Category: Interview

Welcome back to my cruel, cruel interview series where I ask book people the most difficult question of all- what’s your favourite book? I’ve loved seeing everyones reaction to Jenny’s answer and I love Beckys answer. I think it’s fascinating how people answer this question and the reasonings they have behind their choices.

Becky blogs over at Rebecca Reads with a focus on childrens literature as she is a trainee teacher. I think this is such a wonerfully unique perspective, as most people reading this age group probably don’t spend as much time around so many different kids. I know when I read MG, I haven’t got a clue what kids these days would think! So, Becky, what’s your favourite book?

Becky: As a reader, whenever someone asks me the question, what is your favourite book? I panic. It’s one of the most difficult questions you could ask me. It’s like asking a parent who is their favourite child! So when faced with this question for this blog post, I had a really long think about my answer. So I decided to narrow it down a little more, to just children’s literature. And how could I choose between two?

As a trainee teacher, I love reading children’s literature, and over the past couple of years it’s brought me so much joy! I have two favourites in children’s literature, Wonder by R.J Palacio and The Secret of Nightingale Wood by Lucy Strange.

I first discovered Wonder 2 years ago thanks to Twitter! I thought it sounded interesting and I very quickly added it to my tbr list! It’s about a boy called Auggie, who has a facial disfigurement and is going to school for the first time. The book follows his early experiences in school and how those around him react to this transition. I love this book, because it covers such unique and difficult topics to discuss with children, but in a way that makes it more accessible for them and allows them to connect with a character who is experiencing difficulties. The lessons that can be learnt from this book are immense! You can read a full review here.

I have never really had favourites in other genres, I don’t know why, I just don’t think I’ve found ‘that book’ yet. The one that really sticks with me and I want to re-read constantly. Obviously Harry Potter is another favourite, and whilst I watch the films all the time, I don’t have the urge to constantly re-read the books, maybe the length puts me off a little!

Jenny: I have so many books that I would consider favourites. I have a shelf dedicated to my favourite books (which is slowly getting more and more full with the more books I read!) and when someone asks what my favourite book is, I usually find myself rolling off book after book after book. Some of them include; The Beach by Alex Garland, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson-Walker, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and basically everything that John Green has written.

Check out all the pages Jenny has turned over for quotes she loves!

Last Friday I had the amazingly unbelievable opportunity to interview Lauren Oliver, the New York Times bestselling author of Panic, Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy. Her latest book, Panic, has come out in paperback in the UK this month and after reading it I had some questions about it- as well as some general ones. So without further ado!

Where did the idea of Panic come from?
The idea of Panic came actually from kind on an unlikely source, it came from a rather humorous fairytale by Grimm’s, one of his lesser known ones called, ‘The Boy who went forth to learn about the Shivers’, and I saw it’s an unlikely source only because Panic is not very humorous and it’s pretty gritty and real. But the fairytale, basically, is about a boy who is literally too “simple” i.e. stupid to experience fear and so he basically goes out, his father is kind of embarrassed and ashamed of him, so he goes out to earn his fortune and and ends up managing to spend three nights alone in a haunted house with very comedic results and thus marries a princess, so he ends up very well of. But I started thinking about fear and mechanisms of fear and why some people are able to embrace or at least withstand fear whereas other people kind of move away from it or do all that they can to minimise fear. So that’s where the idea of Panic came from!

I found it really interesting that in Panic you gave Nat some kind of form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Why did you choose that?
I chose it because I wanted to show, I do think mostly everybody is afflicted by, has their own kinds of deamons and things to deal with and I think for Nat that was a way of kind of deepening her character and also understanding to myself why she would play. Essentially she’s playing for money so she can go out to LA but I felt that she also needed to have something else that she too was running from, fears and anxieties that in her case express themselves through a desire to be really in control.

In the first chapter you used phrases like ‘rewind back to the beach and pause,’ and ‘turn the camera slightly’. What made you choose that form of narration?
That’s a good question! I’m not sure, first of all, it’s in the third person which was a departure from some of my earlier books. And I think unconsciously perhaps, kind of in the language of film, there is a spectator element obviously- this is a game that’s enjoyed by the spectators, way more so than the players. I was inspired by shows like Survivor where there’s alliances and people backstabbing each other and I wanted to show the ways that friendships can deteriorate over time because of the competition- so I think I may have unconsciously been parodying the language of spectatorship.

I heard that Panic has been optioned by Universal, which is amazing, is there any news on that?
We’re just waiting on script provisions now actually!

How did you get started in writing?
Basically my love of writing grew out of a lifelong love of reading, as I’m sure many peoples writing did. I mean really, for me, for years, writing was a personal way of exploring worlds that I loved. So I started doing predecessors to fan fiction. When I was a kid I would find a book that I loved and when it ended I just felt so sad that I kept writing it so I was definitely doing a version of fanfiction. And I just never stopped, after that I started writing stories based on my life which again, I think is very typical and it just grew into an extension of stories that interwove my own experiences with the fantastical or imaginative constructs. 

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
I really really wish my advice was less boring than it is, I mean, I wish there were some spell or certain magic trick, but the thing about being a writer is that you don’t actually need any qualifications. You don’t need to study at school, you don’t need a certain degree, you do need to just read and absorb as much as you can and you also need to write. You actually need to put pen to paper and practice.

Do you have any favourite books?
Yeah! I have plenty of favourite books. I love 100 years of Solitude, I love Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, I love Henry James’ The American, the Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, I love Jane Austen- especially Pride and Prejudice, Agatha Christie, the Harry Potter series, His Dark materials. Lots of stuff. I love Roald Dahl. Yeah.

You had Dodge and Nat talk about if a Bear and a Shark had a fight, which is one of my favourite questions to ask people, so if a Bear and Shark had a fight- who would win?
In which medium? Or in a neutral medium? Neutral medium? 
If the shark could be in water and the bear could be on land.
Er- I think the bear would win! I don’t know. But bears aren’t as aggressive. I don’t know, I really don’t know. I mean the thing is that sharks, I feel like they’re clumsier. I think the bear would win. If they were both given equal territory and equal amount of aggression, like they knew they were fighting I think the bear would win.
Yeah, cause bears catch fish don’t they.
And they can go in multiple directions and they’re speedy, they can see and they don’t have that limitation of their eyes being in the side of their head. I would say bear. Is that what you would say?
Yeah, I think I would say bear.