Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to The Golden State author Lydia Kiesling.
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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Lydia Kiesling: Ramona and Her Mother by Beverly Cleary.
BM: Favorite re-read?
LK: Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, and The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch.
BM: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with?
LK: I won’t flatter myself that it’s a conversation but maybe a demented fan yelling about The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, Mating by Norman Rush, Off Course by Michelle Huneven, How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan, After Birth by Elisa Albert, and Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding.
BM: A book that blew your mind?
LK: Compass by Mathias Énard.
BM: Last book you read?
LK: I just finished Perfect Tunes by Emily Gould and loved it.
BM: A book that made you cry?
LK: Lately: Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck and The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin. Surprisingly: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Reliably: the last paragraph of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.
BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?
LK: I realize I’m answering all of these with more than one book, but it is too hard! Chimerica by Anita Felicelli, The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang, The Parisian by Isabella Hammad, and The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell.
BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?
LK: I can laugh aloud just thinking about some scenes from Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.
BM: Classic book you hate?
LK: Rabbit Run by John Updike didn’t do it for me.
BM: Classic book on your To Be Read pile?
LK: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
LK: I exclusively read books that other people have heard of because that’s how I hear about them!
BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?
LK: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.
BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?
LK: I just got a galley of How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang and I am beside myself.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
LK: American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson.
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Lydia Kiesling is the author of The Golden State, a finalist for the VCU Cabell Prize, and a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree. She is a contributing editor at The Millions and her writing has appeared at outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, The Guardian, and Slate.
Lydia Kiesling’s The Golden State is out now in paperback from Picador
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