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| photo: Darcy Hemley | |
Before leaving New York City for the West Coast, Christine Lennon was an editor at W, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, television writer Andrew Reich, and their twins. The Drifter (Morrow, February 14, 2017), her first book, is about a group of friends whose lives are changed forever by a violent event they experience in college. It's a love letter to the 1990s, and a story about the complexities of friendships and the secrets that can ultimately destroy us.
On your nightstand now:
A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline, The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge, The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer and Parenting Without Power Struggles by Susan Stiffelman (as if). There are more. This is just the top of the stack.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Has anyone ever picked just one book? If I absolutely had to choose, I would say The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. My copy had the Braille alphabet on the back cover. My mom read it to me, and I would lie in her lap and trace the tiny bumps with my fingertips trying to memorize it all.
Your top five authors:
There are so many, but Jennifer Egan, Ann Patchett, Kate Atkinson, Carson McCullers and Joan Didion are at the top of the list. And Steve Martin.
Book you've faked reading:
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I know. It's amazing. I'm a loser. 
Book you're an evangelist for:
Dish by Jeannette Walls is so entirely compelling. I was telling everyone about her writing years before The Glass Castle. In this book, Walls explains how and why the thin line between "news" and "gossip" has vanished over the years. I'm a journalist who interviews celebrities and I live in Los Angeles so it's riveting stuff for me. But I think anyone who is interested in Old Hollywood would love what she writes about people like Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe.
Book you've bought for the cover:
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.
Book you hid from your parents:
My parents paid zero attention to what I was reading when I was a kid, which was fine by me. The only thing I even sort of hid was Forever by Judy Blume because it was infamous at the time for being frank about sex, and was passed between friends on the school bus.
Book that changed your life:
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. A friend gave this counterculture bible to me when I was in college, at a time when I was slogging through books written by a bunch of 19th-century writers who made reading feel like hard work. I tore through it, and it helped me realize that no matter how much reading I had to finish for school or, later on, for work, I had to make time for the really fun stuff, too.
Favorite line from a book:
I wish I could commit every line of Jenny Offill's poetic Dept. of Speculation to memory, but this is the only one that sticks:
"Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits."
Five books you'll never part with:
My husband is a borderline hoarder of books, so I will never say never when it comes to parting with them for fear that we will one day be crushed by stacks of them. But I know that I would miss all of the E.B. White books, because it reminds me so much of my childhood and they have brought my kids so much joy.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which is, coincidentally, about reincarnation and second chances.