There are certain books that have burrowed deep into my brain and stayed there, quietly (or loudly) influencing the way I draw, think, and create. It might be a bit of a cliché for underground artists to cite Catcher in the Rye as a major inspiration, but clichés exist for a reason. That book just makes sense. There’s something about its voice, its disillusionment, its honesty, it felt like someone finally put the noise in my head into words.

All the books listed below hit me in a similar way.

A Clockwork Orange, with its invented slang and brutal beauty, is unlike anything else I’ve ever read. The rhythm of the language is so immersive you start thinking in Nadsat whether you want to or not. Then there’s the dreamlike absurdity of Kurt Vonnegut books like Slaughterhouse-Five that warp time, space, and emotion in ways that seem chaotic at first but leave something profound rattling inside you.

Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn is pure grime, raw, grotesque, unapologetic filth. It’s wild to think that something that extreme came out in the 1960s. Compared to that, a lot of modern literature feels like it’s tiptoeing around the truth.

And then there’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The only non-fiction book here, but it reads like an hallucination. It ties together the threads of On The Road and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, bridging the Beat Generation and the psychedelic counterculture with wild energy. It makes reality feel bendable.

These books don’t just tell stories, they change the shape of your brain.

Here's a list of the books that have inspired me most.

• Catcher in The Rye - JD Salinger
• Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
• Generation X - Douglas Coupland
• On The Road - Jack Kerouac
• A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
• Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
• Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
• Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
• Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson