Book lover: Charlotte Randall

Christchurch writer Charlotte Randall. Photo / Simon Baker

Charlotte Randall is a Christchurch-based author whose latest novel, Hokitika Town (Penguin, $30), is on the best-seller list.

The book I love most is ... What, only one? I'd have to go for Life & Times of Michael K, by J.M. Coetzee ... this is probably weird, I'm not otherwise a great fan of his writing. I love the ending, and not just because I had no water after the earthquake: "He would clear the rubble from the mouth of the shaft, he would bend the handle of the teaspoon in a loop and tie the string to it, he would lower it down the shaft deep into the earth and when he brought it up there would be water in the bowl of the spoon; and in that way, he would say, one can live."

The book I'd like to read next is ... How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, by Stanley Fish. With a title like that I've been having a lot of fantasies about what it will be like, but I'm sure it can't possibly live up to them.

The book that changed me is ... Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald. There aren't many new ways of writing that please me, but this was one.

The book I wish I'd never read is ... 1266, by Roberto Bolano. Although it was generous of my daughter to give it to me as a present, and I did request it, I found it tedious and depressing. Maybe it's a bad translation. The flatness of the tone bored me to death.