Over the past few decades, whenever anyone has asked me what my favourite book is, my answer has been Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Part of my reasoning is that it’s a great novel. The other part is that I have a very limited pool of books that I’ve read to draw from. Take away the books I had to read for academic purposes (including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and I could count every novel I’ve read for leisure on one hand. The last book I read for fun was Angels and Demons almost a decade ago. This shortcoming of mine has been something I’ve been self-conscious about for a long time.

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