Alex Massie Alex Massie

Damn those ugly sociopathic nerds and their squalid ejaculations!

Imagine that, until now, the only books you’d been able to read were those that had been carefully selected by your parents and that, not surprisingly, these were books of a type that your parents approved of, written by authors who, for want of a better word, they considered sound. These books weren’t necessarily bad, you understand, but the more you read the more you began to wonder if this was the only type of book there was and these the only perspectives ever committed to paper.

Imagine how you might feel, then, if you were suddenly freed from this prescribed reading diet and handed a pass to the British Library. You might be amazed at the variety on offer and bewildered by the sheer range of subjects waiting to be discovered. Having been brought up on a high-fibre reading diet, you might very well binge yourself silly on sweet and fatty sensations of questionable literary or intellectual merit.

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