I wanted to know what everyone’s favourite book was and why and here’s a few of the best responses…
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Windows Server 2008 Administrators Companion.

Intricate plot, loads of dark, interesting characters, a fast moving thriller with a historical backdrop.

A cross between Dickens’ ‘Bleak House’, Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender is the Night’, Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Idiot’ and George Eliot’s ‘Romola’. The introspective aspects are redolent of Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’ and the pace is straight out of the Jason Bourne Trilogy. Technically not up to much – a better read would probably be ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep’.
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I read a book called Stoner by an American author called John Williams recently. It’s not a widely known book but many scholars consider it one of the greatest American novels of all time. It’s a tale of heroic stoicism through the dissapointments of love, work and life that somehow finds an optmism amongst the bleakness that is the most life-affirming thing I have ever read. When I finished the last page I had tears in my eyes for the first time in about 35 years.
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Team of Rivals – the story of Abraham Lincoln
Now, I admit this sounds VERY dull and it was a bit of a hard slog BUT it was a very interesting and inspiring book.
I am completely ignorant of American history, didn’t know he was assassinated and when it happened cried openly on the train reading it!!
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And the winner was: On the Road by Jack Kerouac, coincidentally chosen by me and my work wife, wait for it, Jack Renwick.

Everyone knows about On the Road, it’s not necessarily our favourite book now, but it certainly changed both our lives.

I left the relative comfort of a Management Trainee job with the Nationwide Building Society and went picking melons on a kibbutz in the Southern Negev Desert. Jack went from Signwriter to the well-respected Duncan of Jordanstown College in Dundee to study design and also had a spell travelling in the States before starting as a Junior at The Partners eventually becoming Creative Director.

Admittedly, it’s a book for your 20s rather than your late 30s or 40s, but it still girds my loins and lights up the spirit of adventure buried deeply inside us all…

Well, normally I take say something safe and popular like 1984 by George Orwell. A fantastic book and Orwell gets across the depressing and oppressive nature of that society so well. But in truth I probably enjoy Leslie Thomas books as much and my particular favourite is The Adventures of Goodnight and Loving. A tale of a respectable, middle class, middle aged man going through his mid life crisis. He packs his bags and runs away from dull suburban life in London and heads out into the world on adventure! Stirring stuff.

Well that’s my vote.

Julian Stubbs

Think mine for now remains a collection of poems that in light of your run seems appropriate…. ‘Distance and Proximity’ by Thomas A Clark. More a serious of meditations about walking than running, but I find it a calming book.

I like this line;
‘in the course of a walk, we usually find out something about our companion, and that this is true even when we travel alone’