Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to Simon the Fiddler author Paulette Jiles.
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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Paulette Jiles: The Boxcar Children. Survival adventure, no adults around!
BM: Favorite re-read?
PJ: River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is magical.
BM: Book that blew your mind?
PJ: Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.
BM: Last book you read?
PJ: High Albania, written in early 1900’s, a woman exploring Albania, alone, with of course guards and escorts and a pistol. Loved it.
BM: A book that made you cry?
PJ: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
BM: What book would you like to give a shout-out to?
PJ: The Secret Knowledge of Water by Craig Childs—a book of the deserts and their hidden waters, amazing.
BM: Classic book you hate?
PJ: Anything by Balzac.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
PK: The Sheltering Desert by Henno Martin.
BM: Book you’re reading right now?
PJ: The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson.
BM: Favorite children’s book?
PJ: Little Women.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
PJ: High Albania.
BM: Favorite book of the 21st century?
PJ: The Martian by Andy Weir, kept me up all night.
BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?
PJ: Poetry, all and any.
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Paulette Jiles is a novelist, poet, and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the novels Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, and News of the World, which was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award. She lives on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas.
Paulette Jiles’ Simon the Fiddler is out now from William Morrow
