Waterstone's Writer's Table - 40 books selected by Philip Pullman

A wonderfully eclectic list, as you might imagine. Good to see Buddenbrooks getting a mention. I can remember being just as amazed when I read this book at about the same age as Thomas Mann when he wrote it. As Pullman says: "How could a 25-year-old know so much, and write so perceptively? The first of Mann's great novels, and still astonishing today."

Follow this link to read about how Pullman made his selection:

Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week

Once Upon A Time In The North by Philip Pullman

an exquisite object, finely produced, with skilled and handsome woodcuts [by John Lawrence] of the streets and harbour of "Novy Odense" on the Barents Sea, which has the atmosphere of a frontier town in a western... NICOLETTE JONES

Philip Pullman interviewed...

As a famous writer, Pullman is often asked for advice by aspiring novelists. "The advice people are often given is study the markets, I say do exactly the opposite. What the market has been saying for the last 10 years is 'we want another Harry Potter', but no one was saying 'where's the first Harry Potter book?' The only person who was thinking about that was JK Rowling.

"So write what you want to write, because people don't know what they want to read. It's like politicians asking focus groups what they should be doing. If you're in politics you should know what you want to do."