My earliest reading memory
My sister and I were obsessed with Tomi Ungerer’s The Beast of Monsieur Racine, a picture book in which two children disguise themselves as a mysterious beast and are studied by a scientist. It’s a fun story, but on each page, comical and grotesque things are happening. A nail pokes up on a slide, a pickpocket steals something from a distracted woman, a falling axe splits open a man’s head. We studied the illustrations as if we were poring over a sacred text.
My favourite book growing up
Now sadly out of print, Joyce Ballou Gregorian’s The Broken Citadel was the first book of a trilogy. In it, a young girl steps into another world, where she joins a prince and a scholar who mean to kill a monster and rescue a princess. Each chapter is prefaced by a poem or a scholarly note from the imagined realm of Tredana. Gregorian drew on her Armenian heritage for the landscape, mythology and literature of her invented world, and I can still go back to her books as if revisiting a place I’ve actually been.
The book that changed me as a teenager
I was a weekend lurker in the fantasy and science fiction section of my local bookstore, eager to spend my weekly allowance, but overwhelmed by the selection. I was drawn to the monsters and half-naked women on the paperback covers of Arthur Saha’s Year’s Best Fantasy anthologies, but too embarrassed for a long time to bring one up to the counter and pay for it. When, eventually, I got up the nerve, I found the stories uniformly enthralling, and the bookseller didn’t bat an eye. After that, I grew much more bold about what I wanted to read, regardless of how lurid the cover might be.
The writer who changed my mind
I went to a master of fine arts programme in the 90s, a time when Raymond Carver was the standard by which many young writers judged their own and other’s work. Stripped down, psychologically astute realistic fiction is all well and good, but I wanted to write ghost stories and science fiction and fairytales. I found realism, to be honest, somewhat lacklustre. But then I picked up Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man, and realised that realistic fiction could be just as strange, dazzling and mind-altering as the SF and fantasy I loved.
The book that made me want to be a writer
I never really imagined I had what it took to be a writer until I managed to write one story, and then another and another. Even then, I suspected I might not stick it. What I wanted to be (and still am, mostly) was a reader. But the book that made me understand how to be a writer was Humphrey Carpenter’s JRR Tolkien: A Biography. It described a man who was a devoted partner to his wife, a friend and colleague to other writers, and someone who made an entire world out of his experience and interests.
The book I came back to
The first time I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, I was camping in the Grand Canyon. Every day we went down the Colorado River on a raft, and every night I pulled Red Mars out of my waterproof box and read it by flashlight under the stars. I’d figured that this would be the perfect setting to read a novel about colonising Mars, but in fact I bounced right off. A few years later, though, I picked up Green Mars and fell completely in. And as soon as I read Blue Mars, I went straight back to begin the trilogy again.
The book I reread
The Regency romance as we know it begins with Georgette Heyer, and I’m not sure that anyone has surpassed her ability to whip up the perfect souffle of acerbic dialogue, unexpected pairings, period detail and happy endings. Venetia is my favourite. A naive girl falls for a sophisticated and disreputable rake, only to discover a scandal in her own family.
The book I could never read again
My first and only child was born at 24 weeks, weighing about a pound and a half. They’re now 15 and taller than me, but the first year of their life was spent in various hospitals. I spent much of that time in hospital chairs, either working remotely or reading. I’d never read Patrick O’Brian, and since his series is substantial, I figured I was in good shape. But every time I began an Aubrey and Maturin novel, there would be a terrifying setback or life-threatening new complication in the NICU, and I began to feel, superstitiously, that if I kept on reading O’Brian, we might lose our kid. As much as I’d like to read the whole series from the start again, I’ll never be able to go back.
The book I discovered later in life
I don’t think I’d read any Frank O’Hara until I taught a graduate fiction workshop, in which there were a number of poets who wanted to try their hand at short fiction. They were all enormous fans of O’Hara, and so I picked up The Collected Poems. He’s fabulous – congenial, witty, expansive and lively. I love feeling as if I can hear his voice in my ear as I read.
The book I am currently reading
Anton Hur’s translation of Bora Chung’s collection, Cursed Bunny, was one of my favourite books last year, and so I’m in that familiar reader’s bind, where I’m trying to read Your Utopia as slowly as possible, but what I really want is to gobble it up immediately.
My comfort read
I’ve read Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life so many times that I know the first few sentences more or less by heart. One day, I expect, I’ll be able to recite the entire novel.
My earliest reading memory
My sister and I were obsessed with Tomi Ungerer’s The Beast of Monsieur Racine, a picture book in which two children disguise themselves as a mysterious beast and are studied by a scientist. It’s a fun story, but on each page, comical and grotesque things are happening. A nail pokes up on a slide, a pickpocket steals something from a distracted woman, a falling axe splits open a man’s head. We studied the illustrations as if we were poring over a sacred text.
My favourite book growing up
Now sadly out of print, Joyce Ballou Gregorian’s The Broken Citadel was the first book of a trilogy. In it, a young girl steps into another world, where she joins a prince and a scholar who mean to kill a monster and rescue a princess. Each chapter is prefaced by a poem or a scholarly note from the imagined realm of Tredana. Gregorian drew on her Armenian heritage for the landscape, mythology and literature of her invented world, and I can still go back to her books as if revisiting a place I’ve actually been.
The book that changed me as a teenager
I was a weekend lurker in the fantasy and science fiction section of my local bookstore, eager to spend my weekly allowance, but overwhelmed by the selection. I was drawn to the monsters and half-naked women on the paperback covers of Arthur Saha’s Year’s Best Fantasy anthologies, but too embarrassed for a long time to bring one up to the counter and pay for it. When, eventually, I got up the nerve, I found the stories uniformly enthralling, and the bookseller didn’t bat an eye. After that, I grew much more bold about what I wanted to read, regardless of how lurid the cover might be.
The writer who changed my mind
I went to a master of fine arts programme in the 90s, a time when Raymond Carver was the standard by which many young writers judged their own and other’s work. Stripped down, psychologically astute realistic fiction is all well and good, but I wanted to write ghost stories and science fiction and fairytales. I found realism, to be honest, somewhat lacklustre. But then I picked up Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man, and realised that realistic fiction could be just as strange, dazzling and mind-altering as the SF and fantasy I loved.
The book that made me want to be a writer
I never really imagined I had what it took to be a writer until I managed to write one story, and then another and another. Even then, I suspected I might not stick it. What I wanted to be (and still am, mostly) was a reader. But the book that made me understand how to be a writer was Humphrey Carpenter’s JRR Tolkien: A Biography. It described a man who was a devoted partner to his wife, a friend and colleague to other writers, and someone who made an entire world out of his experience and interests.
The book I came back to
The first time I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, I was camping in the Grand Canyon. Every day we went down the Colorado River on a raft, and every night I pulled Red Mars out of my waterproof box and read it by flashlight under the stars. I’d figured that this would be the perfect setting to read a novel about colonising Mars, but in fact I bounced right off. A few years later, though, I picked up Green Mars and fell completely in. And as soon as I read Blue Mars, I went straight back to begin the trilogy again.
The book I reread
The Regency romance as we know it begins with Georgette Heyer, and I’m not sure that anyone has surpassed her ability to whip up the perfect souffle of acerbic dialogue, unexpected pairings, period detail and happy endings. Venetia is my favourite. A naive girl falls for a sophisticated and disreputable rake, only to discover a scandal in her own family.
The book I could never read again
My first and only child was born at 24 weeks, weighing about a pound and a half. They’re now 15 and taller than me, but the first year of their life was spent in various hospitals. I spent much of that time in hospital chairs, either working remotely or reading. I’d never read Patrick O’Brian, and since his series is substantial, I figured I was in good shape. But every time I began an Aubrey and Maturin novel, there would be a terrifying setback or life-threatening new complication in the NICU, and I began to feel, superstitiously, that if I kept on reading O’Brian, we might lose our kid. As much as I’d like to read the whole series from the start again, I’ll never be able to go back.
The book I discovered later in life
I don’t think I’d read any Frank O’Hara until I taught a graduate fiction workshop, in which there were a number of poets who wanted to try their hand at short fiction. They were all enormous fans of O’Hara, and so I picked up The Collected Poems. He’s fabulous – congenial, witty, expansive and lively. I love feeling as if I can hear his voice in my ear as I read.
The book I am currently reading
Anton Hur’s translation of Bora Chung’s collection, Cursed Bunny, was one of my favourite books last year, and so I’m in that familiar reader’s bind, where I’m trying to read Your Utopia as slowly as possible, but what I really want is to gobble it up immediately.
My comfort read
I’ve read Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life so many times that I know the first few sentences more or less by heart. One day, I expect, I’ll be able to recite the entire novel.