Interview with Jen Adams, author of the popular site The Books They Gave Me and subsequent book (Free Press, November 6, 2013).
Q: What are you currently reading?
That’s never a short answer! Right now, I’m working on Vonnegut’s Mother Night (which was given to me by a friend!), Brooke Gladstone’s The Influencing Machine, and I’m finishing up Lev Grossman’s The Magicians.
Q: What was your favorite book as a child?
I loved the Little House on the Prairie novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder, along with everything by Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary.
Q: Who are your three favorite authors?
Nabokov, Flaubert, and Eliot.
Q: Which book did you buy for its cover?
All of them. And none of them. I’ve always really been in love with the physical book. Going to a bookstore is a really tactile, sensual experience for me. But I can’t say that a cover alone has ever prompted me to buy a book I didn’t otherwise want.
Q: Do you have a favorite line or scene from a book?
There’s a passage in Madame Bovary where Flaubert describes her yearning for a sign, a connection, with her husband. It never comes. There is such sadness in that little chunk of text — it always puts a catch in my throat.
Q: What is your favorite book to give as a gift?
I actually almost never give books as gifts anymore! I always choose so badly — something I’m certain the person will love, and they say, “Oh! Yes…thanks.” That, or my family is just tired of getting books from me.
Q: What was the best book you ever received as a gift?
That fat complete Blake in hardcover, from Seminary Co-op in Chicago…it’s in the book.
