photo: Trina Turl Photography |
Ruby Lang writes warm, witty contemporary romance featuring multicultural characters and their rambunctious families. Her screwball rom-com Wild Life, written under the pen name Opal Wei, was called "breathtaking" by the New York Times Book Review. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times and Bitch. She and her family are recent transplants to Toronto. Her contemporary hockey romance, Hard Knocks (Canelo US), is an enemies-to-lovers romance with a neurologist and professional ice hockey player.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Cat Sebastian said Hard Knocks was the horniest book about stadium economics anyone was ever likely to read.
On your nightstand now:
I'm just starting Van Hoang's The Monstrous Misses Mai, which is about a quartet of young, Asian American woman in the late 1950s who receive a magical (and sinister) offer they can't refuse.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I read L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (and the whole series) so much, the spine cracked and pages fell out. To this day, I still perk up when someone mentions puffed sleeves.
Your top five authors:
I love Mavis Gallant's short story collections for their perfect observations and sharp prose. Home Truths and Varieties of Exile are particular favorites.
There's a Jane Austen novel for every season and mood. Right now, we're heading into autumnal Persuasion season with a brief Northanger Abbey stopover for Halloween.
Susanna Kearsley's books, especially The Winter Sea, are for when I want to be emotionally destroyed.
All of Sherry Thomas's work--the historical romances, the YA fantasies like The Burning Sky, the Lady Sherlock mysteries--start out witty, a little detached, until she wallops you with feelings. I keep a few of her backlist unread so that I'll have something new-to-me to savor in case of emergency.
S.A. (Austin) Chant's slim output--Coffee Boy, a contemporary romance, Caroline's Heart, a fantasy western romance novella, and Peter Darling, a fantasy--is so varied and gorgeous, I hope they keep writing.
Book you've faked reading:
For years, my New Year's resolution was to finally finish reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. But after a decade of starting and restarting, I quietly decided that actually I had read it, and you can't tell me different.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I'm a firm believer in asking people what they've loved in order to tailor my recommendations rather than telling people what I like to read. My tastes are irrelevant in the land of trying to get people addicted to more authors and stories.
That said, I'll often get people new to genre fiction to start with The Sword Dancer by Jeannie Lin, a Tang Dynasty historical romance that opens with a rooftop chase scene and turns into the most delicious cat-and-mouse game.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I used to buy every middle grade book with an East Asian kid on the cover, and the most rewarding was Grace Lin's Dumpling Days, which I read out loud to my daughter and which ended up being the first time I saw my Taiwanese-North American upbringing represented in a book.
Book you hid from your parents:
My parents bought me boxes of questionable garage sale paperbacks without vetting them, so there was no point in hiding.
Book that changed your life:
When I was in my early 30s and I thought I was too old to stay up all night reading, Susanna Clarke's haunting and immersive Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell came into my (now sleep-deprived) life.
Favorite line from a book:
The whole ending section of George Eliot's Middlemarch, but this in particular:
"The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character."
Five books you'll never part with:
I've moved around a lot, and it may horrify some people, but I don't have some of my favorites. For instance, I'm glad to know Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is out in the world (and in my public library), but I don't currently own a copy.
The only print book I've kept through my travels is an early edition of Joan Didion's The White Album. Everything about it is a perfect time capsule of that era: Didion's self-examination, her prose, and the author photo of her-- frail and cynical--on the back cover.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
One of the joys of rereading is seeing how one's perceptions have changed, so I don't really want to encounter the stories I've loved as if they'd never touched me. The book I most want to read again for the first time is the next new-to-me book.