Kate's favorite books

This is one of the toughest questions any reader (or writer, for that matter) gets asked. Those of you who've checked out my website will know that I read an average of a book a day and have done so for almost forty years. Ouch. Didn't really mean to tell you how old I was - but there you go.

So what are my favorite books? They change - month to month, sometimes even week to week - but there are some books or authors that never change. I love:

• Jane Austen - I like them all but I love Persuasion - maybe because it's about reunited lovers.
• Michael Ondaatje - everything he's ever written, poetry, novels, memoirs - but my favorite is In the Skin of a Lion.
• Gene Stratton-Porter - books I learned to read at my grandmother's house, written in the early part of the 20th century, about places I hope to go. Keeper of the Bees is my favorite.
• Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, as astonishingly beautiful, insightful, perfect book.
• Bronwen Wallace - both her poetry and her single book of wonderful short stories. Even her poems are stories in disguise.
• Anything by Neil Gaiman and William Gibson - both amazing writers.
• Harry Potter - I'm counting down the days to July 21.
• Anything by Alice Hoffman - although my favorite is Turtle Moon.
• Barbara Kingsolver, I love all of her books, but probably The Bean Trees is my favorite.
• Al Purdy and Patrick Lane - great poets and both of whom have written fiction - Pat Lane's book of stories, Purdy's novel, A Splinter in the Heart.
• Suzanne Brockmann is one of my heroes - especially the SEAL team books. I read them when I'm racing for a deadline.
• Christine Feehan, though only the Game series; Marjorie M. Liu; Judith McNaught, but mostly the romantic suspense; Linnea Sinclair - fabulous.
• Barbara Hambly's fantasy series; Mercedes Lackey's Victorian magic series; Mary Jo Putney's Guardian series.
• Because I'm obsessed with the First World War, I love Timothy Findley's book The Wars, Pat Barker's Ghost Road Trilogy, poets of that war - Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, John McRae.
• Dick Francis, P.D. James - my favorite mystery writers.
• Carl Hiaasen who always, always, always makes me laugh.
• Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, one of my favorite books ever.
• Short story writers Mavis Gallant, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro.
• Non-fiction writers - Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point), Margaret McMillan (Paris 1919.
• Art books of all and every kind.
• Margaret Atwood - I like them all but my favorites (this month) are Oryx & Crake and The Handmaid's Tale.
• Robertson Davies - he writes amazing complex perfect books.
• Stephen King (who wouldn't love someone who can write perfect sentences?), Dean Koontz, Clive Barker - though not all of any of them.
• Jim Butcher - I love Harry Dresden.
• Charles Dickens - I want to be able to write that omniscient narrator like he does.
• E.M. Forster's A Passage to India - I read it when I want to understand how to write a setting that is one of the best characters in the book and A Room with a View when I want to understand true love.

That's probably enough because I could go on forever and I know I've missed a whole bunch of writers I love. But if you saw my apartment - floor to ceiling books, books in drawers, books in closets, books everywhere - you'd know that I can't tell you how many different books I do love. All of them, really. Every single one of them.

Kate