'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' by Betty Smith is one of my favorites. Even though it doesn't have any monsters or crazy fantasy in it, it's such a raw story, and I can really relate to the characters. I think it's a beautiful story.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
'East of Eden' is an important story for me. It's about a kid that's misunderstood and feels like he's not loved by his father. It's a very father-son kind of story, and it's not until the end that they sort of make up. I like that because every boy has trouble with his father, so it's very relatable.
I have always loved story - I escaped within it as a child, I read every day, I love figuring out the complex layers of an author's work.
I've always been a huge fantasy fan. I was always interested in fairy tales and anything with magic or dragons... I was always drawn to those types of stories.
I've always loved the wild rumpus in 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak, because the words disappear, the pictures take up the whole page, and we move forward in the story by turning the pages.
While my favorite book of short stories is Fredrick Brown's 'Nightmares and Geezenstacks,' my favorite single story is 'Sound of Thunder,' by Ray Bradbury.
I like any story that starts one place and really takes a huge journey to a whole new place; that people in their life want to take that journey. They want to be able to find things in their life that aren't working and work through them to a new place of change.
I love 'Anne of Green Gables.' I have for years. That's one of my favourite things. She's such a can-do kind of girl; that's why I'm crazy about her.
The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, and 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago.
My favorite book is 'Go Away Big Green Monster.' I wrote it for my granddaughter Adrian, who was in the third grade at the time.
Fantasy for me as a kid was real, and I had a fantasy about what life was, whether it was sort of wicked and dire, or wholly normal, or whatever. Anything really close to home is not, it seems to me, what a good book should be about.