After much ado, (a year’s worth of it at least) I finally have another Lattes with Ladies interview featuring my good friend, writer, and globetrotter Erin Taylor.
You can follow Erin on her Instagram and wait with bated breath like the rest of us for her first book.
HPL: First off, what are you reading right now?
ET: I’m currently reading four books. I’m reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and On Writing Well by somebody I forget. You’ll have to look the author up after this [William Zinsser]. And I’m reading So Much Love and Discipline and Punish by Foucault.
HPL: So you’re reading them all concurrently?
ET: Yeah, they have very different moods and I have to be in different moods to read them. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is about a Soviet gulag from one day in a guy’s life, and the author has been in a gulag so it’s really heavy. It’s not like a “before bed” kind of read. So I don’t read that one often, just when I’m in the mood to read it, and So Much Love is kind of a page-turner. It’s my go-to for the subway after work when I’m kind of tired. Then Foucault is heavy and hard to understand so that one is for either in the morning or on the weekends.
HPL: That sounds like a discipline and a punishment.
ET: *Laughs politely* [Editor’s note: Erin is a kind friend]. And the On Writing Well is mostly because it is overdue at the library and I need to finish it.
HPL: Practical! I like that. Which of them are you liking the most?
ET: So Much Love because I didn’t expect to like it. It seemed like an “oh, a woman gets abducted” type of story and what gets left behind? But it’s way more interesting than that; it’s not just a tragedy.
HPL: It sounds like a Rom-Com. I wasn’t anticipating that plot.
ET: Yes! At first, I didn’t like the title because of the subject matter, but now I’m about halfway through the book and [the title] makes sense. It’s actually very beautiful and fitting, but at first, I thought it was kind of corny. The book is really good and it has a different take on that narrative. It’s not that the woman who has been abducted is just some missing figure in the story, instead it makes you focus on her more in an interesting way, and I’m not going to spoil things, but it looks at that type of story in refreshing way that doesn’t just focus on female victimhood.
HPL: What book in 2017, really shaped your year?
ET: Oh, in 2017? What did I even read in 2017?
HPL: Yeah, we’re only… several months into the new year and you’ve got several books going on. How about what was the most memorable book you read in 2017?
ET: I would say Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
HPL: Ooh, I’ve heard a lot about this one! How was it?
ET: I really liked it. Again, it’s one of those books that is hard to read. I was reading it for a book club so I sort of had to read it but it was really interestingly put together because each chapter was one bit in one person’s life. And it follows two family trees, two sisters who have never met and each of their kids, then grandkids, all the way down the family tree. It takes place in Africa, by the gold coast, and the United States, where one family is enslaved and one isn’t and it goes from there. It’s really interesting in that you only get this tiny glimpse and then you only see that character again through the eyes of their children or grandchildren, so it is very beautifully written and complicated. All of the characters feel very real, even if you’re only getting them for like 20 pages and then they’re gone. That also makes it kind of frustrating to read because you start becoming really interested in each of these little stories—and they’re only in a day or a week or a couple of months, maybe a year—things are happening and its a narrative for them and you get taken out of that and then put into the next story.
HPL: So you don’t find out what happens until later or at least not from their view?
ET: Yeah and you only get hints of it from what their children or grandchildren either know or don’t know. It’s not an easy read, and I have to remember a lot of names!
HPL: Well, you seem to read a lot of sad books. Me too! Welcome to the Sad Books Club. But how do you choose what you’re going to read next?
ET: The books I’m reading now I found from the Globe and Mail. They did a list of a hundred of the best books from 2017 so I went to the library and put a bunch of them on hold. And then the Ivan Denisovich one was $1 from the university bookstore, and I did not know what it was about but I liked the cover art.
HPL: It’s funny, the way that I’ve heard about that book is from a list of most famous books to read about portrayals of mental illness… or wait, was that a different book? But it was by an author who had been in the gulag.
ET: That’s interesting. [The author] is doing a fictional account but he’s drawing on his own experience. In the foreword to the book it talks about how most people outside of Russia read it as a political book, and it definitely is, but there are a lot of folk metaphors and things woven into the book so it’s a bit weird reading it because I can only read it as a political book. As literature it is interesting but I wonder what I’m missing. There’s this one phrase that is always talking about “sweating blood” and of course it means ‘you’re working too hard’ but its one of those things where I wonder because this one phrase has come up 20 times already.
HPL: I always feel that way about translated text. I’ve been wanting to read the Elena Ferrantes but there’s a part of me that’s like “I can’t read Italian”.
ET: Even reading Murakami, I wonder what’s changed. How much of it is he just has a translator who has a certain style?
HPL: That’s a good point. Then you have these writers who can write in two languages. The effect is always a little weird.
ET: Actually, one of the best books I’ve read this year is by an Argentinian author, either she wrote it in English or its the first time her work has been translated to English, but it didn’t feel like a translated book. All of the writing was just beautiful, it’s called Things We Lost in the Fire. It’s all short stories and they’re all really sad, frustrating, creepy. They’re definitely not uplifting but the stories themselves are just so beautiful that it is uplifting even though the subject matter is horrible. When you’re reading it, it doesn’t even feel like you’re reading. No sentence feels artificial if that makes sense.
HPL: She’s using every word to do something. I love that!
ET: Exactly, and it’s always just the right word she’s using. Even if the stories go to a weird place, you think ‘this makes sense’ because the writing just takes you there.
HPL: You were an English major—you studied literature—do you find it impacts the way that you read when you’re reading for fun? Do you find that it’s hard not to be critical of things? And do you ever want to go back to before when it was just for fun?
ET: Definitely I find that I’m a lot more critical and do have trouble reading certain books because I can’t turn that off. But I dunno, I like that. I find fun in the attention because most books have so much going on in them. Like when you watch a really good movie versus when you watch kind of a crap movie, it’s fun to watch the movie again to see all the things the director and the actors put into it. For me, I like seeing weird bits of language and, even if the author didn’t intend it, creating that meaning myself and finding it that way, I just feel more engaged with the subject matter. Otherwise, you’re just reading stories. It’s entertainment and that’s totally valid, but I just get something extra out of trying to do an analysis, and I miss school a lot so!
HPL: Speaking of school. Here’s an essay style question for you. From Wollstonecraft to Kerouac, travel and writing have been linked for many centuries. How has your time abroad influenced your choice of books and your writing?
ET: I don’t know that it really influenced my choices of books that much. I feel like I’m still reading the same sort of stuff that I would’ve read regardless. Haven’t really expanded my genres, always the Sad Books Club. But I think it did affect my writing a fair bit because I did join a writing group while I was over there. So that really affected my writing but also trying out some different voices based on the places I’ve gone. It also just got me more interested in writing about places and experiencing different places.