Hello there! Welcome to another edition of #DesertIslandBooks. Today I have the very mysterious twitterer over at @WaterstonesUxbr being shipped away to the island! I suggest you go and follow them, even if you don’t live in Uxbridge! They’re lovely! And recommend good books, so go go go!

Anyway, #DesertIslandBooks. Rules:

Why am I on this island?
Have I been exiled? What did I do, Steph? WHAT DID I DO?!

Anyway.
I almost got this confused with Richard Herring’s Desert Island Dicks, where you have to
choose six Richards to take to a desert island… 
Ok. Here we go…

Six Books:
All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman.
Over the course of a short plane journey, a man has to lay himself bare and somehow
save his relationship… This may well be my favourite book of all time, and it’s just over 100 pages long!

A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers
This is the very best of modern sci-fi and it does what all great science fiction should do in that it is all about character. The sci-fi element is of little importance, as is the crew’s
mission. The characters are so well done, so bloody well done, that you’ll want to spend more time with each of them. It made me laugh, cry and just feel good. Essential.

The Bees, by Laline Paull. 
Oh my god, this book! It’s A Handmaid’s Tale by way of A Bug’s Life, and it’s one of the most gripping books I’ve ever read. Warning: if you don’t like spiders, don’t read this!

I know this will seem a bit of an odd choice for a desert island, but I’m going to take
Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi.
This book, the story of Charles Manson and his infamous “Family”, has so much going on it is easy to forget that it all actually happened. A broken yet charismatic man, teenagers with nothing to lose, and the summer of love coming to an horrific end.

Considering you let someone else have a comic book series, I’m having one too!
THEM’S THE RULES! (I’m not sure… but since it’s you!)
I was going to go for the same title, actually (Saga) but instead I’m going to go for
Preacher, by Garth Ennis.
It’s full of blood and blasphemy and is intense as hell yet each and every character is
worth spending time exploring… and it has a character called Arseface. Who doesn’t want to read that?

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman.
It’s got the lot; kidnap, fighting, politics, comedy, thrills, spills, a giant, monsters, sword
fights and true love.

I’ll swap my unlimited supply of tea/coffee for an unlimited supply of Cherry Coke, thanks. I don’t really want tea unless it comes with biscuits to dunk, and coffee is clearly the work of Satan and his little horned helpers.

Album:
Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson.
This Bowie-tinged album still sounds as fresh and unique as it did the first time I heard it. It’s almost timeless; this is how I imagine the future to sound.

Song to keep:
The Speed of Pain
“There’s a knife in my back for every day that I’ve known you.”
Beautifully bleak.I imagine there will be plenty of sun, sand and blue skies so this will remind me that life isn’t all beaches and mermaids (will there be mermaids?). (I mean I don’t want to spoil the surprise!)

Finally, the book I’ll keep when the island police come along (who ARE these people?
Do they have a jet-ski with a siren on? Police sharks instead of sniffer dogs?!) will be The
Princess Bride. I could quite happily read that and only that for the rest of my life.

Now. When should I start packing?
*looks for his bermuda shorts which he last saw sometime in 1996*

HA! What a funny post. I most certainly am game for Cherry Coke and a few books I haven’t read! Thank you so much, wise one of Waterstones Uxbridge for agreeing to be shipped away to an island with (or without) mermaids! 

S x