One of four books that changed him, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:
LUCKY JIMRead about the other books on the list.
Kingsley Amis
Another one from my parents' shelves. I read many unserious novels as a teenager, but Lucky Jim was the first I encountered in which the language did more than just tell the story. It was the story. Amis twisted his sentences until they embodied a wicked world view. The effect was subversive and liberating. The only catch, which I didn't detect for a while, was that no other novel in the world, by Amis or anyone else, was as funny.
Lucky Jim also appears on John Cleese's six favorite books list, Christian Rudder's six favorite books list, Jess Dukes's top ten list of brain-expanding books for the college-bound teen, Andy Borowitz's list of five top comic novels, Sean O'Hagan's list of the ten best fictional hangovers, Roger Rosenblatt's list of the five best satires of academic life, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best lectures in literature, ten of the best professors in literature, and ten of the best beards in literature.
--Marshal Zeringue
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