Ben Farmer lives in Maryland, where he was born and raised. He graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in history and has worked as a teacher, an editor and in a booking agency for musicians. Evangeline is his first novel, published this month by Overlook.
On your nightstand now:
Most recently I read The Lost City of Z by David Grann and would encourage anyone who isn't squeamish to give it a shot. What follows is a list of books from my shelf that I've already begun, that I intend to finish and that do not directly inform my writing.
The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiv Aitmatov, Mongolia by Jasper Becker, Grange House by Sarah Blake, A.D. 381 by Charles Freeman and The Order of Good Cheer by Bill Gaston.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Hobbit. It is difficult to not also choose this as the book that changed my life.
I'm 28 and still catching up on some older material, so instead I'll mention the five books that I read after I finished my own: The Hamlet by William Faulkner, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson and Daniel Boone by John Mack Faragher.
I'll sometimes refer to myself as having "read" nonfiction books that I've actually only read in part. I won't admit to anything else.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I often single out John Mack Faragher's A Great and Noble Scheme, which is the finest of a number of helpful nonfiction works I read while researching Evangeline. If your interest is something besides Acadian history, give The Sagas of Icelanders from Penguin Classics a try.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I sometimes buy bottles of wine because of the label, but I've never bought a book for its cover. I know that I haven't bought books because of their cover.
Book that changed your life:
Instead of "changed my life," let's say, "ratcheted up my expectations for what a novel should be." I could choose either Heart of Darkness or One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I read, sandwiched around Hamlet, my junior year of high school. I also read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild in that class. Everyone should be so lucky.
Favorite line from the last novel you read:
The spring rising of a glacial lake strands the characters in a flooded house in Housekeeping. Any line from the fourth chapter would suit, but here's a memorable early passage:
And here is a single line, from later in the novel: "For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I am able to answer this question easily with movies, where my answer would be The Royal Tenebaums. Using that criterion--a work where I was unprepared for the cleverness of the humor--I might select The Sportswriter by family favorite Richard Ford.