For the End of Year Book Ask - 4, 6, 11 xxx
Thank you! <3
4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?
I’ve already talked your ear off about Pat Barker, but it’s Pat Barker. I just fucking love her. Putting aside the recent setback of that unexpected incest plot in one of her books, I’ve loved everything of hers I’ve read and I’m insanely jealous of the way she says so much with seemingly so little. Her style is about 10,000x less overcomplicated and flowery than mine and she still manages to craft these intensely vivid stories that get inside my head and change me. I want to be more like her in my writing in that sense.
6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?
I kind of ran out of steam in September and started a few books since then that I didn’t finish. Things like Benjamin Zephaniah’s autobiography, Underland by Robert MacFarlane, and Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. Another book that went back on the to-read list late in the year that I didn’t get round to is the first book of His Dark Materials, because I tried to read it a bunch of times as a kid and I could never get far with it. But the tv series made me want to try it again, so maybe that’ll be a 2020 book revelation.
11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?
Regeneration (from 1991), for sure. The whole trilogy is great, but I particularly loved the first one. I sound like a shill for Pat Barker at this point, but whatever. I love a book that makes you stop every once in a while when you hit a sentence or paragraph that just fucks you up or plants an idea in your head that feels like a seismic shift in the way you understand things and you just have to take a deep breath and go ‘holy fucking shit’.
Book Asks
