Daniyal Mueenuddin’s critically acclaimed short-story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist
What are you reading these days?
I keep a pile of five or six books at my bedside, and read them simultaneously, picking up whichever suits my mood. Right now I’ve got Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Collected Stories, Vanity Fair (the novel, not the anthropological magazine), Konrad Lorenz’s King Solomon’s Ring, Roald Dahl’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Pulphead, which is a book of essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Edward Girardet’s Killing the Cranes, about the Afghan wars. As you can see, there’s something there for almost any mood.
Which titles are on your bucket list of books?
A bucket list — that sounds like a list of books that I feel I should read but don’t particularly want to. I don’t believe in this whole program, which implies that certain books are like spinach, something to be consumed because they are good for me. I read for pleasure, not for improvement; and if I feel an appetite for a book, I read it right away.
What is the one book/author you feel everyone must read?
Your question implies that great books contain essential information; but I disagree with this. Books are adventures, some better suited to one personality and some to another. I may prefer the wilds of Patagonia, but I understand that others find their bliss while shaking Goofy’s paw at Disneyland. It’s true that books of philosophy can sometimes provide balm to the troubled soul — the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are useful to me in this way — but again, it’s a matter of taste or training, and each person must suit himself.
What are you planning to reread?
As I get older, I find myself rereading more and more — because I have a professional interest in understanding what makes a particular book work, and also because, as I age, I often find myself wanting to relive old adventures, rather than encounter new ones. Among the books I often reread: Chekhov’s stories, all of Tolstoy, Turgenev — the Russians. Joyce, especially Ulysses. Some poets: Auden, Lowell. I just began rereading Proust, which is sort of like setting off a second time to walk across Brazil.
What is the one book you read because you thought it would make you appear smarter?
In my salad days, during a particularly dry period in my romantic life, I made an effort to read the post-structuralist writers, Lacan, Derrida, etc., seeking to impress a blue-stocking grad student, who talked of little else. I soon came to my senses, gave it up as a bad job.
What is the one book you started reading but could not finish?
Too many to name. I recently found myself unable to finish Orhan Pamuk’s Snow. See also Lacan and Derrida, etc., above. There are a number of writers who have elephantiasis of the reputation, and who annoy me mightily, and whom I avoid, such as Jonathan Safran Foer and Norman Mailer.
What is your favourite childhood book or story?
Enid Blyton appealed to me at a certain age, a beige kid living in Lahore — the world of the Secret Seven appeared so comfortingly sanitised.
I identified for a period with Stuart Little, and wished to possess his little convertible sports car. For several months, when I was seven or eight, I signed myself “Daffy” instead of “Danny” — suggesting that comic books featuring the scrappy little black duck had made a deep impression on me.