JK Rowling: I Don’t Read Fantasy, Sci-Fi or Chick Lit
She’s one of the bestselling fantasy writer’s of all time, yet JK Rowling reveals in a recent interview with The New York Times that she doesn’t read fantasy and science fiction books.
Asked about her reading tastes, Rowling responded: “my reading tastes are pretty catholic. I don’t read ‘chick lit,’ fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill. With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.”
Calling her response to poetry “inadequate” because her passion is story, she also refused to name the last book that made her angry, saying: “As Margaret Thatcher might say, I don’t wish to give it the oxygen of publicity.” Her favorite read this summer was The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller. She said the last truly great book she read was Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. “I lived in it the way that you do with truly great books; putting it down with glazed eyes and feeling disconcerted to find yourself in the 21st century.”
She named Jo March as he favorite literary heroine. “It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.” But the one she’d choose to be if she could is “Elizabeth Bennet.”
Click here for the full interview.
For a response you can also see: http://www.themarysue.com/j-k-rowling-fantasy/
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an author and editor of adult and children’s science fiction, fantasy and humor books, short stories and articles. A frequent contributor to blogs like SFSignal, Adventures In SF Publishing, Grasping For The Wind and To Be Read, he also hosts Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat under the hashtag #sffwrtcht on Twitter and blogs about writing and creativity on his own blog at www.bryanthomasschmidt.net/blog. Connect With Bryan On Google+
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