Author Amy Chozick’s Favorite Character-Driven Reads |
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Author Amy Chozick’s Favorite Character-Driven Reads
The former New York Times reporter’s eclectic list spans everything from David Foster Wallace’s tennis essays and Miranda July’s viral midlife romp to murder mysteries set in luxurious locales.
My day job involves writing for television, and yet, I find myself spending a lot more time reading books than I do watching TV. A couple of years ago, during the WGA writers' strike, I became an even more voracious reader. I couldn't work on my craft, but I could study how other authors mastered theirs. I'd spent my career as a journalist at the New York Times writing other people's stories, so it felt like a real gift to finally sit down and make up my own. To get in the mood, I read a mix of high and low, fiction and non. I love an audiobook on hikes or in the car, but at night, I want to hold a physical book, preferably from the public library or this fabulous used bookstore in L.A., The Last Bookstore.
In a screenplay, you are always thinking about whether something is producible (i.e., can we really afford this car chase?), but when I set out to write my debut novel, With Friends Like You, I could let my mind, and, by extension, my characters (a.k.a., my imaginary friends), go wild. Here are 10 books that I loved reading—or revisiting—as I set out to write With Friends Like You. I hope they make you laugh and unsettle you, maybe all at the same time. You can throw them in your beach bag or load them onto your Kindle for a flight, or pump them into your........