Randy Brownlee was the founder and owner with Alice Osborne of Queen
Anne Avenue Books, Seattle, Wash., until 1997. He's "now a public
servant working my way through middling management levels of the Austin
Public Library, Austin, Texas. Library work is a lot like bookselling
without the cloud of commerce hanging over your head." Randy answers
questions we occasionally put to people in the industry:
On your nightstand now:
Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon, The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine,
The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater and Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee.
Favorite books when you were a child:
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sydney and The Tight
White Collar by Grace Metalious, the latter pilfered from my mother's
nightstand.
Your top five prose fiction authors:
Henry James, Edith Wharton, George Eliot . . . This is where I get
stopped every time I try to make a list like this. Hundred(s) more,
living and dead.
Book you've faked reading:
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. I kept telling myself and everyone
else I loved it, and then about three-quarters of the way through I
stopped reading, never to return. Unfortunately I did not stop
talking about it as well.
Favorite opening from a book:
This is indeed the saddest story I have ever read.
"Her first name was India ~~~ she was never able to get used to it. It
seemed to her that her parents must have been thinking of someone else
when they named her. Or were they hoping for another sort of
daughter? As a child she was always on the point of inquiring,
but time passed, and she never did."--From Mrs. Bridge by Evan S.
Connell
Book you are an evangelist for:
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael
Pollan. A startling account, without polemic, of what and how we eat,
from source to table. It made me think about food, where it came from,
how it was transformed, and the journey it took to get to my table. It
is one of the most enlightening, entertaining, and life-altering books
I have ever read.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Sudden Rain by Maritta Wolff, actually for the cover and the author's
back story and the synopsis. I love those literary adult soapers with
lots of drinking and deception.
Book that changed your life:
Eternal Fire by Calder Willingham, again from my mother's nightstand,
she had the best stuff. It led me up the slippery slope to puberty's
door.
Book you most want to read or listen to again for the first time:
Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey. Does listening count as reading?
Yes, I say emphatically, and this book proves it, hilarious and
horrifying in equal measure.