I'll read just about anything for pleasure – bestsellers, zero-sellers, classics, rubbish. I don't really care what it is, or what other people think of it, as long as I like it, I'll read it. My favourite books though - the ones I come back to again and again – are crime stories and Westerns.

I grew up reading the classics of crime fiction – James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett – and although I still love these old stories, I think the crime fiction of today is as good, if not better, than the traditional hard-boiled detective story. Modern American writers such as Lawrence Block and James Lee Burke have taken crime writing to a level that transcends the genre. It's not just crime fiction anymore – it's simply good writing. Tight stories, powerful feelings, primitive emotions. And, from a writer's perspective, I find there's so much to learn from crime fiction. The best stories have all the elements that make a book special: character development, atmosphere, pace, rhythm, tone. It's all there, wrapped up nicely in a riveting good read.

One of the best crime stories I've read recently is Silent Joe by T. Jefferson Parker. I've only just come across this writer, and since reading Silent Joe I've devoured everything else he's written. He's an American author (they are the best when it comes to crime), and his books are very much character-driven. He makes this work by somehow creating characters that are both complex and simple – a combination I've always found irresistible. To me, Silent Joe is a modern-day classic.

Westerns, I believe, are a hugely underrated genre. I've read them all my life, and I'll carry on reading them – no matter how sad anyone thinks that is! I've always thought of Westerns as the blues music of literature: simple, formulaic and prone to stereotype, yet still capable of producing unforgettable and almost mythical stories. Unfortunately, good Westerns are becoming increasingly rare these days, but if you look hard enough you can still find them. One of the best I've read recently is St Agnes' Stand, first published in 1994, by Thomas Eidson. Eidson has a starkly beautiful style, and St Agnes' Stand is a wonderfully written fable of faith and humanity.

Although I write teenage fiction, I don't actually read too much of it myself, but I'll always make an exception when it comes to anything by Jack Gantos. He is, undoubtedly, the very best. As good as Jack Kerouac, only a better story-teller. His latest books, Hole in My Life and Desire Lines, are both superb, but for me there's nothing to beat the Joey Pigza books. I've just finished the third in the series, What Would Joey Do? And I can honestly say it's one of the very few books that has made me laugh out loud and feel like crying at the same time.

I go through phases of reading lots of fiction, and then lots of non-fiction. During my non-fiction phases, I'll just start reading about a subject that takes my fancy, and if I like it I'll carry on reading more and more. My fancies at the moment are the English Civil War (The English Civil War by Tristram Hunt) and boxing/bareknuckle fighting (The Dark Trade by Donald McRae; King of the Gypsies by Bartley Gorman; On the Cobbles by Jimmy Stockins).

A favourite fancy of mine is theoretical physics, which I've been reading about on and off for the last 10 years or so. Subjects like quantum theory and relativity can take a bit of getting used to, but once you reach the stage where you're beginning to understand the basics, you suddenly realise how amazingly stunning (and surprisingly relevant) it all is. At the moment, I'm browsing through a whopper of a book by Roger Penrose called The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, and I've also just started Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life by John Gribbin.

Finally, I get through piles of books that I think might be useful for stories I'm either writing or planning to write. Some of the piles at the moment include Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey by Isabel Fonseca; The Looked After Kid by Paolo Hewitt; A Book of Dartmoor by S. Baring-Gould; God by Alexander Waugh; and How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland.

Kevin Brooks Books on Encompassculture.com