Lookshelves

1) Who are you and where are you?
 
Jonathan Gibbs, London, UK
 
2) What do you do for work?
 
Journalist, working for the website of the Independent newspaper, also writing on books for that and other publications.
 
3) What do you do for fun?
 
recently, sledging and snowball fighting, but more generally working on the novel and then trying to make it up to the family.
 
4) Tell me something about your bookshelves.
 
This is the bottom end of some alcove bookshelves in the living room. My favourite bit is the littoral zone - the zone of conflict, crossover and negotiation - between grown-up books and small boy books, where Proust sits alongside '50 Soccer Skills'.
 
5) Tell me something about ONE of the books on your shelf.
 
'A Time To Every Purpose Under Heaven' by Karl O Knausgaard is one of the more astounding novels I have read in recent years. It hides brilliant, novella-length retellings of Cain and Abel and the Flood and, 50 pages before the end, it blows itself sky-high.