I did an interview with ShelfAwareness that came out well, I think (I wrote this a long while ago and it’s just coming out now, so I have the necessary distance to say that). I particularly like my answer to “Name your five favorite authors”: “My favorite authors are the ones living, dead, read and unread, published and unpublished, who write because they can’t stop and because something inside them burns to be outside. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to read their books, but they are all and every one my favorites.”
Your top five authors:
I just hate picking top fives. Top five for what purpose? The five I’d most like to have dinner with? The five I’m glad got to write? The five I’d be sure to face out if I ever worked as a bookseller again? The five that I’d take with if I was on a desert island?
About two-thirds of my friends are writers. I’ve read thousands and thousands of books. I love and cherish books, but I don’t have favorites. If I was a “favorites” kind of guy, I’d have written one blog-post and had done with it. Instead, I’ve written ~50,000 of them.
Five authors? That’s like five elements of the periodic table. What use are five authors? My favorite authors are the ones living, dead, read and unread, published and unpublished, who write because they can’t stop and because something inside them burns to be outside. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to read their books, but they are all and every one my favorites.
Book you’ve faked reading:
I would never fake reading a book. Why would someone fake reading a book? That’s like faking what color socks you like. Are there seriously situations in which faking having read a book is a thing? Really? Ew.
