Olive Mullet, who has family roots in Italy, was a long-time English faculty member at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, where she continues to live with her husband Dan. She reviews books for various publications as well as the website (very useful for writers and readers) called New Pages.
l. What were your favorite books as a child/and or teenager? Can you recall why these were your favorites?
The first book I ever bought with my own money was Dickens’ Great Expectations. Dickens is in my blood since he was my grandmother’s (for whom I am named) favorite author. Every Christmastime I read a new Dickens, a breath of fresh air after all the contemporary writers I read for book reviewing and book club selections.
A guilty pleasure book was Anna Marie Selinko’s Desiree about Napoleon’s first love, Desiree who became Queen of Sweden. It was because of this book that Napoleon became my “first love.”
2. Growing up, were there many books in your house? Was reading encouraged? Were you read to?
Books were the lifeblood of our family. There were always books around, and my most pleasant memories are going to the local library and picking out books. I remember selecting James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr. Chips. I loved that author and read everything by him.
Before I knew how to read, my mother read me Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and later she quizzed me on all the Oz books. I think she influenced my becoming a book reviewer. I think reading aloud to children is crucial and may even be the cause of my loving audio books so much. My mother used to have reading parties when she was young, inviting her friends to come around and read with her, a mostly silent party. She often read on a favorite tree branch. To this day when my siblings and I get together we spend long periods of time reading in each other’s company.
3. As a child, teenager, or adult, did you seek out books that adults discouraged or forbade you from reading? Which ones?
I actually don’t remember any forbidden fruit. No one stopped me from reading anything.
4. Any guilty or not so guilty pleasure reading as an adult?
I didn’t used to like murder mysteries, but recently I am enjoying ones set in Florence, Italy where Mother and I lived for a while during the 50s. Magdalen Nabb’s series starting with Death of an Englishman are wonderful because they are set not that far from the time I lived there and certainly during Mother’s time there. Since Magdalen Nabb, the British former potter who lived in Florence died in the 70s, I have discovered another British writer who lived in Florence called Christobel Kent whose work I am enjoying.
5. How have your reading habits changed in the last years or the recent past?
I used to enjoy fantasy books for adults or even for YA including Harry Potter, but I have lost interest in them. Since I no longer teach literature in college, I have happily given up Flannery O’Connor and haven’t read many nineteenth century novels except for Dickens.
6. Once you’ve started a book, do you feel obligated to finish it?
Unfortunately yes, mostly. I have this idea that I should just read to p.50 and if I don’t like it, stop. However, a lot of books don’t get really started until after 100 pages or more. I have found some getting interesting after 200 pages! I have rarely given up a book, which I really should do, given how many books I have still unread.
I would love advice on how to eliminate books.
7. The last book that made you angry, either at the author or at content in the book? The last book that moved you to tears? Brought you to laugh out loud?
That was Ian McEwan’s Atonement. When I first read it, I liked it but clearly did not see what was happening at the end. I consider the ending a trick on the reader, leading the reader along until the final revelation about that narrator. Of course, the author would probably retort that Briony has not changed. But it is the change to a first person narrator at the end (which we do not have during the rest of the novel) that makes us on the side of that narrator, and this “I” narrator conceals who she is. I threw the book across the room after the second reading.
I also did the same with Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner mainly because I was so angry with the main character.
The last book that moved me to tears. Strangely that was Ian McEwan’s Children Act. He is a great writer with this book because for the first time, he is not just a master craftsman, beautiful stylist and character delineator, but the main character in Children Act, whom I did not like in the beginning, I felt moved with her transformation at the end. McEwan moved me to tears for the first time in his fiction.
The last book that brought me to laugh out loud?
Without a doubt, James Hamilton-Paterson’s Rancid Pansies. It is very hard to find humorous fiction these days and that one did it. We need humor so I am always looking for funny books, but we all have a different funny bone. My husband finds many more things funny than I do, yet he did not find Rancid Pansies that funny. Only one of my friends agreed with me about the book.
8. Do you read mainly printed books? Do you listen to audio books, or read on devices such as e-readers? Do you notice differences in your reading experiences with print and electronic devices?
I read all of the above, and it really is a matter of whether I want the book as a keeper to have the printed version. If I am not sure or if I know the reader is excellent or the style worth listening to, I will get it on Audible which has fabulous readers. Then I am sure to finish the book once I start it. Audio is perfect for many non-thinking activities like doing laundry or washing up. And Kindle is for lighter books and to save room on the bookshelf or for books to travel with. I actually use my Pad for Kindle books because of the backlighting, which helps me not disturb my husband when he wants to sleep before I do. I have also used an Axis Reader from our library but that means it disappears after three weeks, and you have to renew it then if it’s not finished.
I do think the book does not stay with you as much if it is listened to or maybe also on Kindle or e-reader. Also frankly it is hard to find earlier passages in the book even with a bookmark on the Kindle or e-reader and certainly impossible on the audio except by finding the chapter.
9. Permission to pontificate. What one or two books should everyone read, and why?
I read mostly contemporary foreign writers. But a classic for me is my favorite writer’s novella — Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a much more concise handling of his magnificent style and powerful actions than even One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Most recently I would recommend Elena Ferrante’s 1600-page tetralogy (My Brilliant Friend, Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of The Lost Child) set in a lower class Naples neighborhood, going from the 50s through 60 years of a lifelong female friendship. It is realistic about such an intense, dependent and competitive friendship between two girls/women who do their best to leave or rise above the male dominated and impoverished world in which they were born. It follows Italian history and political developments during these years with not just the two friends but the families in the neighborhood, which is itself a character in the book.
10. Who or what was the strongest influence on making you a regular reader? Teacher, relative, friend, etc.
Probably my mother who didn’t go to college but was self-educated and an expert on British history. We used to discuss and argue about the two princes in the tower and whether Richard III or Henry VII was responsible for their death. Henry, we decided, was.
11. Have you been part of book clubs or book club discussion groups?
I run a book club and have for many years. It includes men, which is vital for their perspective. I remember calling an absent male book club member on the phone to come because he had to defend his sex for the main character in Richard Ford’s Independence Day. In my book club I select the choices of books, which the group has to vote on. That chore fell to me since no one else wanted to do it. We meet in each other’s houses but fortunately for the hosting and the book selection we only meet about 3 or 4 times a year. We read recent fiction. I feel discussion groups are important — otherwise you just read and often forget what you read or don’t get a chance to voice your opinions about what you’ve read.
12. Do you read mainly in one genre?
Yes, mostly current fiction and mostly foreign fiction. I read for my reviewing in newpages.com, also reviewing our local library’s books in their newsletter and for our local newspaper, summer reading and Christmas gift buys (again new fiction).
13. Name one or two of the most difficult yet worthwhile book you’ve read.
Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, which is about North Korea, the details from people who have escaped the country. It is well structured and unforgettable.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace might be difficult for the novels’ length and number of character. But Anna Karenina is such a revelation as to the focus of the novel, not on Anna Karenina but on Levin, a persona for Tolstoy. The ending is not what we expect from the movies and is much more meaningful. War and Peace is fascinating for the revelation about why the French lost the war in the Napoleonic wars and for the portrait of Napoleon. Also Pierre, the main character, changes as any human would over years, which is why we need the novel’s length. I am particularly grateful for reading these books as a mature reader. My French teacher was right when he said great books require life’s experiences to understand them.
14. You’re by yourself for a month. Which books do you take?
Dickens’ Bleak House and maybe the two Tolstoy novels mentioned above. I might also bring Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan tetralogy. Great books are worth rereading because you get more out of them each time you read them.
15. You know you’ll die in one month. You’re still capable of reading. Will you still read? If so, what book or books?
I might want something lighter but also totally absorbing. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Bachman comes to mind, but maybe better would be short stories like Alice Munro’s. I would probably have to see where I am in reading at that time.
16. Can you articulate something about why you read? Habit? To be spellbound? For a larger view of things?
Probably the larger view of things. I am constantly looking for insights about life, truths that come out in ah-ha moments. Fiction writers seem best able to offer such revelations.
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