A BBAW interview with ... Avis

One of the best things I've discovered since I started reviewing is this great community of online bloggers. I love finding new blogs, so I liked the idea of the Book Blogger Appreciation Week interview swap. Basically, you're paired up completely randomly with another blogger and get to discover their blog and chat to them. I tend to know lots of the YA blogs out there, but not many others. I was lucky enough to be paired with Avis from she reads and reads, where she spotlights fiction written by women.

What is your favourite genre? Are there any genres you won’t read?

Literary fiction is my favourite genre although I also really enjoy mysteries, SF, contemporary fiction, memoirs, personal essays and certain types of nonfiction (such as The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, for example). I’ve also recently been discovering YA and graphic novels. The genres I don’t normally read are chick lit, paranormal fiction, Christian fiction, horror, thrillers, academic nonfiction, romance and westerns.

Who is your favourite author?

Picking a single favourite author is impossible! Some of my favourites are Janette Turner Hospital, Barbara Kingsolver, Nancy Mairs, Michael Cunningham and Kate Wilhelm, just to name the first five that come to mind. There are others I’ve read more recently that feel like potential favourites (they can’t be favourites yet because I’ve only read one of their books so far): Pagan Kennedy, Michelle Richmond, Susan Olding, Stephanie Kallos and Marina Endicott.

Do you have any books that you reread time and again?

I’m not much of a rereader (there are so many books I haven’t read once yet!), but I do enjoy rereading my favourites every now and then. Three that I’ve read at least twice and will probably read again are The Diviners by Margaret Laurence (she’s brilliant and this is her best book in my opinion), The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski.

Do you judge a book by its cover?

I actually think it’s almost impossible not to judge books by their covers. For me, covers act as a kind of sorting mechanism. I read a zillion blogs and come across heaps of books nearly every day, so I need a fast way to eliminate at least a few of them as potential additions to my wish list. (I don’t have time to read every single review I come across.) At their best, book covers should be a kind of visual shorthand, so that readers can recognize the types of books that appeal to them just by looking at the cover. Of course, it happens pretty often that a book’s cover is completely misleading. This happened to me recently with Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton, which I almost didn’t accept for review because of its pink cover but ended up really enjoying. Obviously, the cover doesn’t make or break it—if somebody I trust strongly recommends a book, I’ll read it, whether or not I like the cover.

What do you do when you’re not reading or blogging?

For work, I’m a freelance French-to-English translator. For fun, I watch movies or TV, hang out with friends, play Carcassonne, write, cook, sleep.

If you had to pick the three best books you’ve read so far this year, what would they be?

Pathologies: A Life in Essays by Susan Olding
The Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler
The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell

Thanks for the fun interview Avis! You should all go and check out her blog.

*edit* And you can now read her interview of me if you want to.