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My earliest reading memory
Being bored, either reading the Bible (who begat whom) or something at school, the slow procession around the class, three pages aloud for each child, The Mill on the Floss or some such. When I was 15, there was Dickens – Great Expectations, Miss Havisham, the rags-to-riches-to-rags, great, rollicking adventure of it all.
The book that changed me as a teenager
For English literature we had to read The Merchant of Venice. I was very affected by the way everyone in the class and apparently everyone in Venice hated Shylock. To me he was underdog, not villain. I think I also picked up on the racism, which, to be fair, Shakespeare did address, but still …
