The year in author interviews – Orange County Register

Looking back at some of the Q&As from The Book Pages. (Covers courtesy of the publishers)

By Erik Pedersen

The end of the year is a time of tradition, appreciation and exhaustion.

As we come up on the second anniversary of The Book Pages – it seems like I was just writing about its first – I’d like to thank you, whether you’ve been reading this weekly newsletter from day one or just stumbled onto it. I’m grateful for this growing community of readers, and I look forward each week to bringing you an interview, essay or occasional book coincidence.

We covered a lot in 2023. Along with reporting on LA’s forgotten voice Henri Coulette and interviews with writers S.A. Cosby, Colson Whitehead, Don Winslow, Ann Leckie, Lou Berney, Backlisted podcasters, and crime-writing brothers Lee and Tod Goldberg, I also got to participate in the 28-year “Finnegans Wake” reading group as it read the final page (and saw how even the New York Times followed our story). That’s nowhere near all of it.

It’s been an adventure talking with writers, publishers and book people, such as booksellers Nikki High, Jhoanna Belfer, Annabelle Chang, and bringing those conversations to you. And not just my own , I’m also grateful for contributions and input in the book coverage from colleagues and contributors Michael Schaub, Diya Chacko, Peter Larsen, Liz Ohanesian, Stuart Miller, Allyson Vergara, Kelli Fadroski, Jeff Miller, Samantha Dunn, Charlie Vargas, Jocelyn Pedersen and more.

So this week, let’s take look back at some of the author Q&As we’ve done in 2023 as we prepare for some great books in 2024. Next week, I’ll have more.

Don Winslow

The author of 23 novels including “The Winter of Frankie Machine,” “The Force” and the Cartel Trilogy, Winslow announced that he would retire from writing novels after the publication of his final trilogy, which began with “City on Fire.” Winslow talked about the second novel in the trilogy, “City of Dreams,” and the books and people that have made an impact on his life.

Q. Danny Ryan, the protagonist of the “City on Fire” trilogy, is trying to leave one career for a different line of work. Do you see parallels between your retirement and his desire?

Don Winslow: That’s the first time anyone’s asked me that. [laughs] No, to tell you the truth, that’s the first time it’s occurred to me. I mean, I’ve often written about characters who are trying to get out of what they’re doing. My first five books are about a guy named Neal Carey, who was trying to be a graduate student in English literature, but he was also a private eye and work kept calling him away. Later on, I wrote a book called “The Winter of Frankie Machine” about a retired hitman who gets pulled back unwittingly, so maybe it’s a theme with me. But no, that parallel hadn’t occurred to me until you just mentioned it.

Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea, the author of 19 books, including “The Hummingbird’s Daughter,” “The Devil’s Highway,” and “The House of Broken Angels,” spoke with Michael Schaub about the new novel, “Good Night, Irene.”

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

There is a character named Garcia in the second half of the novel. He goes by the nickname “Zoot.” Since this takes place during World War II, it should be clear that back home, he is a zoot-suiter. What nobody knows is that Garcia was the co-star of my very first novel, “In Search of Snow” — he appeared in 1994 and is still in print. In that novel, he alludes to his World War II experiences but never gives details. That backstory is explained in “Good Night, Irene.” I’ve been holding on to it for almost 30 years.

Leigh Bardugo

Bardugo is the author of the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology. She responded to our questions while on book tour for “Hell Bent.”

Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

“The Shadow Hero” by Gene Luen Yang. It’s the story of the first Chinese superhero, told in a very Golden Age of Comics way. I’ve given it to kids, adults, even my mom, who I don’t think has ever picked up a comic book. It has heart, humor, beautiful mythology.

If you don’t find this graphic novel delightful, I don’t think we can be friends.

Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai, the author of the novels “The Hundred-Year House,” “The Borrower,” and “The Great Believers,” discussed her latest “I Have Some Questions for You” with Michael Schaub, and also took the Book Pages Q&A.

Q. What are you reading now?

I’m doing this thing where I’m reading my way around the world, reading 84 books in translation. It’s a memorial for my father who died in 2020. He was a poet and also a literary translator. He lived to be 84, so I decided I’m going to read 84 books. I’m six books in, and the one I’m about to start is a Turkish novel called “Madonna in a Fur Coat” by Sabahattin Ali.

I started in Hungary, because my dad was Hungarian, and I went through a little bit of Europe. My last book was Greek. I’m going to read this Turkish book, and then I’m going to do Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and then down the east coast of Africa. I’m putting it out on social media, and then I’m writing about each of them in my Substack. I’ve had people reading with me, which is really fun. It’s just going to be this long adventure.

Dr. Abraham Verghese

Known for his hugely successful novel “Cutting for Stone,” Dr. Abraham Verghese spoke with writer Diya Chacko about the book, “The Covenant of Water.”

Q. Is there a book you always recommend to other readers?

Abraham Verghese: Yeah, I think my all-time favorite book is “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I’ve read that many, many times. It’s just a beautiful love story.

Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle, who has written novels, novellas and short stories, spoke with Michael Schaub about his new novel, “Lone Women.”

Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that stayed with you from a recent reading?

The grandson of one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves is named Fountain Hughes. He gave a recorded interview in 1949 as part of the Works Progress Administration program. You can listen to his voice as car horns sometimes play in the background. Much as some people like to discuss slavery as some ancient event, it remained in the living history of this man, and by recording it, it becomes a part of our living history. Past isn’t even past, as the saying goes. Learned this in a book called “Darkly” by Leila Taylor.

Kelly Link

Link, author of the collections “Magic for Beginners,” “Stranger Things Happen,” Pretty Monsters,” and “Get in Trouble,” talked to Michael Schaub about her latest book, “White Cat, Black Dog.”

Q: Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?

Before I could read to myself (I was slow to learn), my mother read all of the Narnia books to me. At the same time, my father was reading me Tolkien. Finally, they explained to me that if I would learn how to read, I could pick those two writers up anytime I wanted, and revisit those worlds. It was a persuasive argument.

Rafael Frumkin

Rafael Frumkin, whose latest novel is “Confidence,” spoke with Michael Schaub about the book, scams and more in the Q&A.

Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

I’m always recommending “God Says No” by James Hannaham because it’s so funny and dark and just kind of perfect for the current moment despite being published in 2009. I also love Jaimy Gordon’s “Lord of Misrule” and C.E. Morgan’s “The Sport of Kings.” They’re both books about horse racing but they’re also about so much more than horse racing: race, class, gender, and ill-begotten power.

Warren Zanes

Warren Zanes, a member of Boston’s the Del Fuegos, a solo artist and scholar, spoke with Michael Schaub about his book “Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

Q: Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?

Yes. My mother gave me a copy of Jim Harrison’s “Legends of the Fall,” which I then gave, tattered, to my eldest son on his 18th birthday. Jim Harrison turned me into a real reader, got me ready for college, made me want books. His characters were so alive to me. They were often in some kind of turmoil but also loved food, literature, beauty . . . the good stuff. I wanted to be in Harrison’s worlds, so I read everything of his I could find. By the end of that, I was a reader.

Dan Jones

Dan Jones, well-known author of bestselling histories “The Plantagenets” and “The Templars,” answered questions about “Essex Dogs,” his debut novel set during the Hundred Years’ War.

Q. You’re a Guns N’ Roses fan. What’s your favorite bit of GnR history?

Maybe the first or second album I remember owning was “Appetite For Destruction,” so I guess that dates me somewhat. I was 10 years old when the “Use Your Illusion” records came out. I used to stare at the band pics in my bedroom in a tiny village in rural England and wonder how on earth one could enter that rock and roll world. Well, cut forward 30 years and I went to see GnR play in Seville, Spain last year, by very kind invitation of my buddy Duff McKagan, who is not only one of the kindest and best human beings alive, but also a very knowledgeable history reader. After the show, we took a tour around Seville’s famous cathedral, then drove up to Cordoba to see the great mosque-cathedral there. So it turned out the way to access the rock and roll world was to study hard in school, take history at university and write a dozen books about the Middle Ages. Life is full of mysteries.

Authors Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child are the authors of “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.” (Photo: Deborah Feingold / Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing)

Preston & Child

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are coauthors of the Pendergast series, including their latest, “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.” Each had a go at our Q&A, and the responses follow.

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

Douglas Preston: That’s a good question! “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng” takes place in 1880 in New York City, at the height of the Gilded Age. Constance Greene attends a grand ball in a mansion on Fifth Avenue where she is cornered by a persistent, plain-looking, highly intelligent and sarcastic teenage girl of 18 years of age, named Edith Jones. Jones disparages the ball and makes witty comments about it all. The conversation turns to literature and Jones mentions that her mother has forbidden her to read novels. Constance is shocked and tells Jones to disobey her mother and read novels in secret, hiding them under her bed. Here is the fact that no one—or very few—know about Edith Jones: she is the future Edith Wharton.

Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind?

Lincoln Child: “The Silence of the Lambs” pushed all my buttons. It’s a great feeling, perhaps ironically so, to feel you’re in the clutches of a writer infinitely better and more intelligent than yourself, who’s at least five steps ahead already of what you speculate might be lying in wait.

Iris Yamashita

Iris Yamashita is an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter for the movie “Letters from Iwo Jima,” and her debut novel is “City Under One Roof.”

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

I often talk about the Alice in Wonderland references in “City Under One Roof.” What nobody knows is that in my writers’ group where I sometimes workshop material, we jokingly made a pact that we would always include the magic number 42 in our books. (Lewis Carroll, who was a mathematician, often referenced the number in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” such as Rule Forty-two: “All persons more than a mile high to leave the court,” and there are 42 illustrations in the book.) So far, I have been the only one in my group to publish a book, so it’s just me at the moment living up to the pact.

Matthew Salesses

Matthew Salesses, the author of “The Sense of Wonder” and other books, spoke with Michael Schaub about his reading life.

Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written just for you (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?

Most of the books I’ve read were definitely not written for me. I grew up reading about White kids in the English countryside! It’s rare that a book feels like it was written just for me. Maybe the first one I can remember is some of the essays in “Outsiders Within,” edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Sun Yung Shin, and Julia Chinyere Oparah.

Jason Culp

Jason Culp, the audiobook narrator of “The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams,” responds to the Book Pages Q&A.

Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?

Sure, my very first one, which was a book by Danielle Steel, in 1996. I was a busy voiceover guy and got offered to read this book, and I was very blithe about it. How hard could it be? I’d been reading things on tape just for my own pleasure since I was around 10 years old, so you could say I was made for it, which made me arrogantly confident. I barely looked at the script before showing up to the studio, which was upstairs in Carnegie Hall in New York. Then, about a half-hour into the reading, I began to sweat, realizing what a mistake it had been to think it would be so easy — all the characters to keep track of, understanding pace, dynamics — all the things I’ve spent the last 25 years learning how to do. I faked my way through that session, but was so traumatized by it that I over-prepared for years afterward! I would read a whole book on tape at home and try to listen to it before I showed up to record it for producers. Now of course I’ve gained a little experience, so I don’t have to do that anymore.

Susanna Hoffs

Susanna Hoffs, the co-founder of the Bangles and author of “This Bird Has Flown,” talked to Michael Schaub about the novel.

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

Susanna Hoffs: It was a turn-on to write.

More books, authors and bestsellers

Here are some of the 20 books coming out in early 2024 that we’re looking forward to reading. (Courtesy of the publishers: Flatiron, Riverhead, Viking, Doubleday, Counterpoint, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Random House, Belt, Harper Collins)

2024 TBR

20 highly anticipated books coming in the first quarter of next year to read. READ MORE

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Holiday romance

12 Christmas and holiday romance novels to warm your winter or give as gifts. READ MORE

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The week’s bestsellers

The top-selling books at your local independent bookstores. READ MORE

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Email me at epedersen@scng.com with “ERIK’S BOOK PAGES” in the subject line and I may include your comments in an upcoming newsletter.

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

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