Book lover: Gordon McLauchlan

Gordon McLauchlan is a journalist and writer who has recently published The Passionless People Revisited (David Bateman, $29.99).

The book I love most is ... two linger in my heart and mind. I recall travelling from Christchurch to Dunedin in 1949 and reading P. G. Wodehouse's Thank You, Jeeves. I laughed all the way. I never travel without superb pocket anthology A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry, edited by Oscar Williams.

The book I'm reading right now is ... Ben Jonson: A Life by Ian Donaldson. This feeds my enthusiasm for the Elizabethan period. I'm also reading Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, whose work I like because he writes about what's happening in the world.

The book I'd like to read next is ...The Barracks by John McGahern, an underrated Irish novelist.

My favourite bookshop is ... Unity Books, High St, Auckland, with whom I have much the same relationship as Prince Charles would have with his tailor.

The book that changed me is ... Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. I left Wellington College after several years of perfunctory Shakespeare, picked up a copy several years later out of curiosity and that triggered a lifelong pleasure. Everyone should start with Julius Caesar.

The book I wish I'd never read is ... Can't think of one. If I don't like them I don't keep reading them.