(adapted from The Guardian)

The book I am currently reading

I normally have a few books on the go. At the moment one of them is How Not to Be a Boy by Robert Webb. I wish I could write about my family with such wit and grace. It would balance out the bitterness.

The book that changed my life

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. When I was a teenager, I spent a summer working at the local library. I came across this book and spent the summer reading it. I had been raised a Christian and I was beginning to smell more than a whiff of misogyny about it, especially when it came to women’s sexuality. I was forming my own ideas about sex, which were very far removed from that of my sexually conservative parents. This book introduced me to the concept of the feminine divine and started me on the journey to the slutty atheism I enjoy today.

The book I wish I’d written

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. At times I identified so closely with Bastian and the world that Ende created I felt as if I had written it.

The book that influenced my writing

Many collections of fairy tales, folk tales, legends, and myths.

The book that is most overrated

Just as something you like isn’t necessarily good, something you dislike isn’t necessarily bad. So I don’t know if it’s overrated or not, but I really hated Spartacus by Howard Fast. I got sick of its gruesome, pointless violence very quickly. I ended up pitching it into the latrine in the back of my hut in Senegal.

The book that changed my mind

Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving by Betty Dodson. Being raised Christian, I grew up with the vague idea that Masturbation is Wrong. There was a lot of hysteria, as it were, surrounding sex education, as if somehow knowing how your body worked and learning about sex and relationships would turn you into a syphilitic crack whore within a matter of weeks. Thank fuck I got over that! This is one of the most sex-positive books in existence. I don’t think I had ever looked at my vulva in a mirror before I read this, which makes me a bit sad when I think about it. It also has very beautiful pencil drawings in it.

The last book that made me cry

Love is Love, a comics anthology published after the shootings at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. It’s a slim book, but I still haven’t finished it because it always makes me cry… Maybe it’s useful to have something like that on hand for those times when the tears won’t come.

The last book that made me laugh

How Not to Be a Boy. I don’t think I would have found it as funny as I do now if I hadn’t spent so many years in England.

The book I’m most ashamed not to have read

Well, I’m not dead yet. But over my life I’ve mostly read stuff by Western white men. I need to address that imbalance.

The books I give as gifts

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry, and various cookbooks, depending upon their taste. And if they cook.