We chat with
Why do you work in books?
As soon as I was able to read, Dad made a chart which involved a specific reward for each book on the chart; I’d receive the reward once I’d read the book and told Dad what I thought of it. The reward usually involved more books, which we’d pencil into the chart, and so on, and so on. Later, my first real job was at a bookstore.
How would you describe your own taste in books?
I’m drawn to the dark, stark nature of the nineteenth-century Russian realists and French naturalists and to the American Southern - or Appalachian-Gothic writers who follow on from that particular branch of storytelling. These days, this lives on in Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, Ron Rash and their ilk, stuff which I love.
Who has the best book cover?
I’m a little partial to Kenneth Mackenzie’s The Young Desire It which is available as a larger format Text Classic. I’m not sure if I’m so taken with it because of the text between the covers or not, but I love the illustration on the front with its bright colours, and the larger format gives it a bit of class.
Which book would you happily spend a weekend indoors with?
On a recent trip to Rio, I found myself torn between reading or seeing the sights. I chose my book and kept the curtains drawn until I’d read the final word. The book was Zola’s The Drinking Den and even though I’d read it previously, I couldn’t bear to tear myself away from Zola’s heartrending descriptions of nineteenth-century Paris, and the tragic Gervaise, with her dreams of rising out of the slums.
Name a book that has changed the way you think, in ways small or large.
Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair prompted me to move to Central America to study Latin American literature. It changed the way I thought about everything: it gave me goosebumps and made me fall further in love with the world and with language. I had heard that people recited Neruda’s poetry from memory on street corners all over Latin America, something I had to see for myself.
What’s the best book you’ve read lately and why?
I seriously loved Margaret Atwood’s MaddAdam for the simple reason that sentence-by-sentence, line-by-line, it’s incredibly funny and smart. Every sentence is another wry observation. I honestly loved every word in the book and couldn’t wait to pick it up again; I took it everywhere I went. The characters and the story are all so entertaining, and the narrative plays on concepts of storytelling and mythmaking.
