Book lover: Ant Sang

Ant Sang. Photo / Supplied

Ant Sang is an award-winning cartoonist whose most recent graphic novel is Shaolin Burning (HarperCollins).

The book I love most is ... Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. An intense, exhilarating meditation on consumerism and what it means to truly be alive.

The book I'm reading right now is ... Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Fascinating firsthand accounts of the punk scene in America, from the late 60s to early 90s.

The book I want to read next is ... The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

My favourite bookshop is ... Take me to a comic shop and I'm a very happy man. Heroes For Sale (K Rd) and Gotham Comics (Onehunga) have a great selection of graphic novels, and the guys behind the counter are tops.

The book that changed me is ... Ed The Happy Clown, by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. I read this graphic novel in the early 90s and it profoundly altered the way I perceived the comic book.

I realised comics could tackle any topic or theme.

Ed The Happy Clown is subversive, crude, raw, and utterly entertaining. It single-handedly gave me the notion that I too could make comics, and inspired me to start producing my first mini-comics in the mid 90s.

The book I wish I'd never read is ... If I don't like a book I end up putting it down, so I can't think of a single book I've regretted reading.