After a misspent youth mired in Virginia Andrews’ novels and Dolly magazines, reading Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s, The Leopard, for Year Twelve English opened my world to the sheer beauty of literature. Reading it in suburban Melbourne, I felt every moment of the oppressive Sicilian heat and the languid life of an ageing Sicilian aristocrat. A special memory was re-reading it during a long, hot Italian summer years later. Needless to say, I never returned to Virginia Andrews.