Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery

L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables played an integral role in my childhood. For a long time, I lived vicariously through the life of Anne Shirley of Green Gables, later of Queens College and that little school that I forget the name of. She did all the things that I, a child of the mid 90s was not allowed to do – she played by the stream unsupervised, she roamed the town unsupervised, she had tea parties unsupervised, she was unsupervised. In most part.

And The Ass Saw The Angel – Nick Cave

At the risk of making a wide sweeping generalisations, novels relating to flagrant worshippers of errant gods are prone to heroing the three D’s – the disabled, disadvantaged and downtrodden. Not so in Nick Cave’s And The Ass Saw The Angel. Everyone is fair game.

Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure – John Cleland

After a quick introduction of the title character, Fanny Hill (heh), as a good little girl with few temptations in life, the book escalates into lesbian sex. Quite unexpected from a book lustily thrown into the nether regions of literature ‘Classics’.

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

So I just finished reading Lolita. I was slightly disturbed – not only by the story line, but by the fact that I pretty much devoured the novel.

Why, I asked myself, was I so interested in paedophilia (if it can be considered that) and why was I siding with the paedophile?

The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band – Tommy Lee , Vince Neil , Mick Mars , Nikki Sixx , Neil Strauss

As you may or may not have worked out, most things I read have some element of stupidity in it. I enjoy stupidity. Like when boys punch walls when they are angry and break their hand, or when 20-pluses insists on drinking like 16-year-old with parents on holiday, the entertainment factor is high. Extremely high.

Which is why I so enjoyed reading The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band; this bio is bascially an amalgamation of the two.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

Your relationship with your favourite book is not unlike what you have with your most favourite person in the world – they drive you nuts, they have ridiculous quirks, they can quite possibly annoy the bloody crap out of you, but you still love the heck out of them, you find them hilarious and you want to spend all your time with them.

That’s me and Tess. So many times have I cursed her idiodicy for listening to her equally idiotic mother, her foolishness for getting back on that bloody cab with that unfortunately (for Tess) named Alec d’Urberville, for that stupid note under the rug. Oh the pain! The PAIN!