Beijing Bookshelves: Alex Pearson, owner of The Bookworm

The Bookworm's Literary Festival kicks of TONIGHT (Friday, March 5), so over the next few weeks we'll be asking notable Beijingers: "What's on your bookshelf?" Who better to start with than Alex Pearson, owner of the Bookworm?

I am on a major reading binge at present as our festival is looming.

David Grossman’s Writing in the Dark (in my handbag, so mostly in taxis and arriving early for appointments), Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (on my bedside table, so nighttime reading) and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (on the sitting room table, so morning reading). All are so utterly brilliant that I think I’ll have to read them again.

One “must-read” China book? For a foreigner to understand China, probably James Kynge’s China Shakes the World. For an understanding of the country by a countryman, probably Zhu Wen’s I Love Dollars.

My favorite book from childhood? I was massively into Susan Cooper – The Dark is Rising, etc, and the poems of Edward Lear.

Someone from a book that I’d have loved to meet is George Mallory, to see how he fed his mind while on his fateful ascent of Everest.

The last book I bought was The Rough Guide to South America.

Are there any books that I pretend to have read? Please don’t tell any of the festival authors this, but on occasion I read the first couple of chapters of one of their books to get the feel and style of their writing, so that I am not totally ignorant when I meet them.

I’d like a peek at the bookshelf of the essayist Eliot Weinberger.

A Beijing bookshelf I’d like a peek at is the British ambassador’s.

My bathroom reading is The Week magazine.

A book that changed my life is Wole Soyinka’s You Must Set Forth at Dawn, for its arresting journey of politics, art, environment, greed and the great human spirit. He has been on my festival hunt list ever since.

The Bookworm International Literary Festival 2010 kicks off on March 5.