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| photo: Angela Altus | |
Maureen Johnson is the author of more than a dozen YA novels, including the Truly Devious series, which will be completed with The Hand on the Wall (Katherine Tegen Books, January 21, 2020). Her collaborative novel, Let It Snow (Speak/Penguin), written with John Green and Lauren Myracle, is now a film released by Netflix for the 2019 holiday season. Johnson lives in New York City.
On your nightstand now:
My nightstand houses a Jenga tower of books. The one directly next to me at the moment is Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow, as that was the last one I read on my e-book reader and it has been haunting me ever since.
Favorite book when you were a child:
A nearly impossible question. I had a children's version of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which started my lifetime mystery obsession. I grabbed every mystery I could get my hands on as a kid, and basically wanted to live inside of The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. I also read a lot of middlebrow political satire, which is obviously a pretty cool thing for a nine-year-old to be doing. I didn't have much library guidance, so I noodled around and picked up all kinds of things.
Your top five authors:
Oof. Another impossible question. I'll fight this question every time.
Book you've faked reading:
Most of my religion workbooks in Catholic school. I was in a mandatory marriage class taught by a nun and the workbook was called Loving. I never read that book.
Book you're an evangelist for:
At this very moment, Catch and Kill. It's incredibly important right now. It's a search for the truth, and a story of bravery and persistence. Ronan Farrow has done something incredible.
Book you hid from your parents:
I never hid anything. My mom did try to take Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence from me when I was a teenager. It was the only book anyone voiced objection to. I just laughed and said, "You have to be kidding." She let me keep it.
Book that changed your life:
Many have, but that first reading of The Hound of the Baskervilles stirred something in me that has been alive ever since.
Favorite line from a book:
"Prismatic is the only word for those frightful tweeds and, oddly enough, the spectacle of them had the effect of steadying my nerves. They gave me the feeling that nothing mattered." --The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
Five books you'll never part with:
My first copies of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Westing Game; Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson; And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie; and The Code of the Woosters.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Pretty much all of P.G. Wodehouse.