The book I love most is ...Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. He manages to craft such a wonderful combination of humour and pathos, magical-realism and history in that book - it's one of the funniest I have ever read, but alsoone of the most moving.
The book I'm reading right now is ... I have been reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest very slowly for over a year now. It is incredibly brilliant and dense and rich. I sort of treat it like a block of dark chocolate and only eat a very small piece at a time. I'm dreading finishing it because it's become a part of my daily routine.
The book I'd like to read next is ... My "to-read" pile is taller than my bedside table, but Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo, Alain de Botton's The Architecture Of Happiness, Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing are at the top of the pile.
The book that changed me is ... Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. I read it as a grown-up having never read it as a child and thought it was amazing. The scope of the story, the simplicity of the language and the depth of the allegory are so beautifully arranged. I also like the drawings very much. More books for grown-ups should have pictures.
The book I wish I'd never read is ...Atonement by Ian McEwan. I know that's contentious, but it left me kind of queasy and anxious. The characters are unforgivably nasty and the world he creates is so claustrophobic and grim - shuddering just thinking about it!
* Stephanie Brotchie will present the critically acclaimed The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic - about an odd boy with a murmuring heart - as part of the Auckland Fringe. $20. From March 8-12 at the Basement. iticket.co.nz (09) 361 1000.
