"Like a lot of my most recent reads, I found a copy of this in my local Underground station book swap/donation area. It's a very moving and insightful, disturbing and sometimes humorous account of Ben coming to terms with a rare illness, a massive change to his life, and the seemingly unending search for clarity about his condition, and an improvement in his health. It is gripping from the first page, and barely touches on his music career, focusing much more on family and his experiences with the NHS. I’ve not read anything else quite like it."

"This is about an East German singer who has a botched sex-change operation and is left with an “angry inch” of flesh between her legs. Moving to the US, she gets involved with another singer, who steals her songs and becomes famous, while Hedwig, played by the director John Cameron Mitchell, ends up playing in a chain of seafood restaurants called Bilgewater’s. It’s a beautiful film that touches on Greek mythology and the origins of love, as well as gender identity. It’s a lot of fun too – a comedy with a serious message. And the songs are great."

"The next one would be Life Is Beautiful. I could barely speak after seeing that film. I was so moved by it. And again, actually, come to think of it, it’s a very dramatic and comedic film all at once. It’s a true mash-up. The drama of it, though, is the driver, and it’s done so skillfully, and it is so heartbreaking. And the relationship between father and son is so moving and the lengths to which the father will go to try and protect his son under the absolute worst of circumstances is so valiant and catastrophic, really."

"This is a tiny book with a huge heart, about a man—Captain Kidd—who in 1870 is hired to transport a young girl across Texas and return her to her relatives, after she is released by the Kiowa, who had abducted her several years earlier during a raid on a white settlement. The girl at this point has little grasp of English, let alone the ways of the white world, and this makes for a narrative that is in turns funny, moving, and tense, as the two set off on a three-week journey fraught with deepening peril."