Blogfest 2009

This has to be the most difficult question of my five! How do you ask an author what their favorite books are unless you wish them to go on and on and on…

Out of all the books I’ve read, there are six particular books that will always be at the top of my “favorites”. My Soul To Keep, a science-fiction novel written by my favorite author, Tananarive Due, along with its sequels, is a beautifully-written, suspense-filled wonder! Khaled Houssenei has recently become a favorite author of mine. His book A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of the best novels I have read thusfar due to his gift, as shown in this book, for making the human struggle- specifically the lives of two Afghani woman- a struggle that encapsulates the whole of their culture. I read Stealing Freedom, by Elisa Carbone many years ago, and it has continued to be a favorite. Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons is a great book, as is Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, (excluding the movie.) Lastly, as a guide for higher living, Shakti Gawain’s book Living in the Light is my bedside buddy, backpack pal, and staying-up-late-in-a-hotel companion that brings me back to my purpose here in this Universe.

In speaking of higher living, this type of literature is one of my favorite genres to read. Authors under this group whose books I have read and collected include Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Shakti Gawain, Eckhart Tolle, Dan Millman and his Peaceful Warrior, and U.S. Anderson’s Three Magic Words.

Other authors and books I have enjoyed include my 20th century mentor, Zora Neale Hurston, writer Anthony Browder who brings obscure pieces of African/African-American history to light, Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea, Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, Tananarive Due’s Black Rose, and Christina Lamb’s Sewing Circles of Herat and House of Stone. My favorite literary classics collection include Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities.

Young adult author’s I enjoy are Nancy Farmer, Madeleine L’engle, Sharon G. Flake, and others. And did I forget J.K. Rowling and her outstanding ability to encourage children to read their first 870-page book with the Harry Potter Series? They are a must-read.

As you can see, reading is a favorite past-time of mine. I feel that it is one of the most important means of educating yourself.

I would like to share a quote from Shishu Bhavan, a children’s home in Calcutta, often attributed to a strong, favorite figure of mine, Mother Teresa. It reads “give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough…give the world the best you’ve got anyway”.

*In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the end of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.*

I don’t remember exactly how old I was when my dad read me those lines for the very first time, but I still remember the magic of them, and the way they filled me up with wonder. I was only four or five, but from the moment I heard those first lines of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, I was a fantasy fan for life. I could *see* that hobbit hole, I could understand the everyday life of the hobbits inside it, and I knew for the first time that magic was real.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that The Hobbit is a really funny book, full of fabulously real characters, whether they’re powerful wizards or treasure-hunting dwarves, who get irritated at each other for utterly ordinary reasons and get grumpy when they’re hungry or it’s raining. That combination of real people and dazzling magic captured my imagination for life. I read The Hobbit and all three of the Lord of the Rings books over and over again, and from there I went on to read and love hundreds of other wonderful fantasy adventures, from CS Lewis’s Narnia books to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld comedy-adventures and, more recently, Sarah Prineas’s Magic Thief books. If a book had humor and truth and magic all mixed in together, I was a fan, and I still am.

But that wasn’t the only kind of book I fell in love with. A few years later, my parents pulled a double whammy: my mom gave me a copy of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and my dad read me Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. And I fell in love, hopelessly and forever. From that moment on, my very favorite fantasy setting was a real place and time: nineteenth-century England, and especially Jane Austen’s Regency era. I devoured every Regency romantic comedy I could find, and every Gothic romance, too. (In my book A Most Improper Magick, my heroine teases her proper oldest sister for having a secret love of Gothic romances. Guess what? I share that love, times a zillion. Some of them are so, so silly, and yet…yeah. Sigh. I just can’t help it.) Just like my favorite fantasy adventures, Regency romances took place in a world very different from my own, filled with wonderful characters and lots of humor – and they added a dollop of romance to make me even happier. They were only missing one thing: magic. And as I grew up loving the Regency novels of Georgette Heyer (especially The Talisman Ring and The Reluctant Widow) and Clare Darcy (Eliza!), I kept thinking, *if only they could do magic, too….*

So I guess it makes sense that, as an adult writer, I’m writing exactly the books I always wanted to read: Regency romantic comedies filled with magic and adventure.

What about you guys? If you could combine two different kinds of books, which kinds would they be? And what are your favorite books?

This is a tough one.  My favorite adult fiction writer is Pearl Cleage.  I love her book, “What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day.”  As a teen I was a Judy Bloom fanatic and the classic book “Are You There God It’s Me Margaret” is still relevant.  I also love Terry McMillan. 

I have a ton of favorite authors, but right now I have fangirl crushes on Neal Shusterman and E. Lockhart. Unwind was one of my favorite books last year, and I’m just finishing up Lockhart’s Dramarama which appeals to my Broadway musical geekiness. I so wish I had the musical chops, and could’ve gone to Drama camp!

Well, I’d have to say my own parents. Watching how they worked, and seeing them go from zero to great heights has been a wonderful experience.

Walter Dean Myers is a hero, as well as the late Jim Haskins. I’ve been lucky enough in my life to have met and talked with them. Their books, approaches to writing, and life experiences have had a great influence on my life. Four favorite books from grade school/high school that I still reread are The Pushcart War (Jean Merrill), The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), and 1984 (George Orwell). Two books that I’ve read in the last two years that really intrigued me were The Road (Cormac McCarthy) and Erasure: A Novel (Percival Everett).