Sara Gran is the author of four novels, most recently Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2, 2011), the first in a series featuring eccentric and brilliant Claire DeWitt, who not only solves crimes but must solve the mysteries in her own troubled past. Gran's books have been translated into a dozen languages, been optioned for film and TV, and earned praise from Sue Grafton, Bret Easton Ellis, George Pelecanos and Kate Atkinson.
On your nightstand now:
I don't keep books on my nightstand. Well, I do, but only when there's nowhere else to put them--I don't read in bed. Insomnia. But what I'm reading now is: The Royal Family by William T. Vollman; The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson; Buddhahood Without Meditation by Dudjom Lingpa.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Amphigory by Edward Gorey (I know, completely inappropriate--it was the '70s!). I also loved D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. A fantastic combination, now that I think about it!
Your top five authors:
I tend to have favorite books more than favorite authors, so I will be specific: Shirley Jackson (We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Bird's Nest); Charles Portis (Dog of the South, Gringos); Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye); William Burroughs (Junky--his other books are a bit over my head); Lao Tzu (The Tao De Ching--doesn't that sound pretentious? But it really is a neat book and a lot of fun to read, and I dive into it over and over again).
Book you've faked reading:
Nearly every book I was assigned for 12 years of school. I couldn't even begin to list them all. I hated school. I cut classes and read V.C. Andrews and Raymond Chandler. And I would happily do so again today.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Nelson Algren's Nonconformity, the best book ever written on writing, which I have tried to push on thousands of people and succeeded exactly never. Good. More for me.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Right now I am looking at a book I have propped up near my computer called Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries, which I bought at the Berkeley Flea Market for a few dollars. The cover is a brightly colored illustration of Hitchcock and a boy detective (how did they team up?) examining footprints under a magnifying glass. Five exciting cases to test the wits of young detectives. Sadly, I'm not young, or a detective, or particularly wit-full, so my odds of solving these particular mysteries are slim.
Book that changed your life:
Well, I think everything changes us, all the time. But Annie Rogers's book The Unsayable, which introduced me to Lacanian psychoanalysis, radically altered the way I perceive language and psychology.
Favorite line from a book:
Hopefully I'll write that today. Wouldn't that be a good Monday? In the meantime, from Charles Portis's True Grit: "People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day." Is there a single word of that anyone in their right mind would change?
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Boy, would I like to read one of those Shirley Jackson books for the first time again! But maybe they wouldn't be as captivating without the layers of childhood memories. I guess when it comes down to it I'm pretty happy with my reading chronology as it stands.