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Genevieve Cogman is a freelance author who has written for several role-playing game companies. She works for the NHS in England as a clinical classifications specialist. The Invisible Library (Roc, June 14, 2016), a time-traveling fantasy, is her debut novel, and the first in a series.
On your nightstand now:
The top book by my bedside at this precise moment is Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City by Michael A Lerner. The fiction book I'm in the middle of is A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, an anthology edited by S.T. Joshi. I'm also rereading Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik and An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff. And Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling (translated by John Minford) is also on the to-read pile as I write this. (My bedside is a crowded, crowded place.)
Favorite book when you were a child:
There were lots and lots of books--I was the sort of child who would go round to visit friends and had to be chased away from their bookshelves. But the single book that comes to mind is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. My parents read The Hobbit to me and my brother as a bedtime story when we were five or six years old, and when I was seven, they gave me my own copy of The Lord of the Rings. Of course I failed to appreciate large chunks of it, at that age. (Denethor was a bad man! Eowyn was a heroine! Sam and Frodo walked through a very boring place for a long while!) But I have constantly enjoyed rereading it and finding new things to appreciate in it. I also went on to The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales, later. But if I had to point at a single book that was my favourite, that would be The Lord of the Rings.
Your top five authors:
This is a hard question to answer. Should I mention the authors I've enjoyed most? Or the ones that have had an influence on my writing? Or the ones that have caused me to consider questions of morality or reappraise my beliefs? Or the ones that haven't aged too well, but that gave me great pleasure when I was younger? I'll go with Terry Pratchett, Barbara Hambly, G.K. Chesterton, Suzette Haden Elgin and John Dickson Carr.
Book you've faked reading:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I found it very heavy going and ended up skipping to the ending. Bram Stoker's Dracula was a lot more fun. (Well, for certain values of fun....)
Book you're an evangelist for:
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (published as Midnight Riot in the United States). An absolute pleasure to read, and one that I've recommended to a lot of people. Several friends and family members got it as a Christmas present from me the year that it came out.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I'm not sure I've ever bought any book just for the cover. I do remember being very struck by the covers of the Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London series mentioned above, and by the latest Naomi Novik book, Uprooted, but I think that I would have bought all of those anyhow, even if they'd been loitering on street corners in seedy brown paper jackets.
Book you hid from your parents:
No single book, but I know that when I was in my teens, and reading some really trashy fantasy and science fiction, that I wouldn't have wanted my parents to see it. It is probably true that there are some books you have to read before your taste improves enough to realize that they're bad, or why they're bad. But even when you're reading them, if you know that you don't want to have to discuss them with your parents over supper, then you've already realized that they're not that good.
Book that changed your life:
I'm not sure that I can think of any one single book that changed my life. Sorry.
Favorite line from a book:
Terry Pratchett, Going Postal: "And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based."
Five books you'll never part with:
Am I allowed compilations? I hope I'm allowed compilations.
My collected Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula le Guin.
The World of Jeeves by P.G Wodehouse.
Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling.
Journey to the West, attributed to Wu Cheng'en.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Phoenix Guards by Steven Brust. This and its sequels are a glorious pastiche of The Three Musketeers (and its sequels). Just plain fun to read.