Katherine (Kate) Matthen is assistant sales manager at Indiana
University Press. A librarian with degrees in comparative literature,
theatre and drama and library science, she enjoys playing violin in
orchestras, reading fiction under the Indiana sun, frolicking with her
fat black cat and celebrating a year-around fascination with Halloween.
Here she answers questions we put to people in the book business:
On your nightstand now:
Tonight I'm starting Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. I never read Devil in the White City,
but my friend gave me this book a few weeks ago and I've been
instructed to read it. This is the same girl who turned me on to Isabel
Allende, Alice Sebold and Jodi Picoult, so I believe her.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
Your top five authors:
C.S. Lewis, William Shakespeare, James Herriot, Jane Austen, Helen Fielding
Books you've faked reading:
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce's Ulysses.
Book you are an evangelist for:
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Book you've bought for the cover:
I shouldn't say this, but it was one of ours. Saving the Big Cats: The Exotic Feline Rescue Center by Stephen D. McCloud
Book that changed your life:
The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by John E. Sarno
Favorite line from a book:
"But, good Kate, mock me mercifully, the rather, gentle princess, because I love thee cruelly."--Henry V by William Shakespeare. (Yes, it's a play. I don't care.)
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Most highly underrated book ever read:
The Green Mile by Stephen King
Book that made you permanently disgusted:
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I've been a vegetarian since.