Tim Atkin: This is Not a Dress Rehearsal

I say I’m a wine writer and taster who takes a few photos for fun.

I am currently reading His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet.

The Chronicles of Narnia Series by C.S. Lewis. I enjoyed them at the time, but realised in later life that they were basically a form of Christian propaganda. So I’ve gone off them in adulthood.

I wanted to be a journalist or a film producer. So I’ve pretty much ended up doing what I wanted to do.

He’d be surprised I still had all my own hair. But I’d like to think he’d smile and say “Wine: you call that work?”.

Probably Les Essais by Michel de Montaigne. I read them when I was too young. But I keep dipping back into them in middle age.

I’m lucky enough to have a library at home, so that would be my first choice. But I travel a lot, so I’m always reading on the move. And at any time of the day.

There aren’t many wine books that I admire. But The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace is a great read and opens a window on the fine wine world. I also liked The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty by Julia Flynn Siler.

My Father’s Fortune by Michael Frayn is the best book I’ve ever read about a father/son relationship. It reminds me of my Dad in many ways, who is still alive and kicking at 85 years’ old.

The book I’ve recommended most is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

I like both, but I read more of the latter than the former.

Yes. But it’s pure pleasure above all.

The best book I’ve read in the past 6 months is The North Water by Ian McGuire.

Real. I love hardback books in particular. I’ve got a Kindle, but I rarely use it.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

Probably A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust, which I read when I lived in Avignon on my year abroad as part of my French degree. But The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a close second.

Five non-fiction books (or series) that I’d recommend are: Bury by the Chains by Adam Hochschild, Into the Silence by Wade Davis, Gallipoli by L.A. Carlyon, The Pax Brittanca Trilogy by James Morris and Stealing the Scream by Edward Dolnick. All wonderful works of history/journalism.

And five novels would be: The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez and L’Ecume des Jours by Boris Vian. And I’d also like to mention The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

For poetry, I’d like the complete works of Auden, Larkin, Yeats, Manley Hopkins and Mark Strand. That’s probably enough…

I have very catholic tastes, so lots of things lined up. Starting with Keeping on Keeping On by Alan Bennett and a book about the famous Czech runner, Today We Die a Little by Richard Askwith. One of these days, it’s also time I got around to reading three of greatest novels ever written (or so I’m told): Ulysses by James Joyce, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes. Maybe that will happen in 2017.

This is Not a Dress Rehearsal.