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Dance to the Music of Time, Vol. I: Spring (A Dance to the Music of Time)

Q: Is there a book you really wish you’d written yourself?
A: A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell. That book was a fascinating primer for me in how to write a sequence of books with the same cast of characters, and having the main character age along the way. This notion that life is a dance to the music of time – if you’re writing a series it’s crucial to know how to do it.

Q: What about a book that’s highly acclaimed but you think is overrated?
A: There’s a lot of great literature I’ve tried reading and couldn’t. War and Peace and Middlemarch I didn’t really get on with. The literary novel sometimes disappoints me. When I was at university I was a big fan of Thomas Pynchon, and I’ve tried some of the writers who have come after him and not really enjoyed them. I’m at an age now where if I’m not enjoying a book I tend to put it aside rather than fight my way to the bitter end. There are a hell of a lot of books out there I still want to read before I go.

Ian Rankin: ‘I couldn’t get on with War and Peace’
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/03/ian-rankin-books-q-and-a-in-a-house-lies
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jan/26/fiction4
http://ameqlist.com/sfp/powell11.htm
http://ameqlist.com/sfe/eliot2.htm

Private Passions: Ian Rankin
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nfpgj
https://mixi.jp/list_diary.pl?year=2009&month=10
https://mixi.jp/list_diary.pl?from=l_navi
Desert Island Discs: Ian Rankin
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093vcc