Meet the Reviewers: Shannon
As we start on this blog adventure, we thought that it would be great for you to get to know our reviewers one-on-one! We feel like we are all blog readers because we are nosy and like a peek into other people’s lives, so in order to sate that curiosity, a brief Q&A!
Name: Shannon
Location: Manhattan
How did you become such a reader? My parents are huge readers—there are hundreds and hundreds of books in my childhood home. Trips to the library were a big treat when I was growing up; I remember checking out 10 BSC books at once and being sad that that was the limit. The Scholastic Book Fair was also a favorite destination. We took a lot of road trips as a family when I was growing up, and my sisters and I would always just camp out with books in the backseats.
Favorite book as a grown up? favorite book as a kid? My all-time favorite book is "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I first read it in middle school and have reread it every few years since. Other favorites as a kid were The Babysitter's Club, Sweet Valley High, anything Judy Blume, Megan McCafferty's Jessica Darling series, and Harry Potter.
What’s your favorite place to read? Honestly, my couch—my living room gets great light. Or, in warmer months, there is a coffee shop/bar on my corner that has seats right at the window, so I'll camp out there with a book and a glass of wine. And of course, a blanket in Central Park.
What’s the “weirdest” place you read regularly? Does the New York City subway count? I have a fairly long commute so I usually have a book with me.
What book do you want to see made into a movie? What’s your dream cast for it? I just finished reading "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" so now I'm dying to see that made into a movie. I could see Rita Moreno as Evelyn Hugo and Tessa Thompson as the narrator.
What character in fiction do you most relate to? I'm cheating and going with a nonfiction "character." I thought of a few fiction characters (Kristy Thomas because I'm a control freak, Hermoine Granger because she's a know-it-all who loves to read) (wow I'm really selling myself...)
But ultimately, the woman whose writing I relate to most is Nora Ephron:
“I'd known since I was a child that I was going to live in New York eventually, and that everything in between would just be an intermission. I'd spent all those years imagining what New York was going to be like. I thought it was going to be the most exciting, magical, fraught-with-possibility place that you could ever live; a place where if you really wanted something you might be able to get it; a place where I'd be surrounded by people I was dying to know; a place where I might be able to become the only thing worth being, a journalist. And I'd turned out to be right.”
What book still haunts you because you didn’t finish it? I was assigned “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” in high school and could NOT get through it. The movie was also not interesting to 16-year-old me.
What won’t you read? I will read pretty much anything but I don't typically reach for sci-fi or fantasy first.
