C. S. Lewis - his works were very, very important during my time there. We had discussion groups. I did become more attracted to it although I still attended the Methodist church. If you read Lewis. Then until this day, he did the lectures, something like christian behaviour and 'the screwtape letters', and we were all discussing them. I thought some of his work was the most illuminating to people reaching out to christianity because you're always questioning particularly at that age and you're looking for reassurance and for answers. Indeed you go on questioning throughout your life.

I remember the awakening that occurred in me when I read, for the first time, Franz Kafka. ... That morning I was happy. I wanted to run out and embrace them, all these garbage collectors, because they taught me that there was another world than the world of Kafka, which is absurd and desperate, and despairing.

But one of the things that my father did was to let me read comics. Now people used to say that’s bad because it isn’t — it spoils your English but, in fact, letting me read — I devoured all kinds of comics — fed my love for English and my love for reading but I suppose if he had been firm I might not have developed this deep love for reading and for English, which stood me in good stead when I later went into hospital for 20 months. I did have something to do. I had — as things maybe got a little bit more serious, I was given a diet — we didn’t have too many books but my father was keen that one read things like Aesop’s Fables and Lamb’s, Tales from Shakespeare . I didn’t read the originals but I read these stories that describe what Shakespeare was saying in the plays and that possibly was something that sharpened your appetite for later.

some of the most noteworthy books I’ve read I guess, like A People’s History of the US, the Howard Zinn book totally changed the way I look at politics. And then in the same way I read a book recently called Sacred Economics that like totally changed the way I looked at economics.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matheson. I also recently read Sapiens by a guy named Harari. And I’m going to give that thing over and over again to everyone I know.

And maybe it’s unfair to use a book. So $100.00 or less? I think one of the best values you can get for $100.00 is a good axe.