Book Brahmins: Rosina Lippi

Rosina Lippi (who also writes under the penname Sara Donati) was born and raised in Chicago but has lived many places, from small villages in the Austrian Alps to rural New Jersey. Since 1998, she has made her home on Puget Sound north of Seattle, with her husband (known to her weblog readers as the Mathematician), her daughter (the Girlchild) and two dogs. Rosina has a doctorate in linguistics, which she used to good effect as a college professor for 12 years, at which point she escaped academia before it was too late. She now writes fiction full time. Or at least, she tries to. Her newest novel is The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square (Putnam), which arrived in bookstores on Valentine's Day. Stop by Rosina's weblog for news about the Pajama Girls and the January Pajama Jamboree.

On your nightstand now:

The Letters of Abigaill Levy Franks, 1733-1748 edited by Edith B. Gelles, Evermore by Lynn Viehl, Angel and Apostle by Deborah Noyes, A Little Ray of Sunshine by Lani Diane Rich.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt.

Your top five authors:

(Oi, the pain of only five.) Dorothy Dunnett, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Jennifer Crusie, Annie Proulx.

Book you've faked reading:

The Odyssey.

Books you are an evangelist for:

Dance by Judy Cuevas and The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carlton (both out of print).

Book you've bought for the cover:  

The True Account: A Novel of the Lewis and Clark and Kinneson Expeditions (Lewis & Clark Expedition) by Howard Frank Mosher.

Book that changed your life:

A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin.

Book you have re-read:

I re-read many, many books, but here's one: Possession by A.S. Byatt.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett.