David Nicholls

Page after page, we'll just zoom through it.

It's very funny, gossipy, but also deeply serious about the very difficult business of making film and all of the things that go wrong along the way.

12 months of books ahead.

This is an ABC podcast.

From Melbourne.

Hello, my name is David Nicholls, and the first book I wanted to talk about today is Franny and Zooey by J.D.

Salinger.

I love The Catcher in the Rye, but this is my favourite Salinger book for many reasons.

Salinger is brilliant about family, and this is about a brother and sister.

It's really two books, a short story and a novella,

Franny is the sister, Zooey is the brother.

And the tortured complications of the Glass family are a rather bohemian New York family.

And I love the wit of the writing.

This is a book I go back to again and again because Salinger is so good on adolescence and youth, on the idealism and the rather self-conscious cynicism of it.

It's a really, really funny book.

There's a long dialogue sequence between Zooey and his mum where Zooey's trying to have a bath and is constantly interrupted by his overbearing mother that I think is just brilliantly witty and well-observed.

And it's extremely emotional as well.

I must have read this book ten times.

I've never...

finished it without crying.