"This book will be on many peoples best loved book lists. I read this at 14 and it gave me my first overview of the elements of life, love and society. This book contains ruiminations if not answers on what it means to be fully human."

"I read this novel, about a man’s seemingly blessed life unravelling as his child self-destructs, in the first few months after my daughter was born. Feeling my love for her as I read about another parent losing his daughter made it all the more intense."

"The first film I remember seeing. I was seven. It was a Sunday morning, late in 1973. I was alone in a theater that no longer exists. I remember I couldn’t stop laughing. Mon oncle and Playtime were the films that made me love modern architecture."

"Heard these guys for the first time when I was over in L.A .last year. It definitely soundtracked my travels. Love their attitude, in terms of being wonderfully throwaway when needed but also very musical and elegant. Anyone who channels Harry Nilsson is all right by me."

"The first feminist character in a novel. I love this period of French lit, reflecting the life of a bored wife trapped as a woman in a ‘suitable’ marriage as a way to maintain her inheritance. It was seen as introducing realism and the modern narrative."