THE GREAT BOOKS ACCORDING TO ME: Starcrossed, by AA Gill.  I do understand that it won that year’s Bad Sex Writing Award, and no doubt deserved.  Imagine the movie Notting Hill – made a good deal more gritty, nasty, cruel, really dirty, and lots, lots funnier, while still preserving Antigone and a weird bittersweet, genuine romance, at the center.  For anyone who has actually read the novel, I know that you’re cringing.  Great book?  Well. A senior editor of the Times Literary Supplement, also a dear friend,  once told me: “Ken, you have such almost exquisite taste.”  “Oh?” I inquired, all coyness and demurity.  “Yes,” he said, “marred only by your fondness for AA Gill.”  And a barely perceptible pause.  “And Mark Steyn.  But you knew that.”