Meg Waite Clayton is the author of nine novels, including “The Race for Paris,” “The Last Train to London,” and “The Postmistress of Paris.” For her latest book, “Typewriter Beach,” Clayton focuses on Hollywood and Carmel-by-the-Sea, where she lives part-time. The author spoke with our colleague Michael Schaub, and here she responds to the Q&A.
Q: How do you decide what to read next?
I read a lot of books before they are officially published, which I really enjoy. I’m often sent books I’m asked to support, and I do as much of that as I can; it is so hard for any author to get a start, so I’m especially sympathetic to debuts. And I try to read books by writer friends before they come out so I can give them love on the publication days. I try to read my neighborhood book group read each month, even if I can’t make the gathering. And I’m always reading for research or in search of ideas for new novels.
SEE ALSO: Like books? Get our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more
I’m a slow reader, so that’s about 95% of what I read. But I always ask booksellers what they are reading, because they know books and what is coming. And I read reviews and summer read lists and the like.
Q: Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
Well, I have four brothers, so my early reading was “The Hardy Boys” and a lot of biographies of U.S. presidents.
So it may say something that the first two books I remember having a big impact were female-protagonist books: “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.
Both books were put in my hands by librarians, and left me feeling understood in ways I hadn’t before. I suppose that is why I’m always trying to write stories about strong women who inspire me and, I hope, inspire readers too.
Q: Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
I have been listening to audiobooks since they were called “books on tape” and you had to check them out of the library! I started listening when I first started writing myself, as we lived on a horse farm outside Baltimore, and it was a long drive to everything. Also, I spent a lot of time on a tractor back then, cutting our fields.
I love them, in part because of that ability to read and multitask. But I also just love being read to. It’s nearly as comforting now as when I was a kid with my mom reading to me, or a mom reading to my sons.
I used to do a column for the San Francisco Chronicle reviewing them. And narrators make such a difference. A good narrator can make a book I’ve had trouble getting into suddenly sing, and a bad one can ruin even the best book. I’d listen to almost anything narrated by John Lee except my own “The Last Train to London”; it’s always disconcerting to hear my own words in another voice after all that time of having them only in my head. Ditto for Gilli Messer, who I first discovered listening to Anna Quindlen’s “After Annie” and narrates “Typewriter Beach.” And I adore Kate Reading and Edouardo Ballerini.
Q: Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?
I lean heavily toward female protagonists, and I do read more historical fiction than anything, especially books set in the first half of the 20th century. But they have to be really well written, and true to the actual history.
I am also forever going back to the classics. There is a reason they are classic, and I always learn something new about writing when I read them.
Q: Do you have a favorite book or books?
My desert island books are “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Middlemarch.” But I also keep a list of a dozen or so classics and a dozen or so more contemporary novels I love on my website.
Q: Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
My mom made me a reader, by being such a voracious reader herself. I so miss being able to share books with her.
I’ve written often about the impact the Sierra Madre, California, librarians had on me the summer between fifth and sixth grade; they freed me from the tyranny of The Hardy Boys by putting female protagonist books in my hands. That was the summer I began to imagine becoming a writer myself, in no small part thanks to them. I wish I knew their names so I could thank them.
My eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Johnson, was the first person to encourage me to submit my writing for publication. It was a poem I’d written for class, and I sent it to the only place I knew published poetry, which was Seventeen Magazine. They rejected it. No doubt I’d submitted it on lined paper in purple ink, but I took from that one rejection when I was fourteen that I wasn’t a writer, and it was twenty years before I ever submitted anything again. But I still have that poem with her A+ on the corner. Funny, the things that help you believe in yourself. That made me a reader of poetry, which I love to read but don’t write.
And I had the great fortune early in my writing life to be mentored by Alice McDermott. I learned so much from her about how to read as a writer, and how to write, and what to aspire to. Every time I think I’m finished with a novel, I read through imagining Alice reading, and I get back to work to try to make it better.
Q: If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
Who do you find the most compelling characters in literature, and would you want to be more like them?