Rob is one of my favourite writers! He can make any topic interesting. I know this because he once did a story on Justin Bieber and I finished it. I first met him at a house party when he was interning at The Brag and he now writes for a magazine and makes Beef Knuckles with his friends. He enjoys talking about wine blogs, singing karaoke and staying up really late. I once told him I would be willing to pay thousands of dollars to read his work but he wrote down his three favourite books for me for free because we’re friends.
"So, turns out it’s kinda difficult to pick your three favourite ever books when you can hardly remember what you’ve read in your life. Plus, lately I’ve just been reading a lot of Armond White movie reviews and cookbooks (Giorgio Locatelli’s Made In Italy offered some enlightening tips on olive oil) and, as good as they are, they hardly count as “all-time” literature (well, not yet anyway)."
"Glancing over my bookshelf for inspiration, I quickly spotted a few books I’ve found especially meaningful over the past few years – Alfred Doblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge and Cakes and Ale, Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar, The Abortion and So The Wind Won’t Blow It All Away, all of Nick Tosches’ “biographies”, Jim Thompson’s Savage Night, John Porcellino’s Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man – but even those get on my nerves sometimes (ie: Doblin and Brautigan are often too wilfully obscure, Tosches and Thompson are too tough, Maugham hates girls, Porcellino’s a Zen sadsack, etc, etc...). So anyway, seems I haven’t properly loved a book since I was about 6-years old. Who knows why? I guess the older you get, the quicker shit sucks. So here are three books that the years have yet to taint in my eyes (and hopefully they never will)..."
Little Toot, by Hardie Gramatky
"This book is an all-time favourite because it has pretty pictures of boats and only like 40 words in it. I guess as a child I felt a close affinity with Little Toot, the slacker boat who despised work and preferred to waste his days cutting figure-8s in the calm New York harbour (worryingly, I still do). It also introduced me to some important lifelong lessons, like if at first you don’t succeed, try something easier."
Winnie-The-Pooh, by A.A. Milne
"The Disney cartoons were alright but they have nothing on the literary origins of Christopher Robin and his lovable crew of toys/friends. As the intelligent voice of reason, Christopher Robin was always my favourite character in the Hundred Acre Wood, but Pooh’s pretty funny because he’s such a fuckin’ idiot. Ironically/tragically, Christopher Robin was based on A.A. Milne’s real-life son who, after years of schoolyard taunts, grew to resent what he saw as his father’s exploitation of his childhood. The book ends with this perfect illustration by E.H. Shepard."
The Shooting Star, by Herge
"As a kid, my parents used to take my sister and I on weekly excursions to city bookshops where they’d let us each pick something to take home and read. With this sweet arrangement, I ended up owning a shitload of books about Garfield and Tintin. I don’t remember much about Garfield except that I hated Nermal’s guts, but I still have my Tintin collection and I re-read them every so often. Even though at some point over the years my parents scribbled Lotto numbers all over the cover, The Shooting Star is my favourite because it starts with a freakish end of the world scenario, quickly moves into ocean/boat territory, and features one of the longest Captain Haddock fake-swear rants (ie: “Thundering typhoons! Patagonian pirates! Lily-livered landlubbers!”, etc) in Tintin history. Captain Haddock is one of the great creations of fiction, and I’m fairly certain that my lifelong love of him has fuelled my current appetite for liquor."
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