Get Your Read On

Who knows the Gilmore Girls programme? If you don't, Rory Gilmore is a young girl with an addiction to reading. All the books that she refers to in the ENTIRE seasons of Gilmore Girls has been correlated and turned in to a challenge.

THE RORY GILMORE READING CHALLENGE

Below is the list of books and I am going to attempt to read ALL of them. I have no idea how long this will take but a few of them I have cut off my list as I have already read them (in red) and some I already own so that makes it easy to access (in blue).

If you want to join me, take up the challenge and have a read :)

1984 by George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – read – July 2010
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
The Bhagava Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
Candide by Voltaire 
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cujo by Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon 
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown 
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Don Quijote by Cervantes
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen 
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethics by Spinoza
Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (TBR) 
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling 
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling 
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (TBR)
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry (TBR)
Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (Lpr)
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
Howl by Allen Gingsburg
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Iliad by Homer
I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Love Story by Erich Segal
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult 
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby 
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien (TBR)
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining by Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy 
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom 
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 
Unless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee – read
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire – started and not finished
The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Letter from Ex-Porn Editor

I stumbled across this article today and thought it worth you guys reading! It is written by an ex-'lad's mag' editor who, after advocating for 'soft porn' for years, had a child and within the year quit his job and now advocates against porn!

Have a read and a think:

The lads' mag I edited turned a generation on to porn - and now I'm a father I bitterly regret it: A remarkable confession from the longest-serving editor of Loaded

By Martin Daubney

PUBLISHED: 20:51 GMT, 8 June 2012 | UPDATED: 21:43 GMT, 8 June 2012

The day that summed up the sheer ludicrousness of what it meant to be the editor of Loaded, the most notorious ‘lads’ mag’ of all time, is one etched on my memory. 

It was January 2004, and my team had been through our rivals’ magazines doing a ‘nipple count’ — meticulously tallying the number of bare nipples that appeared in one issue.

To our dismay, we’d been trumped by Maxim, who’d weighed in with a hefty 83 (which included one bare-chested man, but we let them have that).

‘Damn, they beat us this month,’ I announced. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

When one wag responded, ‘Why don’t we print 100 pairs of boobs, over six pages, in glorious close-up?’ we all whooped with delight and reported to the pub to celebrate.

So it was that we did a ‘We Love Boobs’ special, which notched up a then-record (although by today’s standards relatively tame) 200 nipples.

As an extra layer of schoolboy comedy, we decided to caption each picture with a jokey term for breasts. From ‘aardvarks’ to ‘Zeppelins’, we had it covered.

Sitting around a boardroom table with six other university-educated men trying to think up 100 comedy words for breasts summed up just how low British men’s magazines had sunk.

It was an intellectual low-water mark, but we’d spent a lot of time and money talking to our readers in research groups, and they’d repeatedly said Loaded’s winning formula should be ‘more birds, less words’. 

The average Loaded reader — largely white, working class, 20-something blokes — had a simple palate, so we gave them what they wanted. 

To me, it was harmless fun, dictated by market forces.

What’s more, I was paid more money than I’d ever earned in my life to do it. I’d always dreamed of editing Loaded and vowed to do whatever it took to stay there. 

I never stopped to consider issues like the crass sexualisation of women. 

Moral naysayers were party poopers, and if they attacked me, I’d attack them back — harder.

It was knowingly mindless, and for a while it was fun — and extremely successful.

When our We Love Boobs issue (which had George Best’s wife, Alex, as the cover star) hit the news stands, our readers bombarded us with thank you letters and sales soared.

A few months later, I was crowned New Editor of the Year by my company and my bosses popped more corks than the Queen’s Jubilee sommelier.

Back then, it never once occurred to me that we were objectifying women or doing any harm. I fiercely denied that Loaded was a ‘gateway’ to harder pornographic magazines.

It was in my own interests to do so. If we were classified as ‘top shelf’, we’d have been put in opaque plastic bags like the pornographic magazines, which would have been commercial suicide. 

But such thoughts came home to roost five years later in 2009, when I finally grew up and became a father. 

It had such an effect on me and changed my views so forcibly that within a year I’d quit a dream job that, for me, had become a moral nightmare.

When I look back now, I see we were severely pushing the envelope of what was considered decent. 

We were normalising soft porn, and in so doing we must have made it more acceptable for young men to dive into the murky waters of harder stuff on the internet. And, for that, I have a haunting sense of regret.

I edited Loaded for eight years — the title’s longest-serving editor — and its titillating mix of topless girls and decidedly non-PC humour attracted the wrath of feminists, MPs and, once, even the Pope (when we photo-shopped a pint of lager into his hands). 

In my time, Loaded won eight industry awards for journalistic excellence, but its massive success —it sold more than 500,000 copies a month at its peak — was always down to pictures of scantily-clad women.

When I became editor in 2002, I realised all our readers really wanted was acres of flesh. 

The trouble was, the more we gave them, the more they demanded — and the racier we had to become in order to satiate their desires. But it was the arrival of mass broadband internet in the mid-Noughties, fuelling a massive and uncontrolled access to hardcore porn, that changed everything. 

Now young boys — for there were, and still are, no effective age restrictions on access to online porn — were spared the expense and embarrassment of even buying a magazine. 

Worse, they could do it without their parents ever knowing.

Loaded’s sales plummeted, so we turned up the volume even further in a desperate bid to stay alive. Smiling, end-of-the-pier-style pictures were replaced with oiled torsos and fake lesbian orgies.

Loaded won eight industry awards for journalistic excellence and sold more than 500,000 copies a month at its peak

When you go down that road, there’s no turning back. The magazine was getting grubbier to the point where even I didn’t want to be seen with it on the Tube.

Pretty soon, we were accused of being pornographic, and there wasn’t a month when a minor Lib Dem MP or feminist lobby group didn’t try to make a name for themselves by demanding we were placed on the top shelf, or banned altogether.

Constantly under attack as a public standard-bearer for moral depravity when the anonymous internet porn barons were nowhere to be seen, I became a skilled defender of the indefensible.

By quoting scores of carefully-selected global government reports and PhD papers that ‘proved’ porn wasn’t harmful, I successfully out-manoeuvred two female members of the Labour Party at the Durham University Debating Society, lambasting the proposition ‘the house argues that pornography is degrading to all women’.

I was then invited to the Oxford Union Debating Society, and argued in favour of topless girls in tabloid newspapers, which my opponents proposed ‘had no place in a decent society’. To a packed house that night, I won by a margin of 3:1.

Then my life changed for ever. In May 2009, I became a father to Sonny. A month later, I turned 40. Almost overnight, my world view changed.

My partner, Diana, had always supported my career, but at gatherings with the new friends we’d made at National Childbirth Trust classes, I’d cringe with embarrassment as other parents teased me by asking ‘would breastfeeding be a turn-on or a turn-off for Loaded readers?’ For the first time, I became secretly ashamed of what I did for a living.

My life had become a charade, switching between diametrically-opposed extremes — nipples by day and nappies by night.

I started seeing the women in my magazine not as sexual objects, but as somebody’s daughter. Some of Loaded’s models had children themselves, and I’d think ‘what’s your kid going to think of you when they’re old enough to understand Mummy used to get her boobs out for a living?’

To think that the girls who posed for our magazine had once had their nappies changed, had once been taught to take their first steps and had once been full of childlike hope . . . it was almost heartbreaking.

I was confronted by the painful thought that maybe Loaded was part of the problem. Was it an ‘enabler’ to young teenage boys who’d consume harder porn later, in the same way dabbling with cannabis might lead to stronger addictions to cocaine or heroin?

Then, in July 2010, it was announced that terminally-wounded Loaded was to be sold to a small publisher with a murky reputation. It was the excuse I needed to leave. I woke up and thought ‘I can’t do this any more’ and quit.

The prospect of having to tell Sonny — and his friends’ parents — that I worked for a company linked to pornography was pivotal. As the father of a young child, working in such a place would be indefensible.

I suddenly wanted to vanish and do something decent with my life. I became a house dad, which fulfilled me more than Loaded ever had.

Now, nearly two years on, I am ashamed at the way I used to defend my magazine. 

Offering excuses for pornography when Loaded was attacked left me feeling cheap and hollow. I became a person I wasn’t, and, looking back, one I didn’t like. Today, I find myself agreeing with some of my fiercest former critics. 

When I edited Loaded, I’d often get asked ‘Would you want your daughter to appear in topless photos?’ and I’d squirm, but feel obliged, but ashamed to say ‘yes’.

Fortune gave me a son, but not on my life would I want any daughter of mine to be a topless model. 

Looking back at my old job, I think it kept me and my team in a morally-retarded state. We became numbed to nudity. We treated our models as crude sales devices.

In truth, the editorial team had little interest in the girl content, and viewed it as a necessary evil. But our readers demanded ever more, and by responding to the rise of pornography on the internet, we pushed the line too far.

I can say with 100 per cent conviction that all the girls who appeared in Loaded wanted to do it. Their role models were self-made millionaires like Jordan, and the rest of us shouldn’t condemn them because their aspirations didn’t tally with our own. But it’s not a huge leap into the world of pornography — a world devoid of aspiration.

Anybody who coerces a woman, or, worse, forces or threatens them to take part in porn should be jailed for many years.

Let’s be clear: you can’t ever ban pornography. Like tax and Tory U-turns, it is painfully unavoidable and lots of consenting adults consume it of their own free will. But we must tighten up the current laws to make it unavailable to children, as it can be so damaging.

It sells boys the debasing view of women as one-dimensional fakes: fake boobs, fake hair, fake nails, fake orgasms and fake hope.

How will these tainted children be able to interact with real women later in life if the first ones they ‘meet’ are on-screen mannequins? By allowing children free access to pornographic images, the next generation of young men are becoming so desensitised, I genuinely fear we’re storing up an emotional time-bomb.

Porn objectifies women, demeans and cheapens them, because it sells a fantasy where men are always in control and get what they want. 

But real life isn’t like that. In porn, women cry, ‘yes, yes, yes!’ but in real life, they often say, ‘no’. Not all men have the intelligence or moral fortitude to understand they cannot take what they want. 

Today, it’s never been easier to get your hands on porn of the most grotesquely graphic nature, yet absolutely nobody admits responsibility. 

And most shocking of all is the total lack of moral accountability displayed by the internet pornographers when it comes to supplying their product to minors.

If, as a magazine editor, I strayed outside of the rules, I’d be taken off sale, fined and lose my job. 

Likewise, if a newsagent sells an over-18s magazine to a minor, he can expect to lose his licence and be closed down.

Yet the internet pornographers laugh in the face of this, and the internet service providers (ISPs) wash their hands of the problem.

It’s like saying supplying a drug is ok so long as you don’t manufacture it. There’s no accountability, and it needs to be cleared up, fast. Isn’t it time the ISPs were held to task?

If found guilty of being the highway that gets porn to children, they should face massive fines and risk of closure.

The Mail has been campaigning for new rules forcing all internet users to opt in if they want access to pornography — and I couldn’t be more emphatic in my support. We also need to make sure that these controls apply to smartphones as well as computers.

Looking back, I think magazines like Loaded did give young men a ‘taste’ for soft porn that led to deeper and darker desires. But we operated in a bygone, almost innocent age compared to today, when internet pornography is being pumped out on an industrial scale — straight into the bedrooms of our children.

The internet and its morally redundant pornographers have changed all that. It is time our policy-makers cried ‘enough!’ and banged them to rights. 

Two years after my exit, I can finally admit that I was part of the problem. By speaking out, in some tiny way I hope to be part of the solution.

Where is God now?

I want to share a story with you about a lady that Luke's mum knows. This lady has said so many things that have encouraged and uplifted me and now, I hope, I will do the same for her.

She had two children. Recently she had to bury both of them. They died separately in unrelated circumstances. A parent should never have to bury a child, let alone all of them.

Just a few weeks ago her department at her job was restructured and she was left without a job. She has said that in losing her job she has lost her second family that she had made at work.

Today she was diagnosed with secondary cancer in both her lungs. This means that the cancer has taken root somewhere else and spread there. She is facing death. She has said that she is dying from a broken heart.

My friend, as you read this please know that my heart and my whole being is weeping with you. Please know that my prayers, in words and in groans, are for you. There are no answers for what you are going through, there is no fairness or justice to what you have experienced. My words that follow seem weak and pathetic against such deep pain and grief, but I hope that maybe you will hear the love in them and they will bring you a small measure of peace.

Where is God in your pain?

He is with you.

He is right beside you holding your hand and crying for you and with you.

He is in the love that others give you.

He is in the community that surrounds you.

He is in the prayers that people pray for you.

He is in the hope that people have in your recovery, whether you desire it or not.

He is in every breath you take in to your broken lungs.

He is in the silence as a friend sits with you.

He is in your memories of your children.

He is in your strength.

And He is in your weakness.

My friend, life has been so unkind. I pray that whatever happens you will know love, you will know hope, you will know peace, and above all,

you will know God.

(I ask that others who read this comment on facebook or on the blog site with prayers and words of love for this lady who has lost so much. I know her story will be touching all of you. I will make sure the comments are passed on)

Masturbation...yay or nay?

First of all let me say welcome to my new readers from India! I hope you find something worth while in my simple words.

Secondly, no I am not obsessed with sex. I believe that it is the most misused and most misunderstood functions of the body, in Christian and non-Christian alike, and so therefore I think it is somewhat necessary to write on it, in all its forms.

Thirdly, please have some sympathy for me in regards to how careful I had to be googling images for this issue!

Masturbation.

Let's admit it, we have all done it and, as far as I know, no one has gone blind from it yet.

But is it ok? I mean, from a Christian stand point, does God approve of one exploring their own body and satisfying themselves sexually?

Now, my non-Christian readers might find this dilemma kind of funny, but it can be a real issue for Christians! I know people who feel so guilty for giving themselves pleasure, and feel that they are sinning every time they do. Or they don't do it all.

In my humble opinion, it isn't a simple as "yes or no" when it comes to whether masturbation is good or bad.

I think it is more about where your mind is at that where your hands are at.

We all now know my views on porn (read my last blog "50 shades of PORN") and so it goes without saying that looking at videos and pleasuring yourself at the same time is demeaning to you and to the people you are watching. If you want to know why read the last blog.

However, I think the same goes if you are consistently fantasizing about one person (or who knows, a group of people?) while you are doing the deed. 

(just a random aside - how does one talk about this without using terms that either sound cheesy, dirty or downright funny????...

...and we're back).

If you are fantasizing about one person then are you really valuing them for who they are as a person, as a human being that is loved and cherished, or are you substituting that person for porn videos? I have heard, and this is 100% real, a guy say that if he fantasizes about his girlfriend while...you know....that then it will help keep him away from porn. WRONG. It is just making his girlfriend a porn star.

On the other hand, if you are separated from your partner for a while and are unable to have sex with them, maybe it is better to be thinking of them than anyone else.

I also know a person that says that when they masturbate they don't picture faces, they only picture the bodies of the people they are thinking about, but they don't know if that is because they are honouring the people or because their brain is too lazy to think up faces. Either way, this is still objectifying people to the point where it is only their bodies that we are interested in, not the people themselves.

So what is the answer? Should all those good boys and girls who try so hard to abstain until marriage go around sexually frustrated for all the years that it takes to find a partner?

Is it so bad to help yourself out a little?

My personal opinion is no, it's not. I think it is healthy for people to explore their bodies and what they can do. It can take away fear of sex and can make people (girls particularly) aware of parts of their body that may not otherwise get much attention, and in some cases can be reviled!

I think it can help with tension release, particularly for those that are trying not to go too far with their gf/bf and want to keep it clean but can't handle the tension that it creates!

But it can also lead very quickly into lust and desire that is unhealthy and demeaning to you and to your love interest.

So be careful. 

God has created your body as a wonderful and glorious creation that is meant to work as it does.

Let's just not misuse and abuse and make something beautiful an instrument of the degraded.

50 Shades of PORN

If you have been living under a rock for the last few months you may not have heard about the phenomena of the book "50 shades of Grey".

It is a fairly recent book that has received worldwide fame and sold more books than the Harry Potter series! 

And it is porn.

Seriously.

The main story-line goes something along the lines of woman meets man, man is attractive, man introduces the woman to his red room, red room is a place where they get to go sadomasochistic on each other and cause pain for sexual arousal, woman falls in love, more pain inducing sex.

And this obviously deep and meaningful plot line is the best selling book of our era.

Have to say the most brilliant pic I saw recently was one that said "anyone who says that 50 shades is excellent literature needs to be beaten with the complete works of Shakespeare". But I digress.

My issue here is not the writing style of the author or even the subject which she chooses, but the fact that it has been so phenomenally successful.

Sex sells.

Porn sells even better.

What is the difference between porn and sex? Is there one?

I think there was a more defined line in the past. Selling sex was about using pretty woman and men and product placement to insinuate a connection between the two.

Now it is much harder to define as selling sex often means just that. Barely clothed woman and men, often in compromising positions are used to sell, often barely mentioned, products. People don't want to see what they could be any more, they want to see what makes them aroused.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is porn.

Interestingly enough there are dictionaries that don't even mention sex when defining porn. For example:

television shows, articles, photographs, etc., thought to create or satisfy an excessive desire for something,especially something luxurious: the irresistible appeal of foodporn; an addiction to real-estate porn.

 "the excessive desire for something".

Porn, the sexual gratification kind, not the real estate kind, has a grip on this generation like nothing else. It is easier to ask a group of people 'who hasn't seen porn' that it is to ask who has as the numbers will be easier to count.

It is instantaneous gratification that is accessible anywhere if you have the right kind of phone with web capabilities.

It forgoes the issues of having to build a relationship (see my last post "Give me love!") and skips straight to the sex with no need to call them the next day, or to even know their name!

And it is so unbelievably destructive that I would rank it near the top of why there are so many failed relationships.

If you watch porn a lot it desensitizes you to the need for love in sex. It forms your ideas about what a male or female body should look like (and trust me NO natural body looks like that) and it puts in your head desires for sex that you may never find anyone actually willing to do, submitting you to the possibility of only finding sexual gratification through porn.

And it demeans and objectifies people in a way that makes them something rather than someone.

Every time you watch porn you are making those people less than human in your eyes.

You don't care about them, you don't care if they are drug induced, sex slaves that have been stolen from their homes and trafficked into the business.

You don't care that they may have been sexually abused as a child and found that this was the only job they felt they were good at.

You don't care that they carry STD's and are passing those to every sexual partner they have.

You don't care because they are less than human to you.

And they don't care if your marriage or relationship breaks up because of them. They don't care that you views on your partner may be warped because of them. They don't care

because you are less than human to them.

You are the one that gives this industry a reason to keep going.

You are the one that keeps them in business.

You are acting less than human by even watching porn.

I know a young man who said once that watching porn was the ultimate hypocrisy. He watched woman with no thought of who they were or respect for them and yet he believes in treating his female friends with dignity and respect.

It's because in his eyes, at that moment, those women were less than human to him.

As a woman who has been coerced into having pornographic pictures taken of her, the possibility that they are on the web and that some of the men in my life that I care about could maybe one day click on a link and see them fills me with a horror that I cannot begin to describe. It makes me wonder if the women in porn feel that sense of shame and disgust as well.

There are far more that just 50 shades of porn and it is becoming more and more apparent on everyday television and movies. 

Next time you think to watch porn, ask yourself

"What if this site shows me young pics/movies of my mother?"

Let's start to humanize people again and give them the respect and dignity that they deserve.

Give me love!

I was listening to Ed Sheeran on my iPod this morning while on the bus (totally awesome singer/song writer, check him out if you have the time!) when his song "Give me love" came on. It's a beautiful song but there is this one bit that gets to me everytime; Ed starts yelling "Give me love" in a way that is so heart rending, so emotional that you can almost feel the desperation in his desire to be loved.

I think this cry of his, this calling out for someone to love us, is at the core of every being. We all want to be loved in a way that is deep and meaningful, in a way that the person sees us as we really are, not all the pretentious crap that we put out for the world to see.

You know what I mean, we want someone who sees past the clothes, makeup, swagger, heels, language and money (or lack thereof) and sees the insecure, crazy, silly, stupid, funny, sensitive person that we try so desperately to protect all the time.

And this is why when relationships end it hurts so damn much.

If you think about it the whole idea of a meaningless relationship (call it friends with benefits, one night stand, fling, whatever) is an oxymoron.

Relationship implies a knowing of each other that allows for honesty and openness.

Relationship means understanding each others fears, or at least committing to the process of discovering them.

Doesn't sound very meaningless to me.

And, let's face it, no one comes out of a relationship of any kind unscarred.

Take a one night stand for example. I know plenty of girls and guys who will testify that you can have sex with someone and it mean nothing. It's just some harmless fun to get your jollies and then you are gone.

So explain to me why when the dude doesn't call the next day he is call a series of words, most that have to be spelt *****?

Tell me why you will avoid that person at any cost if you see them at the bar the next weekend?

Why is it called the 'walk of shame' if there is nothing wrong to be ashamed about?

If we start at this, the most fleeting of relationships, and go to a long term marriage ending, the most enduring of relationships, we will see that no relationship ending leaves people unhurt.

Because we all want love, and when that love ends or is not fulfilled or disenchants us, it hurts like a b***h.

The sad thing is that in this life all love will end. Be it through breakup or death, at some point the person that we love, that we scream "Give me love" to in our hearts, won't be with us any longer.

And that thought scares the bejeezus out of most people. So we substitute real relationships with 'meaningless' ones because it means that when it does end it can be on our terms. We can pretend that it didn't hurt, we can say 'I dumped them' and lie to ourselves about the damage in our own person.

Whoever said "it is better to have loved and lost than to never love at all" obviously had never been through a serious breakup. Most people I know avoid deep love because the possibility of losing it makes them scared and vunerable.

We are weak as humans.

We will hurt each other and break each other, unintentionally and sometimes for fun.

We want the power and we will fight each other for it.

And yet the cry still echoes;

"Give me love!"

There is only one person who can fill this deeply ingrained desire for love.

The very fact that this cry is in us from the time we are young points us towards a God who loves so unconditionally, so completely, that we will never be abandoned or hurt by them.

The only place to find this love is in the cross that Jesus sacrificed himself on, in the resurrection that brought him back to life, and in the forgiveness that he extends to all.

The cry doesn't need to go unanswered.

You ARE loved!