“St. Agnes’ Stand,” Thomas Eidson

I love westerns and always wanted to make this into a movie. I still do! It’s the one that got away. A tight, taut, tense standoff, and almost impossible to put down once you start reading. It deals with differing beliefs in nature, faith, spirituality.

Image Asif Kapadia. Credit... Ian Gavan/Getty Images

“Midnight’s Children,” Salman Rushdie

Huge magical realist epic about Indian independence through the eyes of a child born on the stroke of midnight. Funny, dense, flowery, the story goes on huge tangents, but I love this crazy novel, which somehow manages to depict and sum up the essence of the incredible vast country of India. A real education for me as someone who grew up in London, who had never been to India while growing up. This book helped me better understand what my parents had been through, where they came from before they chose to travel across the world to settle in the U.K., where I was born.

“Rock Springs,” Richard Ford

Simple, dark, powerful short stories about families, breakups and their kids caught in between. Love the restraint. It’s all brewing under the surface, less is more.

“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” Patrick Suskind

An incredible, sensual, magical, dark, twisted story. There was a point when everyone was reading this book in London and I delayed. For some reason, I didn’t like the cover (embarrassing, but true), but finally the word of mouth was just too strong and I dived in, took one sniff and was blown away. It’s one of the finest books I’ve ever read.

“Marcovaldo,” Italo Calvino

A dryly humorous collection of tales about a poor Italian family and simple things in life. The book was recommended to me by an inspirational tutor at university and this collection, more than any, motivated me to try to write short screenplays.