Booking It, Stephanie-Style

I enjoy reading Stephanie's Monday "Booking It" posts on her blog, Pointed Meanderings, and often feel compelled to respond to the same questions, but for one reason or another never seem to get around to it. Here are today's questions though--all about favorites--and, as my transition into working on my writing for the morning, here are my answers, many of them (of course) food-related.

1. Do you have a favorite author?

I have many. Had you asked me in college, I would have said Ernest Hemingway. A few years ago, the answer would have been Janet Evanovich for her Stephanie Plum novels. Currently I'd have to say Anne Tyler. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is phenomenal, and Back When We Were Grown-Ups is amazing. Breathing Lessons, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, is incredible, though not my favorite book of hers. I'm actually teaching Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in a comp class this spring; I hope my students like it, as I did when I first read it in college. I also love Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek, Caramelo--she's also at the top of my list. And Nigella Lawson, for her food writing--beautiful.

2. Have you read everything he or she has written?

No for all, though I probably come closest to having read everything for Hemingway and Cisneros. 

3. Did you like everything?

Yes for all. Woman Hollering Creek is my least favorite Cisneros text, as were, honestly, To Have or Have Not and The Old Man and the Sea. But there are none that I wouldn't read again to see what I think now.

4. How about a least favorite author?

Um, Faulkner. Sorry.

5. An author you wanted to like, but didn't?

Hmm. I'm sure there have been plenty, but I probably never finished the book and just don't remember right now. Maybe Cynthia Shearer (The Celestial Jukebox)?