"You can adore this book for multiple reasons. The story, the style, the craft… There are no heroes here, just human beings, with all their flaws and failures. Although it is a book about a certain place and a time, and the dark side of the American Dream, it equally feels timeless and placeless, such is its universal appeal. The Great Gatsby is not a story you can read once and put aside, it is a book that deserves to be reread at different stages of life—a companion rather than a classic."

"Chinatown sort of has this classic Hollywood vibe to it, or — not vibe — feel to it. I was always fascinated with sort of the old Hollywood, old architecture, the way Hollywood was back in the ’20s and the way that it captured all that, as well as the story and the acting. It’s just one of those films that I find myself watching over and over and over. I love seeing Jack Nicholson when he’s young — and his voice. All that stuff about him is so interesting to watch."

"I discovered the film on TV in Spain and still like the Spanish title, Rufufu—signaling it as a travesty of a Rififi-style clever caper. The original Italian title—I soliti ignoti (Persons unknown)— also becomes very good once you’ve seen the film. Just the way the characters eat food in the movie is delightful, and the filming style classic and brilliant—a comedy of great elegance. The only two autographs I’ve collected are Mario Monicelli’s and Diana Ross’s (whose “I’m Coming Out” greatly aided the Last Days of Disco soundtrack)."

"I remember reading the hardback first edition of “Backlash” (a feminist classic) in the backseat of a friend’s Buick on the way home from a particularly wild Catskills trip, simultaneously swallowing Doritos and my rage and sadness at the reality of antifeminist backlash. Faludi has published an updated version — especially relevant in our new Trump America — just as interesting, motivating and rage-inducing as the first. This book hurts, but it moves us forward. “Backlash” continues to be an informative wake up call for women of my and my daughter Samia’s generation."

"As a war correspondent, I have read many of the classic eyewitness accounts. I bought this book when I visited Vietnam in 1997. It’s one of the rare novels about that terrible war written from their perspective by a North Vietnamese student. It’s brutal, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking and desperately human. It’s also vital to remember that as much as the U.S. suffered on all fronts, Vietnam came off far, far worse. This book was first translated and sold in the west, ten years before it could be published in Vietnam."

"I’m kind of old-school but I wanted to pick at least one newer anime I’ve enjoyed. Assassination Classroom has a super-weird premise. An alien with the power to destroy earth takes over a classroom of misfits at a high school and encourages them to assassinate him. It’s strange and has lots of wacky action sequences but it also hits on some of the classic motifs of classroom dramas. It’s like Dead Poet’s Society with a mysterious, capricious, gluttonous, horny alien teacher with tentacles instead of Robin Williams."

"This is another classic record that shaped a lot of what we did, I guess. You get those songs sometimes where you hear the sound of it and think something has happened here. Whether it's the glue or whatever that's given it this sound - and I get that with 'Crosseyed And Painless'. Whether it's loops or samples I don't know but it comes across like a soundscape with everything working off everything else. That one track does so much in terms of hearing how records can be made."

"The climax. The euphoria that comes from that intro. You know everything's going to be OK. You can feel they've gone through this hell, and they've arrived at this place that didn't really do them any good. They broke up, but it's a massively positive song, and it's absolutely fantastic. People say they didn't fulfil their potential - Keith Richards says bands don't stay together long enough - but really? They didn't have to. That one album is up there with Never Mind The Bollocks, with with any classic debut album. It's up there. Totally.""

"I just love this book. When I was halfway through it—right around when one of the three daughters tries to talk to her father and he goes out into a storm—I was like, “Oh my God, this is King Lear.” I was so impressed with how Smiley was able to take such a classic tale and put it in rural 20th-century Iowa. It’s beautiful, it’s crushing, it’s everything King Lear is—and it’s effortless. I was blown away by the imagination, intellect and talent it must have taken to do that."