Christina VanHuss (Cox)
asked
Lenore H. Gay:
What books influence your writing and how do you pick books to read?
Lenore H. Gay
My early education helped form my interests. We read literary works from
Shakespeare’s poems and plays to Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Silas Marner and The Scarlet Letter. In later years I read noted books by Margaret Atwood, Henry Miller, Sartre, Rimbaud, Anais Nin, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Gunter Grass, Mary Renault, Doris Lessing, Jack Kerouac, Reynolds Price, Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin and D.H. Lawrence.
These days I’m an avid reader and pick books from reviews in print and online. I talk with writer friends and browse in bookstores, skim a few pages to get a sense of the work. Recent non-fiction by Jon Krakauer, John McPhee, Lucy Grealy, Bernd Heinrich, Kathleen Norris and Tobias Wolff.
Some current favorite novelists are Donna Tartt, David Mitchell,
Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Frazier, Michael
Cunningham, Chang-Rae Lee, Siri Hustvedt and Ann Patchett. I
enjoy work by dystopian, science fiction and fantasy writers like Patrick
Rothfuss, Lev Grossman, Emily St. John Mandel, Neil Gaiman, Edan Lepucki, Justin Cronin, Victoria Schwab and Greg Hrbek.
Shakespeare’s poems and plays to Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Silas Marner and The Scarlet Letter. In later years I read noted books by Margaret Atwood, Henry Miller, Sartre, Rimbaud, Anais Nin, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Gunter Grass, Mary Renault, Doris Lessing, Jack Kerouac, Reynolds Price, Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin and D.H. Lawrence.
These days I’m an avid reader and pick books from reviews in print and online. I talk with writer friends and browse in bookstores, skim a few pages to get a sense of the work. Recent non-fiction by Jon Krakauer, John McPhee, Lucy Grealy, Bernd Heinrich, Kathleen Norris and Tobias Wolff.
Some current favorite novelists are Donna Tartt, David Mitchell,
Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Frazier, Michael
Cunningham, Chang-Rae Lee, Siri Hustvedt and Ann Patchett. I
enjoy work by dystopian, science fiction and fantasy writers like Patrick
Rothfuss, Lev Grossman, Emily St. John Mandel, Neil Gaiman, Edan Lepucki, Justin Cronin, Victoria Schwab and Greg Hrbek.
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