What books are
currently on your nightstand?
The Nuns of
Sant’Ambrogio, a historical account of a nineteenth-century convent scandal
(which I bought partly for the title but which I’m having a hard time slogging
through) and The Golden Apples of the Sun,
a Ray Bradbury anthology—the original paperback that I purchased for 40 cents
back in 1961.
Who is your all-time favorite novelist?
Who indeed? Of Mice
and Men is one of my all-time favorite novels, but I don’t know that
Steinbeck is my all-time favorite novelist. I admire Faulkner’s style (over
someone like, say, Hemingway), and I’ve certainly read most of his work (As I Lay Dying multiple times), but I
don’t know if he’s my favorite novelist, either. I used to read everything that
Kurt Vonnegut wrote, but I’m not as enamored of him as I used to be. My wife
just reminded me about Virginia Woolf, an author whose entire novelist canon I’ve
read and enjoyed (especially To the
Lighthouse).
What book might we be surprised to find on your shelves?
Three Comrades by
Eric Maria Remarque because it is essentially and mostly a romance (as in “love
story”), something I don’t usually gravitate toward. (But I saw and loved the 1938
movie—co-scripted by F. Scott Fitzgerald—when I was about 12 and had to
get/read the book.)
Who is your favorite fictional character?
I struggled with this one and could come up with no
satisfactory answer. I was thinking Odysseus, the original hero on a journey,
but not all of his qualities are admirable. Ditto Yossarian in Catch-22. I suppose I must have one, but
I don’t know who s/he is.
What book do you
return to?
Already mentioned Of
Mice and Men and As I Lay Dying
above. Maybe Stephen King’s It,
Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine—or Nightmares and Geezenstacks, a horror
anthology of short stories by Fredric Brown (the first and greatest
practitioner of what is now called “flash fiction”).
Bio: Anthony
Ambrogio, 66, life-long resident of Detroit (and environs) until January 2015,
when
we moved to Cape Cod. Major claim to fame: Married to poet-novelist Anca
Vlasopolos; two daughters. Minor claim to fame: numerous articles and
reviews in
periodicals like Midnight Marquee, Monsters from the Vault, and Video Watchdog. Strives for fiction-publication
credits but so far has only a very few short stories to show for it. (Photo attached.)
4 comments:
Oh, some of the books you love and return to are such classics!! And a nice variety too!
I just finished The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio and it is indeed a slog. I don't think it's the author (Hubert Wolf's) fault but his book has been marketed and publicized as "racy goings on at a convent" when it's really more about church procedure when investigating claims of sacrilege. Oh well, that's what I get for assuming I was about to read a "sexy nuns" book!
Btw, there's quite a bit in Stewart O'Nan's West of Sunset about Firzgerald's work adapting Three Comrades for the screen.
Nice bookshelves. Faulkner is not my taste but some of the others are.
I see we would disagree on Faulkner and Hemingway, but such is the way of the world. :)
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