Writers Who Read: Emma Barry

The Writers Who Read series continues this week with the lovely Emma Barry. Welcome, Emma!

Who are you?
I’m Emma. I have a couple of graduate degrees in humanities field; I wrote a dissertation on nineteenth-century popular literature and business history. By day, I teach college composition. By night I read mass quantities of genre and general fiction and nonfiction and I write romance, all while wrangling my preschool-aged twins, trying to become a better cook, and drinking tea–lots and lots of tea.

I wrote a series of contemporary romances called The Easy Part, which are about young staffers in Washington, DC, who find love and struggle with the balance between cynicism and idealism (and each is a tiny bit autobiographical). I also write historical space-race romances with my critique partner Genevieve Turner. They’re about astronauts and engineers and housewives and cocktails.

Which book or series was your gateway into the world of reading?
Definitely the Anne of Green Gables and Emily series by Lucy Maud Montgomery. In my fact my author name last name is an LMM reference! I’ve read all eleven of those books about thirty-seven times a piece, and I think the writing and characterization are wonderful. When I went back to those books as an adult, I realize that the romances drove my reading of them, and they predict a lot about my taste and career path.

Nowadays, what makes you crack open a book instead of pressing play on your favorite Netflix show?
Well, I do love movies and television, and I am grateful to live in the peak TV era, but I still spend time reading every day, largely because reading refreshes and relaxes me in a way that nothing else does. I think it has to do with the focused distraction of reading. You’re deep in the head of the author and narrator, and books reflect a singular point of view in a way that film and television don’t because they’re collaborative efforts. Reading is intimate, but it’s also distanced, and something about that contradiction soothes my inner introvert (if that makes sense).

Which authors are auto-buys for you? Why?
In terms of romance, I’ll read anything by Cecilia Grant, Joanna Bourne, Susanna Kearsley, Alexis Hall, Molly O’Keefe, and Jeannie Lin. They’re all amazing observers of human behavior and psychology. I’m impressed by how subtle and true their characterizations are. I’m not a reader who needs plot to make me turn the pages. I want to not be able to look away from the characters, and these writers deliver. Their work feels fresh to me even when they’re playing with tropes, and they can all be funny and heart-breaking in the same book.

What is your book kryptonite–those unique settings, tropes, or character types that make you unable to resist reading?
My favorite romance tropes are second chance at love and enemies to lovers. In nonfiction, I’m a sucker for an argument that accounts for something happening for reasons that aren’t biographical. (A good example of the latter is in Matt Bai’s All the Truth Is Out when he argues that something like the Gary Hart scandal was bound to happen in that moment because of technological innovations like the rise of twenty-four hour news networks, satellite TV trucks and light-weight cameras.)

What is your ideal time and place to read?
I read in the evening after the kids have gone to sleep, either on the couch or in bed, with something warm or boozy to drink. I hate reading outside, either because you get glare on the Kindle or the page or because of the distractions. But I always have a book or my Kindle with me, and I’ll pick it up whenever I have a break.

Are you a re-reader? Why or why not?
I am a DEDICATED re-reader. I have books I revisit almost every year at certain times (eg, Pride and Prejudice at Christmas, Northanger Abbey and A Room with a View in the spring). There are different versions of myself in those books, and there’s always something new to learn about prose and craft that I don’t seem to get on the first reading–or twenty.

Which books have had the biggest influence on your writing? 
Emily’s Quest by LM Montgomery, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase, Anyone but You by Julie James, Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie, The Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjorie Williams.

What makes a book a satisfying read for you?
The books I like the most are either immensely satisfying or immensely different. A book has to do something I’ve never seen before, teach me something, or it has to be the best possible version of what whatever it’s trying to do. Or both, of course.

What are you reading right now?
I just finished Molly O’Keefe’s New Adult duology Everything I Left Unsaid and The Truth About Him, and it was predictably wonderful. Now I’m reading Barton Swain’s The Speechwriter, and it’s making me want to write more political romance, but darker. Like All the King’s Men. (And it’s really making me want to re-read every word Robert Penn Warren wrote.)

~

Emma Barry is a novelist, full-time mama, and recovering academic. When she’s not reading or writing, she loves hugs from her preschooler twins, her husband’s cooking, her cat’s whiskers, her dog’s tail, and Earl Grey tea. Her most recent release (with Genevieve Turner) is A Midnight Clear.

You can find out more about Emma and connect with her on her website, Facebook, or Twitter.