My earliest reading memory
I’m not sure what we were reading – The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams or the poems in Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein – but I was undoubtedly with my sister, two years older, who set the example for me to be a reader. I picture us in the back of our family car or laying across our twin beds in the room we shared.
My favourite book growing up
I loved mysteries and fantasy worlds. I read so many of the Nancy Drew books, and The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. And I loved the Narnia stories and The Wind in the Willows. I loved books about things that can’t exist. I suppose it’s all escapism – crimes solved by children, talking animals, time travel, people two inches tall. I always loved to slip into another, better world.
The book that changed me as a teenager
I read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath at 15. It was my first real understanding of what fiction can do, how far a story can go, how words can be put to the intricacies of living. It stretched my empathy, seeing what the Joad family endured, learning through story what had happened in that place and time in American history.
The writer who changed my mind
Joan Didion. Every time I read her work, I am changed in some way. Her writing makes me think of the world, people, politics, the land, water, time, motherhood, marriage differently.
The book that made me want to be a writer
I was in college and majoring in English and creative writing. I read Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri and I discovered what can be done with language and words to make something beautiful and compelling. I thought: I have to do this, I can do this, I will do this.
The author I came back to
I tried Jane Austen too young. I didn’t understand the language or the story. I felt lost. When I came back to Pride and Prejudice in my late 20s, I enjoyed it tremendously.
The books I reread
Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Steinbeck’s East of Eden are the books I read again and again, and in fact I’m due for a pass of East of Eden right about now.
The book I could never read again
I devoured the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson, but was terrified throughout. I have considered going back, but I was so disturbed by it I don’t think I will.
The book I discovered later in life
I didn’t read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott until just before the 2019 film, and I wept through the scenes of Jo trying to make it as an author. It hit so close, and of course I had not made it. I was still spreading the pages across the floor in hope and despair. I had my own children by then, and identified so much with the girls’ mother – something that would not have happened if I’d read it when I was young.
The book I am currently reading
While I Was Gone by Sue Miller. This is a reread for me. I discovered Miller 15 years ago, just walking through a used book store and looking at spines. I love her stories, especially some of those older ones. I love the eerie undercurrent of the book and the construction of the whole thing – from the story arc down to the sentences.
My comfort read
Can I pick a few? The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
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