Book lover: Elizabeth Smither

Elizabeth Smither. Photo / Supplied

Elizabeth Smither is an acclaimed New Plymouth-based poet, novelist and short story writer. She has recently released The Commonplace Book (AUP, $34.99), a collection of thoughts about writing and the writer's life.

The book I love most is ... Persuasion by Jane Austen for its highly strung and matchless ending. Transport and clothing may have changed but all her characters: the incurably vain father, the social-climbing sister, the true friend who spills the beans - all exist in the world today. Austen knew we have to work on ourselves if we want to find happiness.

The book I'm reading right now is ... A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer. Staff and clientele of a glamorous Swiss hotel feel the chill hand of Nazism but the real treachery is personal. Love and betrayal between two waiters: one a model of self-containment, the other a skilled seducer.

The book I'd like to read next is ... The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Elizabeth became ill with a mystery virus while travelling in Europe; a friend bought a gift of violets and a snail in a pot. Confined to bed, she could hear the snail eating - "the sound of someone very small munching on celery". I like writing that resembles slow cooking and what could be slower than a snail?

The book that changed me is ... Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. A French Catholic bishop and a priest attempt to establish a diocese in New Mexico among the Hopi and Navajo people. It has everything: unforgiving landscape, unfathomable cruelty and sacrificing love. Cather puts her characters in extreme situations that test them to the utmost. There is a wonderful scene where a priest and his guide take shelter in an ancient cave during a blizzard and hear, far below the earth, the mysterious movement of an unchartered river. The spare beauty of the prose never fades.

The book I wish I'd never read is ... The Little Yellow Digger by Betty Gilderdale. Nothing wrong with the heroic little machine, but after hundreds of readings I failed to find the tone of voice that could lift the flat sentences. Perhaps the digger was just too helpful for my taste? Didn't Austen say, "pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked"? Closely followed by The Hobbit. Terrible dialogue and not much better description. Perhaps Peter Jackson can rescue it.