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Bookworms always enjoy hearing about what their fellow readers have on their night stand. However, for this author, nothing is found on their night stand as they prefer to keep their current reads on their kitchen table. Currently, the author is reading Edith Wharton’s “A Son at the Front,” an edition of “The Forsyte Saga” and some biographies of Émile Zola.
When asked about the last great book they read, the author mentioned C.V. Wedgwood’s “The Thirty Years War.” They described it as sprawling, masterly and having the feel of a great novel with brilliantly drawn characters.
Despite being a lover of classic novels, the author admitted that they only recently read “Anna Karenina” for the first time.
When it comes to bad prose, the author finds it unforgivable as it is a result of bad thinking. Their ideal reading experience only requires time, which they are currently craving.
One of the author’s favourite books that they feel is underrated is Rebecca West’s “The Court and the Castle,” which is a book of lectures given at Yale about the relationship between individual and authority in literature. They also recommend Leslie Fiedler’s cycle of books “Love and Death in the American Novel,” “What Was Literature?” and “Waiting for the End” as mandatory reading in literature classrooms.
The author admires many writers across different genres, including Jeremy O. Harris, Jordan Tannahill, Will Arbery, Vinson Cunningham, Jennifer Wilson, Lauren Michele Jackson, Doreen St. Félix, Derrick Austin, and Parul Sehgal.
When they are working on a book, the author tends to read history and literary or social criticism. They find it difficult to take in contemporary fiction while they are writing, so they reread classics such as Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Jane Austen.
The author wishes that more writers would write about evil people, as they find that contemporary fiction does not create a moral universe where evil is remotely possible. They have never changed their opinion of a book based on information about the author or anything else.
What moves the author most in a work of literature is its moral depth. They do not separate their preference of emotional or intellectual reads, as brilliantly argued and evocative works both excite them.
Their preferred genres to read are big books on European history and romance novels, but they avoid military history and American history. Their books are organized alphabetically, and people might be surprised to see that they have the entire series of Freud’s writings as reissued by Penguin Modern Classics.
The best book they ever received as a gift was a beautiful set of Jane Austen novels from their British publisher when their first book was a finalist for the Booker Prize. When they were a child, they taught themselves to read with a romance novel, which led them to skip the usual children’s book fare.
If the author were to host a literary dinner party, they would invite Mavis Gallant, Elizabeth Bishop, and Laurie Colwin. The author’s reading list includes Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart novels, and after “La Bête Humaine,” they plan to read “Germinal.”
