The reader: Amir Lakani

I have no recollection of meeting Amir at my 30th birthday party but I'm told that's where it happened. He's been telling me to read The Corrections  for a really long time and I should probably pay more attention to his, clearly very good, recommendations. Amir works at Sydney Uni and enjoys playing basketball and crushing on Fiest. These are his three favourite books...

Idoru by William Gibson

When I was 21 I was doing the backpack thing around Europe. It was a blur of cities in a year long sprint fueled by alcohol. When I finally slowed down in London I was very pleased to get my paws on a few books that I brought with me in a suitcase left with the parents of a friend. My mind at that point was as uniformly unimaginative as the bleak London skies so when I saw a future world in Idoru my imagination seemed to light up like a beautiful translucent Idoru (a synthetic Japanese idol). Idoru is a 'cyber punk' novel that parallel plots it's way to Tokyo through ideas about celebrity, economies of information technology, and virtual/online worlds. The characters are unusual and vibrant: one character is named after a Chia Pet and another is inspired by Chopper Read- but much like the film Gattaca, it's the visual style of Idoru that has stayed with me all these years.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I really love this book. I find it very re-readable and quite funny. The observations and characterisations are very sharp, very knowing, and well drawn. Whether it's the parents or the children, Franzen writes about both generations and genders with so much insight and humanity.

Lolita by Vladmir Nabakov

Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps
down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

I read this novel in a dull semester at Uni when nothing was going right and I found life in general very difficult. When I was reading Lolita I remember thinking that there will always be beautiful books to lose myself in no matter how fucked things are. Other than achieving the seemingly impossible by presenting a multi-dimensional, pedophillic narrator who isn't completely detestable, Nabokov's use of language is something to marvel at and a thing of beauty. And old Humbert Humbert.....his musings about his home life with Lo and her ma still cracks me up!