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Irfan Yusuf, writer and lawyer
"I've always had a childhood fascination with cricket, so I've been reading Ian Botham's Head On - Ian Botham: The Autobiography. It's interesting because Botham was playing around the time I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, so it's like taking a walk down memory lane.
"When I was young I was really obsessed with The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. I could almost memorise it [IY: Actually, I had memorised huge chunks of it]. I loved the idea about this young boy who was so free and lived in a place where he was meeting new people all the time. His interaction with his mum was also very similar to mine so I related to him.
"I enjoy reading political books, and recently finished P.J. O'Rourke's Give War A Chance. He's an irreverent writer. Few American writers can poke fun at the conservatives like he does [IY: What I actually said was that few conservative American writers poke fun at people on their own side]. This book tackles everything from communism to Saddam Hussein as he writes from his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. His writing is not terribly sophisticated [IY: actually what I said was that his writing wasn't exactly high-brow] but it makes politics fun and I enjoy making that reading light sometimes.
"I'm a regular reader of Mungo MacCallum, who's a writer for Crikey. He's on the opposite side of the political spectrum and does the same thing as O'Rourke but uses fewer f-words.
"I've found over the last few years I've been reading a lot more online blogs and news websites than I do books. It's a pity, though, and it's something I hope to change. With everything going online and becoming electronic these days, it would concern me if books stopped sticking around. There is a real charm to actually holding a book. Writing a book takes discipline. If people don't value that and writing is only measured by the amount of hits, well then everything would just turn into which celeb slept with who."
Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist by Irfan Yusuf is published by Allen & Unwin, $24.99. He will be a guest at the Sydney Writers' Festival.
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