Derek Owuso: Falling for Literature Instantly

A writer and an audiobook marketer.

I used to be a bodybuilder.

I’m reading Jill by Philip Larkin. I read his interview in the Paris Review and the interviewer mentioned it a few times. I’d always known Larkin as a poet and Jazz man so I was surprised to learn that he’d written two novels.

Well, I didn’t read a book cover to cover until I was 23. But I do remember my auntie telling me about Anansi the spider. And I think if I was a reader very young I would have loved His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I love it now as an adult.

When I was 23. The moment I realised there was something special about literature was after reading St Mawr, a short story by D.H Lawrence. I don’t know what it was about his writing but I fell for literature instantly. It’s funny because now I can’t stand D.H. Lawrence.

The Last book I purchased was Triangulum by Masande Ntshanga. I loved The Reactive, his first novel, and was reading some of the reviews of it to compare with my opinion. Then I stumbled across it. I had no idea it existed to reserved it at my local Waterstones immediately.

My bed. And free days free of listening to music that could interfere with my internal voice. I remember when I first became obsessed with The Smiths. I couldn’t read for months. Everything became a double-decker bus.

I would say The Will to Change by Bell Hooks. Honestly, it taught me how to be a man, how to be myself. Before I read it I was very insecure about how emotional I was etc. But hooks really changed that.

Probably a book called Blood by Lawrence Hill. I discovered it after reading his novel The Book of Negros. Really, it’s just a book with random facts about blood but it’s really interesting. I think I bought it at an airport.

Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien. I’ve been trying to watch the movie for ages but then I realised it was a book. So I read that instead. Incredible. Tragic, fiction and nonfiction, but so brutally honest.

Having SAFE published. I feel like I’ve contributed to the Black British canon and that’s enough for me.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It’s one of those books you know is spectacular but also that not a lot of people have read it. It shows you’re mainstream but still literary.

Great question. Less by Andrew Sean Greer; The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

St Mawr by D.H. Lawrence. It literally made me fall in love with reading.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. At times confusing reading but the language is wonderful minus the sea horse thing. Immortality by Milan Kundera. People are mistaken, this is his best work, not The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Same for Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.

A book called Look at the Harlequins! by Vladimir Nabokov. I’m excited because reading him feels like you’re leveling up as a writer.