Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to the author of Private Means, Cree LeFavour.
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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Cree LeFavour: Go Dog Go, the Dr. Seuss classic. I think it’s the first book I realized I could read. That dog party in the tree at the end blew my mind.
BM: Favorite re-read?
CLF: Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. Bonus fact: it was one of the handful of books Robert Falcon Scott’s men passed around over the course of their three years in the Antarctic.
BM: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with?
CLF: I worship Ian McEwan. The troubled marriage in The Children Act resonates through Peter and Alice’s chilly detente.
BM: A book that blew your mind?
CLF: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Wow. I mean, just, wow.
BM: Last book you read?
CLF: Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World.
BM: A book that made you cry?
CLF: Miriam Toews’s All My Puny Sorrows.
BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?
CLF: Raven Leilani’s Luster.
BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?
CLF: St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels.
BM: What’s one book you wish you had read during your teenage years?
CLF: I was too much of a snob to read Judy Blume and I wish I had! I might have felt a bit less alone.
BM: Favorite book to give as a gift?
CLF: Jonathan Miles’s great early novel, Dear American Airlines. It has the virtue of being funny and profound.
BM: Classic book you hate?
CLF: James Joyce’s Ulysses. Argh! Does it count if I haven’t finished it?
BM: Classic book on your To Be Read pile?
CLF: I’m embarrassed to admit, Stendhal’s The Red and the Black.
BM: What’s a book with a really great sex scene?
CLF: Nicholson Baker’s Vox. A classic but definitely hot.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
CLD: Well, I wouldn’t say nobody has heard of it, but Hardy’s The Return of the Native is just so fantastic. Most people think Tess when it comes to Hardy.
BM: Favorite book of the 21st century?
CLF: Got to give that to Mantel’s Wolf Hall.
BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?
CLF: Let’s call it favorite author: Shakespeare!
BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?
CLF: The great Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls.
BM: Favorite children’s book?
CLF: The Bear That Wasn’t by Frank Tashlin. It’s the story of my life.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
CLF: Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things would make a stunningly beautiful, dramatic film. Why hasn’t it made it to the screen yet?!
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Cree LeFavour is the author of several cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-nominated Fish. She has a BA from Middlebury College and a PhD in American Studies from NYU. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, The Times (London), and Bon Appetit.
Cree LeFavour’s Private Means is out now from Grove Press
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