I like Victorian children's novels extremely a lot. If I would say I collect anything, that's what I'll hunt for now and again at old book stores.
Charles Dickens is a lot of fun to read but it's not obscure, and that's just fine.
Like every child growing up in America, I read 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' I liked them well enough, but I didn't love them.
I read a lot when I was at college, but really, only a few of Dickens's books work for me.
There's no shortage of orphans in 19th-century literature, but it's hard to find a single happy, communicative, functional parental relationship in the whole of 'Great Expectations,' even among the minor characters.
I'm obsessed with the Victorian novel. I can't help it. I feel like the novel then was so powerful and agile in ways I'm not sure it is now.
As an artist, my wheelhouse is 19th-century literature. I want to write realist novels in a Victorian sense, and the writers I admire in that style tend to do omniscient narration.
I grew up on Jane Austen novels and was a massive literature fanatic when I was a kid - I read everything I could get my hands on.
I love 19th century fiction and, in particular, fiction written by and about women.
Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.
A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book.
Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.
Ivan Turgenev's novella 'First Love' is one of the most perfect things ever written.
