|
|
| photo: Nina Subin | |
Lauren Grodstein is the author of The Explanation for Everything (Algonquin, September 3, 2013). Her other books are A Friend of the Family, Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love and The Best of Animals. She directs the creative writing program at Rutgers University-Camden.
On your nightstand now:
Lonely Planet Vancouver by the Lonely Planet people, since the only thing more pleasantly soporific than being in Vancouver is reading about it. The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis. Once I'm finally asleep, I like to dream about Southern food. My four-year-old's Lego Star Wars Character Encyclopedia by the folks at DK Publishing. His Star Wars Scanimation Book by Rufus Butler Seder. Middlemarch by George Eliot.
Favorite book when you were a child:
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. To this day, every time I visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I dream of pulling a Claudia.
Your top five authors:
M.F.K. Fisher, who made eating and writing about eating classy. Richard Ford, whose Bascombe trilogy, about a middle-aged New Jersey man, inspired me to write A Friend of the Family. Brenda Shaughnessy, whose poetry collection Our Andromeda is the truest thing about motherhood I've ever read. Phillip Roth, because he's this constant guiding light. Laurie Colwin, a less well known but much beloved novelist, essayist and story-writer.
Book you've faked reading:
Middlemarch by George Eliot.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I tell everyone I know to read the Bridge books by Evan S. Connell. I'm always surprised when they haven't. There's no finer fictional portrait of an American family.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I do this constantly with children's books, which makes no sense--you could read most children's books in about five seconds in the store aisle--but I never do. I just scoop up every cute kid's book I see, and then my ungrateful kid only wants to read about Star Wars.
Book that changed your life:
I read Layover by Lisa Zeidner while I was in college after it received an incredible New York Times review. I just loved it, and still do. A decade after reading it, I saw a post for a job opening at Rutgers University, in the program headed by that very Lisa Zeidner. I detected good fortune, so I applied for and got the job. My life has since been better in all ways--especially because now Lisa Zeidner is not only one of my favorite writers, she's also a great friend.
Favorite line from a book:
"First, try to be something, anything else." --from "How to Become a Writer," Self-Help, Lorrie Moore
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, when I was living in Berkeley with my first boyfriend one summer years and years ago. I was broke and smoking a lot and stupidly in love and everything about that book felt like a prophecy.