My earliest reading memory
The Green Kingdom from the Childcraft series. At four years old, I learned about chlorophyll and epiphytes and petrified forests. More importantly, I realised how wonderfully strange and enormous the world was out there.
My favourite book growing up
When I was little, every year, the Logos Hope, a ship constructed as a floating library would dock somewhere in Port of Spain. One of the books I took out was a tome-like workbook consisting of chapters of many other books such as JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Jean Merrill’s The Toothpaste Millionaire and Jack London’s White Fang. Even though it was just a collection of snippets, I reread the book many times.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Rage by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman). It’s The Catcher in the Rye meets The Breakfast Club meets a school shooting. It’s incredibly messy and raw and real, written when King himself was a high school senior and publication was still just a dream. It has been allowed to go out of print due to its connection to several real-life school shooters.
The writer who changed my mind
Charles Bukowski. Until I was 14 or so, I had deceived myself into thinking writers of books, regardless of content, were all well-mannered, decorous and prim and proper by nature. I believed they all lived in big houses with great gardens. Then I learned that Bukowski’s work was mainly autobiographical. Writers were as vulnerable and exposed and prone to terrible decisions and circumstances as anyone else.
The book that made me want to be a writer
It wasn’t a book. My father bought a Super Nintendo Entertainment System and I got Chrono Trigger, a Japanese role-playing game about time travellers. It made me dream of writing plots and scripts for games. Of course, that dream was malleable.
The book or author I came back to
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Though short, it was absolutely unbearable as a teenager. I never even made it to the part with the sharks. A decade later, however, after an unlucky streak of story submissions, the tale became much more relatable.
The book I reread
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. It’s a simple premise of a family trying to get a matriarch’s cadaver to her home town. The different narrators and perspectives involved, however, reveal new discoveries with each revisiting. Though it’s based in the American south, there’s something quaintly Caribbean about a book that involves the thought processes of everybody and their neighbours along the journey.
The book I could never read again
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I love the book, but it was an uphill climb. A rewarding climb with a great view at the top, but you feel too exhausted to enjoy it and you’re just ready to do something else.
The book I discovered later in life
No Pain Like This Body by Harold Sonny Ladoo. A book by a Trinidadian author, first published in 1972, that has only recently been getting some deserved attention, due to its rerelease. It’s a drama that plays out as domestic and cultural horror, one that I’m happy young readers can now discover early in their lives.
The book I am currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, about the intricacies of friendship and game design.
My comfort read
Visual novels on my gaming console. Virtual choose-your-own-adventure experiences. There are a lot of mediocre ones but my favourites are the Ace Attorney series, 13 Sentinels and Famicom Detective Club. The text rolling across the screen, emotive character portraits and usually a fitting accompanying soundtrack and sound effects: peak comfort.
• Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for £14.78 go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
