Fin Taylor: Surrounded By Old Books

I say stand-up comedian. It’s the question they ask after that that’s the problem.

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. That guy is mind-blowing.

I was really into the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, so I remember seeing them all stacked up on my shelf. They were about badgers who were knights and fought foxes or something. Gibberish.

I don’t think I would encourage that. That’s how religion starts. I would say read a broad range of everything, and then hopefully come to the conclusion that there’s no way you can believe in any one thing unconditionally.

Can’t remember not getting a rush off it. Been chasing that rush since I can remember.

I was an activity leader at a language school in Oxford. So after these Spanish teenagers had been learning English all morning I’d take them on excursions, which they would get bored of so then I would give them ‘free time’, which would inevitably lead to them committing petty crime. Vote Leave!

Never give up, but never stop asking yourself whether you should.

Norm Macdonald, Patrice O’Neal, Chris Morris.

Because of the cycle, you get into of producing an hour of material a year, I sort of read seasonally. So I gorge on books from September to April and then beyond that I sort of feel unable to put any more stuff in until a heap of shit comes out. I would like to be able to read all year round but I feel your own creativity gets in the way of appreciating others’.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, and Frank Skinner Autobiography by Frank Skinner are essentials.

Don’t think there is. Here’s hoping for early onset Alzheimers so I can just go through my current collection on a loop. I get the New Statesman every week, I think Laurie Penny and Helen Lewis are particularly good. So I read them a lot.

What’s Left by Nick Cohen.

Blindly stumbling around until I ended up doing comedy.

I like a polemic. At the moment that’s what I’m reading a lot of, I like other people’s opinions and how they defend them. In terms of fiction, I like quite dark stuff. I absolutely cannot stand Jack Kerouac, I think it’s nonsense. I tried reading On The Road once, I was on the tube, and I realised there were more stops on the tube line than there were in the whole fucking book. And I was on the Waterloo and City line.

Scary. Impulsive. Instinctive. Feel like there’d be little to stop Ideologues.

Nick Cohen in Non-Fiction. Brett Easton Ellis in Fiction.

No, I think no matter how far down the line it gets, there will always be second-hand bookshops, because there will always be something comforting about being surrounded by old books.

To Kill The President by Sam Bourne.

Well, I don’t know about life, but in terms of my own writing: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I can’t remember who said it but there’s that quote that the great joy of reading is discovering something you already knew existed. That book totally articulates the numbness of privilege and post Thatcher/ Reagan life in the West, and the violence is so abhorrent and yet blackly funny. It really made me think about the imagery in my writing and how much I could push the more disgusting aspects of it.

Anything by the following: Doug Coupland, Christopher Hitchens and Phillip Roth.

I want to get into mid-century Science Fiction. Mainly because I’ve just seen the new Blade Runner film and thought it was phenomenal. I’ve never given stuff like Aldous Huxley or Phillip K. Dick a proper go so I’m going to make an effort with that.

Hi Fives and Thigh Slaps. Which you will enjoy if you’ve seen my Edinburgh shows.

Image credit: Alex Brunacci