Q&A with Kate White (summer reading)
BOOKS & AUTHORS | A short Q&A with Kate White.
In the summer of 2005, I was asked to produce a huge summer books preview piece for Dose magazine. I conducted short email interviews with authors who had books coming out that summer to get quotes for the piece. This Q&A with Kate White was actually conduced by phone on June 20, 2005, but was used in the piece, and is reproduced here, in part.
Over Her Dead Body, 2005
Jen Selk for Dose: What is the best sort of book for summer?
Kate White: “Summer is a great time to try new things and experiment with new genres that you haven’t read before. Lately I’ve been reading plays. You can read a play so easily on a train ride, at the beach. You can carry one in your purse. It’s a great time to try a genre you usually wouldn’t have time for. Experiment with it.”
“For me the ideal summer book is one I can read in the hammock, or by the water.”
What’s the best way to vacation in the summer?
“I usually end up trying to take two kinds of vacations, because I love to do something in the country, but I usually need a city fix as well. I have to have both.”
Should what you read be influenced by where you are?
“When you travel, it’s good to bring books that are perfect for where you are. Maybe you’re reading Out of Africa when you’re in Kenya. But I also think it could be interesting to read a book that is diametrically opposed to where you are. It has almost a shock value. There’s something so wild about doing that. So it might be fun to get books about the place you’re visiting to bring it to life in a certain way, but it can also be interesting to bring a book that gives you a sense of juxtaposition.”
What else have you been reading lately?
“I’ve been reading poetry a lot lately. One of the great things about it is that you can just read a poem over and over again. I’m reading Break, Blow, Burn right now. Camille Paglia reads 43 of the world’s best poems, and she analyses them. When I read poetry, I don’t get tired of it.”
What do you think about genre fiction and gender-based marketing?
“I don’t know the stats, but what you would call whodunits, where there are a bunch of suspects and clues – my guess is that most of those readers are female. There must be something about the puzzle, solving it, interesting characterizations, understanding their emotions, reasoning, there may be something about that that appeals to women. We like to figure things out and look at the nuances. Guys certainly like the crime genre too, but they tend to like police and procedural thrillers.”
Kate White is a New York Times bestselling author of a variety of suspense novels, such as Over Her Dead Body, available July 2005. For 14 years, she was the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of Cosmopolitan magazine.
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Published in Dose, June 24, 2005.