Books

I’ve always been a fan of Tom Sharpe, who wrote Porterhouse Blue. This British academic satire tells the story of Zipser, a graduate student at stubbornly medieval Porterhouse College. Zipser is writing his dissertation on the political significance of pumpernickel in sixteenth-century Westphalia, and when he’s not doing that he’s trying to get laid. Somehow he winds up with cartons of condoms in his room; fearing he might be accused of stealing them, he tries to get rid of the evidence by inflating them with gas from the grate and sending them up the chimney. The flue, however, gets clogged with flammable condoms; and when a guest lights the grate, the ancient tower explodes, taking poor Zipser with it...  >> Read more >>