This is a long and lovely interview I did with the hilarious and indomitable Elizabeth Scott back in January when meeting up in a cafe was no big deal at all. All of the references to what she had been reading and how many books she read thus far were from when the year had just begun, but are certainly still worth a read if you haven’t gotten to them yet! Elizabeth is still reading strong nonetheless and you can follow her at @lzbthsctt.
HPL: What are you reading right now?
ES: So, I’m reading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. I haven’t read it, but I’ve tried to, three times and I don’t abandon books. I just take long breaks. If I started it, I will most likely finish it so I am on my third start of it and am actually making some progress.
HPL: What made you choose Elena Ferrante all of a sudden?
ES: Honestly, I don’t know. I had finished Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reid. I read it as an audiobook and absolutely adored it. And that was the next one: My Brilliant Friend was listed as next on my app so I just decided to give another crack at it rather than leaving it at 12%, I figured, ‘Alright, I’ll start again.’
HPL: You said audiobook, so you’re reading it as an audiobook?
ES: Yeah, I’m listening to the audiobook. I started with the ebook. I’ve been really into audiobooks this year. I think I’ve read four books and three of them have been on audio.
HPL: Do you prefer audiobooks over ebooks?
ES: I would say my favourite way to read a book is a print book–depending on the size of the book–because there are a lot of benefits to e-readers and not just because I work for Kobo. I like being able to lie in bed on my side and not have the book fall in my face. But honestly, the only type of print books I still read are advanced reading copies, otherwise, I usually read everything in an e-reader or audio. I’m a very auditory person and, as of late, I’ve been finding audio an easier way to get into a story as opposed to print. I can listen to an audio book for a lot longer than I can read an ebook because my eyes will start to droop and I will fall asleep. But [with audio], as I’m falling asleep I can put on the sleep timer. And it’s also great obviously for puttering around the kitchen or cleaning. I’ll either put on a podcast or an audiobook. So I find I use audio if I need to be doing something else at the same time. If I’m sitting down to just read I’ll use ebooks.
HPL: You work in publishing, correct?
ES: I work for Kobo, an ebook and e-reader retailer or distributor.
HPL: How do you decide what to read next? You mentioned a lot of advanced copies so obviously you get to know a lot more about books that are coming out before they’re out. How are you making your choices?
ES: All recommendations. All recommended by whatever my friends are reading or I find if there is a movie coming out or something, I may prioritize reading that but it’s usually on recommendation.
HPL: You were an English major and then you went into publishing. What would you say was the moment you fell in love with reading and with books?
ES: I don’t know. I’ve always loved to read. I can remember being in math class in Grade 5 and I was really into The Babysitters Club. I had all the books, so I would put them underneath my desk and then I would put my calculator on top of the book so if my teacher was walking around –I would always read during class and I wasn’t really good at math so it was never a good thing for me not to be paying attention entirely–I would pretend to be doing calculations on my calculator. But books have always been so present in my life. I’ve just always been a reader from the time I could read.
HPL: What kind of genres are you into or were you into? Has it changed a lot since you were a kid?
ES: It changed. I was really into the classic kids books like Harry Potter. I loved Little House on the Prairie. Anne of Green Gables is my absolute favourite, like Anne and Gilbert Blythe are my one true pairing of all time. Any sort of historical fiction, I still read historical fiction now but not so much. But I liked a lot of the classics and especially the series. I liked The Babysitters Club, and I loved anything–which is still true now–anything about female friendship. I would say that is my one specific genre, hence why I am reading My Brilliant Friend.
Actually last year, I started reading romance which I’ve never been into before. Not because I poo-pooed them but just whenever I would start reading one I could never suspend the disbelief long enough to start to enjoy them because I was just so critical thinking about, ‘Something like this could never happen.’ Something happened last year where I just felt like I could use a little make-believe. I just want a dependable story where I know what’s going to happen but I’m still enjoying the journey.
HPL: Have you seen Little Women [the movie] then?
ES: Oh yeah, I’ve seen it many times.
HPL: Have you read the book as well? Are you a big ‘book-before-the-movie’ person?
ES: I used to be. I tried to, but I’m not always [saying], “The book is better than the movie.” As in the case of the most recent movie that came out, they complement each other really well but I would say that this movie version is more like a love letter to the story of Little Women. If you know the story, you love it a lot more. Whereas the 1994 one, you don’t need to know the story as well to love the film. I wouldn’t say I’m a purist about the book before the movie, but I couldn’t really get into a show like Game of Thrones because I would always say, “I will read the book before I watch the TV show”–and then I ended up doing neither. That, and I’m just not a fantasy reader.
HPL: You mentioned recommendations from friends and you mentioned you are reading a lot more on e-readers. I’m curious about your bookshelf. You have a bookshelf full of books: how do you organize your bookshelf? Are you going by genres, alphabetizing, by colouring?
ES: I have a very specific organization since I just moved and along with moving into this new place, my parents decided it was time for me to take all my stuff out of their house so all my books came to Toronto with me. Right now, I have a big Billy bookshelf and a smaller one. I keep all my unread books on the smaller one and that is just chaotic. And my Billy bookshelf, I’ve taken the four shelves and put them on the top half and my hardbacks are all stacked up at the bottom of it. And then it’s colour coordinated light to dark within the shelves. It’s not the most organized system but it’s what works for me. It looks really good from the paperbacks side and then the hardbacks are just there. I also put my more favourite hardbacks at the top because those are the ones that I like to pull out for whatever reason.
HPL: What do you think of the whole trend of turning all the books around so you can’t see the spine?
ES: What’s the point? For me, I read a lot of e-books but I still buy print books. Print books have now become more of a decoration, but I will only usually buy a print book if I want to have the physical copy for whatever reason. To each their own, but I just think from a functionality perspective if you’re going to pull a book out you’re going to cause more harm to the book by pulling it out from the pages.
HPL: Right? I feel like you’re going to mess up the pages! So now a controversial question: do you dog-ear your pages?
ES: I don’t always dog-ear. I’m more of an open-it-flat [person] if I’m saving a page. I’m a book-ruiner when it comes to my own books but if you ruin one of my books I will get really mad. But if I’m doing it, it’s fine. And if I like a part of a book, I dog-ear the bottom.
HPL: Are there any notes in the margin?
ES: I do that with poetry sometimes but I feel like the margin notes are more like a fake show of intelligence. Like in university, if reading, I’m going to make notes in the margin and then pretend I’m going to refer back to it later. I was re-reading Jane Austen last year and I found all my notes from the old Austen class and at one point I just wrote “Fanny sucks.” I know this, I didn’t have to document it. It was in Sense and Sensibility too so it wasn’t even Fanny Price, just a forgettable character. One of the neighbours or the sister-in-law, something like that. This is just so unnecessary, I don’t know why I needed to write this.
HPL: Speaking of classics, who would you say is your favourite classic author?
ES: Jane Austen. I really like Jane but I also haven’t fallen in love with an author the way I did with Jane Austen. So I might have another classic author that I would love but I haven’t had the time to read all their works. You took the Austen class as well? I had read Pride and Prejudice before that and I loved Emma and then when I read all her books I just thought, ‘This is the smartest woman of all time.’ I wish I could time travel just to shoot the shit with her.
HPL: What would you say is your most memorable read of 2020 so far? We’re about a month in, it can be an e-read, anything.
ES: I read four books. I was really surprised by how much I liked The Testaments. I was never really a big Handmaid’s Tale person. In terms of Margaret Atwood, I’m very indifferent towards her. I know she’s very important to people. I also won’t watch The Handmaid’s Tale show because it scares me and it just feels too close to home as something that could potentially happen. I know people who had read The Testaments and said it was really good so I downloaded the audiobook and was surprised by how quickly I devoured it and how much I enjoyed it. But it also very much felt like fanfiction of The Handmaid’s Tale.
HPL: [laughs] Of her own book?
ES: Yeah, it’s just like fanfiction of her own book! It’s just another fun thing for her to do. I wasn’t treating it on the same scale as The Handmaid’s Tale which is ultra-important, but it’s still a very captivating read. I really enjoyed it. Whereas, then I read Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reid and it felt like one of those very important books. Because it was a story about a woman who is 25 and is going to get kicked off her parents’ health insurance when she turns 26. She is a woman of colour and she starts babysitting for this white family. The book starts where she has the daughter in a grocery store late at night because something happened and she was called in to take the young daughter out. Then all of a sudden the security guard is called because they think she has kidnapped this kid when really she is just the babysitter. And it could easily be a story just about race but it is so much more than that. I love when there’s a fun character connection which I can’t say anymore without giving it away but I like serendipitous storylines. That’s my favourite cliche. It could have been a story about racial tensions alone but there’s also this note about being 25 and just not knowing what you’re going to do with your life. While all of your friends are getting their shit together and having long-term plans, and being ok with just still figuring it out.
HPL: Have you ever given away a book and then regretted it?
ES: I have never given away a book!
HPL: Ah, so you’ve solved the problem. Just never give anything away.
ES: [laughs] I feel a bit bad about it. My cousin’s daughter is around age 10 and she is reading Emily of New Moon and Anne of Green Gables. So I asked her, “Have you read Anne of Avonlea?” And she said, “There’s an Anne of Avonlea?” To which I was like, ‘She’s uneducated,’ first of all but a part of me was like, ‘Give her your boxed set.’ But then another part of me says, “No!” Even though I haven’t read those books since I was her age and they’re taped together. I’m very much a book lender and I lend a lot of books to my friends. My books are free for others to read, but there’s something about just giving away my copy or my box set of Little House on the Prairie, for example, which is, again, masking taped together. All those books are very much flattened and they smell like old books.
HPL: Do you buy used books too?
ES: I did buy used books a lot more when I wasn’t working in books. But then that also contributed to why my collection is so large. They’re just so cheap. And so tempting. Then there was also a used book store right near where I lived so I would go and meander through there. It’s also fun when you go in and try to find a specific book, it’s like a treasure hunt.
HPL: Do you have any favourite bookstores? Used or new!
ES: It’s definitely Queen West Type Books for me. It was also just the most convenient one for me to go to. I’m also one to wander around a BMV. I love BMV. Words Worth Books is probably my favourite used bookstore of all time. I am from Kitchener so it’s just such a hometown staple. It’s nothing flashy or trendy. No one is going in just to Instagram Words Worth Books. I’m pretty sure their window displays don’t change but it holds a very precious place in my heart.
HPL: What publishing house do you think is putting out the most interesting books right now?
ES: I have a soft spot for the smaller houses like House of Anansi, but I do read a lot of the Big 5. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of independent authors or self-pub authors because of Kobo Writing Life, which is the self-publishing platform. With me reading more romance recently, I’ve also started reading more self-pub romance authors.
HPL: Really, self-publishing?
ES: Yeah! I remember when I was in publishing school and there was this woman who talked about how she couldn’t get traditionally published so she started self-publishing. Then these houses were coming to her with offers but when she checked her numbers she came back to them with “This is how much I am making from self-publishing,” which was like four times the amount that they were offering her. And she [said], “What can you give me that I’m not already giving myself right now? You didn’t want to publish me.” Even if you look at things like Wattpad. Storytelling and reading stories is not just about publishing houses, which is good. I think it is good to shake up the market. So if you can write well then don’t worry so much about where you are publishing, just be a fantastic author.