Recently I got a job, a nine-to-five dealio with the whole shebang: office chairs and bosses and deadlines and a pay slip. I said ‘this is it, I am now actually an adult, I will never go to a music festival again’. The next day I threw out my Converse All-Stars.

The job in question is at Allen & Unwin publishing house, meaning that some of my responsibilities include reading a whole bunch of our titles. This is no chore—reading is great, I would claim ninety per cent of my personality is book related, the other ten per cent probably a picture of a dog running majestically towards a sexy glass of wine. But between the books I have to read for work, and my ‘Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge’, I suddenly found myself without the time to read strictly for leisure. Furthermore, I began missing reading deadlines.