NL: Can you share a bio with us?
JC: I’m an English teacher in New York City. My family and I have lived in Nyack for seven and a half years, but I have been coming here since the early 80s. I love to cook, run, and read.
NL: What are you currently reading? Do you like it?
JC: I’m in between books for about the next twenty minutes. I just finished Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie, and I enjoyed it very much. Agatha Christie is my comfort food.
NL: If you could have any author speak at Nyack Library, who would it be and why?
JC: My favorite working author is David Mitchell, but I don’t think anyone is more important than Ta-Nahesi Coates.
NL: Which character in a book do you most identify with?
JC: Boxer, the horse from Animal Farm. “I will work harder,” to my own detriment.
NL: What books are on your night stand?
JC: Box Office Poison, my all-time favorite graphic novel, because it’s not appropriate for my 11-year old, and whatever I’m reading at the moment.
NL: Are there any books that you feel are overrated?
JC: For sure. Get back to me at the DNF question.
NL: Do you have a literary “guilty pleasure”?
JC: I don’t feel guilty about it, per se, but I do think people side-eye me when I praise the YA horror series Clown in a Cornfield volumes 1-3 by Adam Cesare. They’re fantastic, but the title definitely gives people pause.
NL: Are you a re-reader?
JC: As an English teacher, I basically *have* to reread books. I think I’ve read Animal Farm, the Crucible, and A Streetcar Named Desire at least 30 times each. In civilian life, I only reread the Lord of the Rings and a few select Agatha Christies.
NL: How do you get out of a reading rut?
JC: I am Boxer. I will work harder.
NL: Thoughts on prologues? Epilogues?
JC: The only prologue I have ever disliked is the Custom House Prologue to The Scarlet Letter, which poisoned the entire book for me when I had to read it in high school. Skip those seventy pages and that book is fantastic.
NL: What’s your least favorite book?
JC: I’m sure Bill O’Reilly has paid someone to put his name on something he’s written lately.
NL:If you were to own a bookstore, what would it be like? How would you arrange the books? Would you serve coffee and food? Play music? Where would it be?
JC:My head is exploding with the options. I don’t want to take anything away from either of our lovely bookshops in Nyack, so I will say simply that it would be in Nyack, there would be coffee and I would bake as often as I could, and I would helpfully solve local murders while making delightful quips. So, like, a bookstore, in Nyack, in the Gilmore Girls, with murder.
NL:Are you a one-book-at-a-time reader? Or do you like reading multiple books at the same time?
JC: I only read multiples if I’m teaching something I need to read or reread.
NL: Do you DNF (do not finish) books or always read until the end?
JC: I got about 200 pages into Atlas Shrugged and was like, “oh, she actually thinks businesspeople quail in the face of the government and its regulations? Ha! I can stop now.”