amis

"Early Martin Amis was treasured by his many dazzled admirers, including this one. This stylistically brilliant and structurally interesting novel enabled him to display all that bravura talent to its best comic advantage."

Tim All Alone by Edward Ardizzone

"I read this book many times as a child. Jeopardy, adventure, rescue...and, above all, those wonderful illustrations."

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Georgio Bassani

"This book, together with the equally brilliant The Intellectuals and the Masses, should help to remove all those stubborn and lazy prejudices you've been having trouble with."

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

"No sooner dead than near-forgotten; but Burgess was a real force and here is a novel in a foreign language that somehow, from the off, we understand. Amazing."

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

"The author's favourite of his novels and who are we to disagree? The death of Steerforth is perhaps the greatest scene in Victorian literature; but there are many other moments when the world seems to hold its breath."

The Waste Land by TS Eliot

"These poems were utterly new and original in their time yet the half-familiar rhythms made it seem as though they had always been there. Timeless, yet of their time; and good to read aloud."

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

"A short novel of mysterious power about the poet Novalis (1772-1801) and his love for a plain 12-year-old girl. Art of such refinement that it defies attempts to explain how it works."

Moonraker by Ian Fleming

"Early Bond. He doesn't sleep with the girl and the big dénouement is in Kent... It breaks all the rules and it really only has three scenes. But what good scenes they are."

The Magus by John Fowles

"Fowles has fallen from favour with British readers, but in the arid terrain of the 1970s he was an oasis of daring and brio. This book is a paean to the power of pure story-telling - and perhaps also to its dangers."

Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser

"The best World War Two memoir I have read. This, you feel, is what it was really like. Funny, too, and with unforgettable characters."

Towards the End of Morning by Michael Frayn

"The only novel that has caused me physical injury. I was laughing so hard that I fell out of bed and bruised my shoulder. I should have sued, really. "

Loving, Living, Party-Going by Henry Green

"Green was in my view the best English novelist of the mid-20th Century and I have tried to explain why in the introduction. These novels are wonderful. Try also Caught and Back."

The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary

"The memoir of a Spitfire pilot in the early days of WWII. Wonderful descriptions of flying, crashing and of the agonies of plastic surgery on burned hands and face. It says something essential about young men and war."

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

"A contemporary British novel that has an interest in language, that has themes and a musician's skill in orchestrating them... How rare is that? Brideshead Revisited for the 21st Century."

The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne

"A scholarly, complete but highly readable, and moving, account of the Battle of Verdun (1916) and what it meant to France. I don't think you can understand that country without knowing about Verdun."

An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan

"This account of how the author was kidnapped and held captive in Beirut begins as reportage or memoir, but develops into a profound and moving meditation on human frailty."

The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata

"Gimpei is an outcast who is in search of beauty. His story is told partly in cherry-blossom lyricism, and partly in harshly lit flashbacks to a troubled childhood. Odd, alien, enthralling. The author won the Nobel Prize."

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

"I remember the exhilaration with which I read this novel for review when it came out. I had never before seen big ideas so excitingly integrated into human lives."

The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

"Each time "poetry" beckons, Larkin stubbornly turns back to "life" - but with such honesty and skill that what emerges from his denials is poetry - pure, because refined by doubt. "

The Rainbow by DH Lawrence

"Poor Lawrence has fallen out of fashion and some of his writing does now seem hysterical. But no novelist before had cared so much for his characters or written about them with such tenderness. It was a revelation to me."

The Adventures of Dr Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

"The best children's book I read as child or parent. Utterly modern and enlightened, without being P.C. - high-concept, funny, touching, exciting and well written."

The Scent of Dried Roses by Tim Lott

"This autobiographical account of a young man's depression and the inexplicable suicide of his mother says something about England that no one else has said, and it still feels important."

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

"Was ever there a more memorable valentine than an X-ray of the beloved's tubercular chest? Mann's unwieldy modernist masterpiece is a reading experience that demands - and repays - total immersion. "

The House of Elrig by Gavin Maxwell

"The author became famous for his otter books, but this is the story of his Scottish childhood, with grouse moors and draughty castles. It is very good on nature and even better on adolescent sexuality."

The First Day of the Somme by Martin Middlebrook

"A reconstruction of the events of July 1, 1916, perhaps the blackest day in British history, by a poultry farmer-turned-historian. Calm, detailed and horrifying, it was written at a time (1970) when no one seemed to care."

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

"These short stories are sad, funny, sharp, etched in acid but conceived in love and tolerance. Above all, each one seems full, like a novel. The reading pleasure is almost indecently pure."

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

"Another beacon from the 1970s. Of Murdoch's many novels, this seemed the one that most exhilaratingly fused philosophical themes and narrative daring. It was a book that left its readers dazed and elated."

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

"Ludic, dandified, euphuistic - and then some. Nabokov's most story-driven book. The hero in the end is not H.H., Lolita or moral ambivalence, but style."

The Catcher In the Rye by JD Salinger

"You think you've read this - but try again. It yields something different every time. One of those rare, inexplicable literary events: a word-perfect novel."

The World is Not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg

"I don't really like "historical" novels - too much costume and "authentic" detail. But if anyone invested the genre with gravity it was Mme O. Her setting - 12th Century France - is fascinating, and her characters live."

Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth

"You don't really like late Roth if you don't love Sabbath. Here are Eros, Thanatos and their puppetmaster in a grand guignol that is vibrant, filthy, shocking, pitiless and somehow essential."

One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Life in the Gulag. The economy and dignity of narrative enhance its explosive moral power."

The Red and the Black by Stendhal

"Church, army and a lover's revenge vie for the soul of Julien Sorel in early 19th Century France. The love scenes with Mme de Rênal is the early part are breath-taking - unsurpassed, I would say."

A Cruel Madness by Colin Thubron

"Known for his elegant travel writing, Thubron is also a gifted novelist. This novel has the air of a once-in-a-lifetime inspiration. Measured, sweetly reasoned and immensely touching."

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

"Each time Tolstoy takes you back to his characters after the years have passed he rotates them a fraction beneath a bright light, like a jeweller, to show a new facet. Cruel, yet humane. No one gives a better sense of time passing. "

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

"A novelist so on top of her game that at times she is almost showing off. Relax - and enjoy her mastery".

A Fringe of Leaves by Patrick White

"Very difficult to break into - but hugely worthwhile. White was one of the big figures of 20th Century fiction and this is a magnificent novel."

Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth

"A manifesto and a revolution in verse whose fallout is still being measured. The strongest single volume of poetry ever published?"

Germinal by Émile Zola

"Flawed and easy to mock, like much of Zola. But as I finished this passionate and angry book, I found I was emitting strange noises, caused by the fact that I was crying, but with open eyes - because I had to know what happened next. "

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