When I was a kid, my mum had a lot of Dumas books in the house, and she's from France originally. My mother had one particular Dumas book that was a family heirloom - this old, beat-up 1938 edition of 'The Count of Monte Cristo' in French. She came to America after losing her parents in World War II as a little kid.
I've always loved Jane Austen's writing.
My mum was never too keen on TV, so we kids all went to the library and got books out. Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.
'Finnegans Wake,' 'Alice and Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' live on my bedside table back home in London.
I always try to avoid looking at the section where my books would be shelved, but I do know that my most reliable neighbor to the right is Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', which is dispiriting. That's a book I don't want to re-read.
If you take 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' as books, one is written for children, and one is an adult's book.
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.
One doesn't read Jane Austen; one re-reads Jane Austen.
It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.
Mark Twain's Roughing It is a book that many people don't know about, but I highly recommend to anybody at any age.
I always read a lot as a kid and I'd spend long periods of time in my room reading... I wasn't reading anything great until I got older, but I used to read Agatha Christie mysteries and all of Ian Fleming's 'James Bond' novels.
Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' has been targeted by censors for promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' for promoting racism. Gee, where does that leave the kids?
I have never loved any writer as much as Hemingway.
Let's face it: the 19th century really was the great age of the novel - Melville, Hawthorne, Tolstoy. These are the people I really admire.
'Bleak House' remains a great novel for me, and I love 'David Copperfield.'
If you ask me, I would love to see works like Sharat Chandra Chatterjee's 'Badi Didi,' Munshi Premchand's 'Nirmala,' and Phanishwar Nath Renu's 'Maila Anchal' come alive on small screen.
I read a lot when I was at college, but really, only a few of Dickens's books work for me.
I loved Anne Rice's 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'The Vampire Lestat'. I found a copy of 'Interview' when I was in seventh grade at a garage sale for 25 cents. It had a crazy cover.
I dare you to read a book this weekend! War and Peace? To Kill a Mocking Bird? Catcher in the Rye? The Heart is a Lonely Hunter? For Whom the Bell Tolls? As i lay Dying? Giovanni's Room? The Bell Jar? These books changed my life. #artforfreedom #rebelheart
My theory in the '90s was that I didn't want to take a Jane Austen book I loved and reduce it to a 90-minute movie. The Emma Thompson-Ang Lee 'Sense and Sensibility' was beautiful, but other ones, I didn't think justice was being done. It's not a slam dunk to adapt these books.
My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.
I grew up reading 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Pride and Prejudice' - girly kind of books.
