Welcome to Blokes vs Books, a campaign that promotes Kiwi men as readers.

Today, meet Ben Cumming, CEO of Hell Pizza.

What Ben's full interview here on our YouTube.

Ben grew up on the classics as a kid. He reckons he’s read every Roald Dahl book there is and if he had to choose he would definitely go ‘old school’ in his choice of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory if he were to watch the movie.

A modern day Roald Dahl is David Walliams: his stories are laugh out loud funny with excellent character development and plenty of dysfunctional families but always told through a warm and loving lense.

Start reading Mr Stink out loud with your 5 year old tonight and you won’t regret it. Children love these stories so much they’ll re-read them time and again. And the best thing is David writes one per year so there are heaps of them!

As a grown up, Ben loves action thrillers, and his favourite ‘desert island book’ would be I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. Ben loves this action thriller for its very complex plot about spies and terrorists, it’s very well written and the suspense kept him on his seat till the very last page.

We also spied on Ben’s shelf Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz, The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris and books by British comedian Ben Elton.

If you are looking for more action thrillers, suspense and crime novels, we think you would also like Paul Cleave’s books. And if you liked The Tattooist of Auschwitz, there is a follow up called Cilka’s Journey.

Kia ora, Ben!