David Nicholls

For my third book, I thought I would choose a classic.

And I suppose the first great writer that I loved was Charles Dickens.

I read Great Expectations when I was about 16 and that had a massive effect on me.

But the one I really admire, the one I love the most is Bleak House, which is a huge thousand page monster, but incredibly entertaining.

The title makes it sound rather gloomy, but it has wonderful, wonderful comedy in it.

But it's comedy that's shot through with real anger, a real sense of injustice at the inequality of life at that time.

The plot is beautifully worked out.

It has everything.

It has a kind of gothic horror at times, high comedy, biting social satire.

It's a novel that you can absolutely get lost in.

The characters are so vivid.

It's very strange to me that it isn't as well known as Great Expectations or David Copperfield because I think it's absolutely his finest book.

And if you've ever been intimidated at the idea of picking up one of these giant 19th century classics, I strongly advise starting with Bleak House because it really will sweep you away.

When I was starting to write Sweet Sorrow, I thought of various books about first love, about youth, about the thrill of falling in love and the disillusionment that sometimes follows.

And a book that kept recurring to me was Philip Roth's novella Goodbye Columbus, his first book.

Again, a very short book, but a brilliant book about a summer love affair.

It's a fantastic story of social aspiration, of ambition, of love that always seems a little bit self-conscious, never quite rings true, taking place over the course of one particular summer.

Again, this is a book that would take you two hours to read.

You would zoom through it.

But it's Roth at his most accessible but still beautiful writing and very, very smart about youth and love and first experiences, our first steps into the adult world.