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Nigella Lawson: 'I reread David Copperfield for a bolstering reminder of greatness'

The author and cook on a life-changing book by Marilynne Robinson, the snobbery surrounding commercial success, and the food writer she hugely admires


The book I am currently reading
I’m suffering from crippling reader’s block. I had months of it during the earliest months of the first long lockdown, then recovered, but now, since about a week ago, find myself back in another bout. I don’t know what’s worse about it: the despair or the overwhelming sense of alienation. But I have three books on my bedside table that I hope will pull me out of it: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson; Oh Happy Day by Carmen Callil; and My Mother Gets Married by Moa Martinson.

The book that changed my life
There are certain books that have had a piercing effect on me at various stages in my life: as an adolescent, Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann; as a young woman, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson; more recently, All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews.

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