Reading Aloud And Allowed
TPQ: What are you currently reading?
FKA: The Epstein files. I need to stop honestly.
The most recent book I actually finished was Billie Piper’s autobiography, which I enjoyed. Epstein files, less enjoyable.
I have started The Shards (Brett Easton Ellis) but only just.
TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?
FKA: Worst has to be Fifty Shades Of Grey (E L. James). I read it on a trashy beach holiday and thought it would be a fun sunbathing read. Impossible to finish. I literally threw it into the sea. Apologies to the waters of Greece.
Best - I really don’t know, books are like friends, how do you pick?
TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?
FKA: I had a few. There was a series in the 80s called Story Teller, an illustrated magazine accompanying a tape where various actors would voice the stories in the magazine. It was a huge door for my small mind, the range of styles and genre was wide and not patronising at all.
The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde was the one I still swoon at. My father often liked to tell me how chuffed he was at my reading level from a young age, reading Oscar Wilde before starting primary school.
We spent most of the summer time in a caravan park during my childhood and by 7/8 I would challenge myself to read a whole Roald Dahl book in a day, taking the book everywhere, even to the toilet. I would be very proud when I ‘won’ the book. I read all of Dahl’s.
As a pre-teen, Judy Blume was a big hit, probably because she talked about periods and boys, secret things. Which led neatly, in a way, to Elizabeth Wurtzel and maximum angst.
Teenage reading was propelled into more heavy material by my discovery of the Manic Street Preachers, who quoted so many authors; it became a game of working out who each writer was and then finding their books. Sylvia Plath, Dennis Cooper, Phillip Larkin and of course Primo Levi and Hubert Selby Jr
FKA: I had a few. There was a series in the 80s called Story Teller, an illustrated magazine accompanying a tape where various actors would voice the stories in the magazine. It was a huge door for my small mind, the range of styles and genre was wide and not patronising at all.
The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde was the one I still swoon at. My father often liked to tell me how chuffed he was at my reading level from a young age, reading Oscar Wilde before starting primary school.
We spent most of the summer time in a caravan park during my childhood and by 7/8 I would challenge myself to read a whole Roald Dahl book in a day, taking the book everywhere, even to the toilet. I would be very proud when I ‘won’ the book. I read all of Dahl’s.
As a pre-teen, Judy Blume was a big hit, probably because she talked about periods and boys, secret things. Which led neatly, in a way, to Elizabeth Wurtzel and maximum angst.
Teenage reading was propelled into more heavy material by my discovery of the Manic Street Preachers, who quoted so many authors; it became a game of working out who each writer was and then finding their books. Sylvia Plath, Dennis Cooper, Phillip Larkin and of course Primo Levi and Hubert Selby Jr
TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?
FKA: Probably Roald Dahl. There was so many books to get through, his worlds were so big and weird, funny and scary. The big imagination. When an author has so much to mentally play in its like setting off on an adventure. I was sad when I got to the end of each one, wishing immediately to return.
TPQ: First book to really own you?
FKA: Probably Roald Dahl. There was so many books to get through, his worlds were so big and weird, funny and scary. The big imagination. When an author has so much to mentally play in its like setting off on an adventure. I was sad when I got to the end of each one, wishing immediately to return.
TPQ: First book to really own you?
FKA: On a bleak holiday to Wales my mum and I bought some books to share. She had gotten me into true crime via the magazine Murder Casebook (I still have the full set in their special binders). One was Killing for Company by Brian Masters. I carried that thing everywhere. I slept with it under my pillow for a long time, which on reflection is a totally insane behaviour for a 13 year old, but it was the early 90s, so… I had to wrap it in plastic the more it fell apart. I’m really not sure what it was about Dennis Nilsen that got to me so much, something about Scottish loneliness I guess. In 2021 History of a Drowning Boy by Nilsen was released, a thing I never thought I’d read.
I’d also have to mention American Psycho here too, Via the Manics that was something I found as a youth that I really attached to, re reading to stay in the world.
TPQ: Favourite male and female author?
FKA: Hubert Selby Jr, James Frey, Brett Easton Ellis, Douglas Coupland, New Juche, Bukowski.
Embarrassingly, I haven’t read a female work of fiction in years. But, Slyvia, Sarah Kane, Anne Sexton.
People who get straight to the meat of things.
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?
FKA: Fact, and Art. Andy Warhol books were my first art books at around 12, and that aesthetic remains exciting to me. I went to uni late at age 30, and began reading more academic books about art, specifically performance art. I am very motivated by image, so large books with big wild pictures of people bleeding and such are thrilling. Some of the people I read about I ended up having some kind of connection with. After uni, in my professional art career, I was mentored by Lydia Lunch for a few months and she would read her poems/lyrics over the phone and send me down loads of her books, which was pretty cool.
A large portion of my book collection is Art books, and True Crime/ 80s/90s self-help.
FKA: Fact, and Art. Andy Warhol books were my first art books at around 12, and that aesthetic remains exciting to me. I went to uni late at age 30, and began reading more academic books about art, specifically performance art. I am very motivated by image, so large books with big wild pictures of people bleeding and such are thrilling. Some of the people I read about I ended up having some kind of connection with. After uni, in my professional art career, I was mentored by Lydia Lunch for a few months and she would read her poems/lyrics over the phone and send me down loads of her books, which was pretty cool.
A large portion of my book collection is Art books, and True Crime/ 80s/90s self-help.
TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?
FKA: This is really my favourite genre, especially by women who have had some kind of horror.
Nancy Spungen’s mother wrote about her and Nancy in And I Don’t Want To Live This Life which is heart breaking and way under appreciated. Prozac Nation held similar identification for me, if wildly indulgent ( a good thing !)
Touching From A Distance By Deborah Curtis is stunning, I very vividly recall at 16 reading that in bus stops in the rain (fitting).
Bette Davis, her autobiography, so fierce and unrepentant.
Mommie Dearest (about Joan Crawford ) Me And My Shadows (about Judy Garland) are both fantastic, and I’ve read a Lot about those dames. When I discovered Judy Garland I read 13 books in a row, in a productive use of a manic episode.
Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement I’ve read a number of times; somewhere between memoir and poetry; 'And she did not believe in God and she broke all of her promises' - some years ago I made a series of paintings in my own blood (I know I know) of different quotes, mainly from books, a few films, and that was one of them.
Dandy In The Underworld by Sebastian Horsley Is a Treat. a story like that could never be fiction.
Was A Million Little Pieces true or not? Literally who cares, James Frey is a Stunning writer. I really really love him.
More recently I’ve read books by chicks like Pamela Anderson, Britney Spears, Rose McGowan, Jennette McCurdy, who all write with such dignity about the most ugly abuses they endured.
I’m very much looking forward to Courtney Love’s long threatened memoir, and Liza Minnelli’s book.
FKA: This is really my favourite genre, especially by women who have had some kind of horror.
Nancy Spungen’s mother wrote about her and Nancy in And I Don’t Want To Live This Life which is heart breaking and way under appreciated. Prozac Nation held similar identification for me, if wildly indulgent ( a good thing !)
Touching From A Distance By Deborah Curtis is stunning, I very vividly recall at 16 reading that in bus stops in the rain (fitting).
Bette Davis, her autobiography, so fierce and unrepentant.
Mommie Dearest (about Joan Crawford ) Me And My Shadows (about Judy Garland) are both fantastic, and I’ve read a Lot about those dames. When I discovered Judy Garland I read 13 books in a row, in a productive use of a manic episode.
Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement I’ve read a number of times; somewhere between memoir and poetry; 'And she did not believe in God and she broke all of her promises' - some years ago I made a series of paintings in my own blood (I know I know) of different quotes, mainly from books, a few films, and that was one of them.
Dandy In The Underworld by Sebastian Horsley Is a Treat. a story like that could never be fiction.
Was A Million Little Pieces true or not? Literally who cares, James Frey is a Stunning writer. I really really love him.
More recently I’ve read books by chicks like Pamela Anderson, Britney Spears, Rose McGowan, Jennette McCurdy, who all write with such dignity about the most ugly abuses they endured.
I’m very much looking forward to Courtney Love’s long threatened memoir, and Liza Minnelli’s book.
TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?
FKA: I’ve never read Harry Potter or any kind of ‘fantasy’ books, I have a very dim view of frivolity of that kind. Game of Thrones, hellish. I loathe when you see people posting their ‘book collection’ and it’s all that kiddy shit. As soon as an orc or a winged beast or mythical creatures are mentioned, I’m out. I admit to being a snob about it.
TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?
FKA: The Bible.
TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?
FKA: I gave a really beautiful pop up version of the Wizard of Oz to my niece Bella. Getting her in to that at age 3 feels like a good Auntie move.
The last thing I lent out was The Last Will And Testament by James Frey, a rare move by me as I don’t really like to lend. But more people should read that one, it’s special.
FKA: Anything by Douglas Copland. Why hasn’t that happened?
TPQ: The just must - select one book you simply have to read before you close the final page on life.
FKA: My own.
🕮 FK Alexander is a Scottish performance artist living in Edinburgh in semi-retirement with her husband, cats, and diagnoses. She has toured extensively, winning multiple prestigious awards whilst making work that pulls from noise music issues of recovery and illness, and is currently reinventing as a suburban hausfrau.
