What I’m reading: Getty Images co-founder and Like Wildfire Blazing author Mark Getty on his favourite books and the advice he’d give aspiring writers | City A.M.
City A.M. spoke to Irish businessman, Getty Images co-founder and author Mark Getty about what he’s reading, the books that changed his life and the inspiration for his novel.
What book are you currently reading?
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
What was the last book you read?
Modernists and Mavericks by Martin Gayford.
When do you tend to read?
From midnight to 2am every night.
What was the best book you’ve read in the last five years?
John Richardson’s three-volume biography of Picasso, A Life of Picasso, and Robert Caro’s four-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
What genre of books do you enjoy reading most (and why)?
I will read anything, a list, an instruction manual, a telephone book, a novel, a poem. I only lack the patience for short stories.
How many books would you say you read in a year?
Over 50 and under 75…
Is there a book (or books) that has changed your outlook on life?
Oriana Fallaci’s A Man, and all of Emile Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart novels.
What book have you not read that you feel you should?
The Kalevala – a 19th century epic compiled by Finnish scholar Elias Lonnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral poetry and folklore – and any book on the history of interest rates.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
My advice to anyone who loves to read or write is to love words first. Look at fonts and at print carefully. Ignore what they mean and just marvel at what they look like.
Can you describe your writing process?
I can’t concentrate for long periods and therefore write in bursts of 20 to 30 minutes.
What were the inspirations for your book [called Like Wildfire Blazing and released this month]?
It’s not entirely clear to me what inspired my book, but I think it’s not more complicated than being another story about who we are as humans.
What book (fiction or non-fiction) do you most wish you’d written?
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Mark Getty’s first novel Like Wildfire Blazing is published by Adelphi and was released on 21 June