Highest Rated Comments


CatherynneMValente18 karma

What a cool question! Someone who is patient and open to weirdness and won't get fed up because I used a three syllable word. Someone who is a Reader--who has read a lot of other things in a wide variety of fields. Someone who wants to be changed by books, who is passionate about stories.

Umberto Eco once said that he spends the first 100 pages of any of his books teaching the reader to read the rest of the novel. I've always liked that thought. Every book you read wants to teach you to be the kind of reader who reads that book.

I look for readers who read like I do--with appetite and ardor.

CatherynneMValente16 karma

Easy answer? Spiders. Yeah, yeah, cliche, but I seriously lose my dignity in the presence of any spider...or insect.

More serious answer? Going back. Both personally and societally. Having progress revoked--having to return to a situation that was less free, less kind, less private, where less was allowed. Returning to the past isn't, for me, a dream to keep me warm at night. It's a nightmare. The 50s were awful for women, POC, queer folk of all types, for personal agency in general. And I've certainly had a "50s" of my own life, where everything seemed fine, but all the smiles were forced and I had no ability to determine my own fate. Tumbling backward is my biggest fear, on both macro and micro levels.

CatherynneMValente10 karma

I usually have a special playlist for the particular novel I'm working on. I listen to a lot of acoustic music with good lyrics--I like the serendipity of a word or a line breaking through my concentration at an elegant moment. I can't listen to anything to aggressive while I work or I get distracted. One of my big comfort listening albums is the FFVIII soundtrack.

CatherynneMValente10 karma

Shirley Jackson, Hope Mirlees, China Mieville, Christopher Barzak, John Crowley, Theodora Goss, Kelly Link, Charles Yu, Nnedi Okorafor, Genevieve Valentine, Diane Wakoski.

CatherynneMValente9 karma

The one that leaps immediately to mind is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, in part because the narrator is so disturbed and you live with her for the length of the story, in her head, and partly because of the ending, which is wonderful and upsetting at once.

But I did read like three Jack Ketchum books back to back last year and felt as though I'd never be cheerful again.