2013-05-23T11:39:39-04:00 Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=marissa-chen Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Marissa Chen Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1565349 2012-06-04T19:00:00-04:00 2012-08-04T05:12:12-04:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/ Mountains of the Mind, was released to unanimous praise - and a string of literary accolades - in 2003. His writing has since established a new authority on the relationship between nature, identity and art, and in so doing cemented his reputation as one of the region's most prolific naturalists. Macfarlane's latest book, The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot, will be published by Hamish Hamilton this month and has already been hailed by Roger Deakin as "adventurous, passionate, [and] intensely romantic".



1. Best book about trips or journeys.

Patrick Leigh-Fermor's astonishing, inspirational, stylistically curlicued A Time Of Gifts, about his walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1933: it sets my feet itching every time I read it.

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

Cormac McCarthy's The Road. When the apocalypse comes, I want a copy of it in my shopping trolley.

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you be doing?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We would be on a five-day walking tour dot-to-dotting the waterfalls of the Lake District, in bright sunshine, but following a week of heavy rain.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of.. the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

A great question. Declared in a spirit of honesty but a tone of reluctance, I have to say - Ralph.

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

Henry James's The Golden Bowl. Read a page, burn a page. It's the only way I'll ever get through it.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

"But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before." (The last line of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn)

Image by Richard Hubert Smith.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1325207 2012-03-09T19:00:00-05:00 2012-05-09T05:12:02-04:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/ most unflappable Twitter account in existence. His first novel Essays in Love (1993) was released shortly after his graduation from university, and his newest book Religion for Atheists was published by Hamish Hamilton in January 2012.



1. Best book about trips or journeys.

The finest book is the second volume of Marcel Proust's very long novel, In Search of Lost Time. This charts the journey of the narrator to the (fictionalised) Normandy beach resort of Balbec - and pays particular attention to all those emotions we feel as we travel by train, then approach our destination and eventually settle for the night in a new and unfamiliar hotel room.

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

I like a good stoic philosopher like Seneca or Marcus Aurelius. These guys are pessimistic, courageous and ready for anything.

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you be doing?

I'd love to go on holiday with Virginia Woolf. She'd be super observant, catty, fun - and (on good day) excellent company. We'd gossip about our fellow guests in a hotel, eavesdrop on people in shops and (perhaps) try some jetskiing, which Woolf would describe with great style and elegance.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of.. the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

I've unfortunately never read this book. I went to boarding school which is routinely described as "like Lord of the Flies" so it put me off the book, sadly.

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

I'd happily burn all of Thackeray. It's simply not funny or especially revelatory.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

I like Seneca's: "What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears."

Image courtesy of Vincent Starr.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1198921 2012-01-13T19:00:00-05:00 2012-03-14T05:12:01-04:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/

A former teacher and one-time ski lodge manager, Emma Henderson graduated with a distinction from Birkbeck's MA Creative Writing course in 2006. Her luminous debut, Grace Williams Says It Loud (Sceptre, 2010), was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and the Orange Prize. A second novel is in the works.

1. Best book about trips or journeys.

Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, by Richard Holmes

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

Without a doubt, Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. For me, it covers the broadest spectrum of subjects and emotions and in ways that are wise, witty and very beautiful.

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you be doing?

John Lanchester. We would be pursuing the debt to pleasure.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of. . .the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

Don't we all want to identify with Ralph, when we should be identifying with Piggy?

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

Clarissa [by Samuel Richardson]. It would give off much heat.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

The opening of George Eliot's Adam Bede: "With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799." As a reader, I get shivers up my spine every time I read this opening. As a writer, I find it endlessly inspiring. I love the way it moves so effortlessly from the macrocosm to the microcosm, from the general to the particular, from the universal to the personal. It is a promise and I can't think of a better final 'message in a bottle'.

Image courtesy of Debra Hurford Brown.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1142959 2011-12-12T19:00:00-05:00 2012-02-11T05:12:01-05:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/ number9dream and Cloud Atlas, and was the only literary author listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2007. He was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize at age 30 for his first novel, Ghostwritten. The film adaptation of Cloud Atlas, directed by Tom Twyker (Run Lola Run), is slated for a 2012 release.



1. Best book about trips or journeys.

So very many - where to begin? Off the top of my head, I suppose. Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage is a blow-by-blow account of crossing the North Atlantic in a medieval boat made of leather. But please let me have Claudio Magris' Danube as well. It's a beautiful, meditative, literary, literal journey down the Danube from the source of its source to its diffuse delta. It makes you feel both ignorant and a little bit wiser.

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

The best-selling ULTIMATE SURVIVAL MANUAL by Mad Max, of course. Now in its 4th edition.

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you be doing?

I'd like to go hiking in North-West Iceland with Halldor Laxness in the 1930s. But who's to say he'd like my company? It might be a disaster.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of. . .the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

Sorry, but I'd have to take issue with that quote. The Lord of the Flies is a damn good book, but there are no women, no non-whites... [but] if I had to answer at gunpoint, I'd say I can see impulses of all the characters in me - the savagery of Jack, the integrity of Ralph, the doomed bookishness of Piggy. I even have days when I feel like the pilot, decomposing in my parachute in the trees...

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

Any self-serving memoir by a politico with wide smile and gimlet eyes. I don't think I'd be short of choice.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

I'd choose a poem by James Wright: Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm
in Pine Island, Minnesota. I love it.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1139347 2011-12-11T19:00:00-05:00 2012-02-10T05:12:01-05:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/ a published expert on the perils of quarterlife crises, Damian Barr's CV is as charmingly diverse as his choice of bedtime reading. The ringmaster of the fabled Shoreditch House Lit Salon, Barr has written for the Times, Granta, and Radio 4, and is also the world's first ever 'reader in residence'.



1. Best book about trips or journeys.

The Chronicles of Narnia. Wild journeys from the least likely start: a wardrobe is the departure lounge into fantasy. I also love Last Letter From Hav by Jan Morris which depicts a little-known European nation that is tiny and riven by about-to-be-warring factions. Of course, Hav isn't real but that didn't stop bewitched readers from trying to organise trips there when the book came out. Non-fiction I'd stay with Jan Morris and choose her book on Venice. It's a city so over-written and sentimentalised yet she sees it anew.

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

It depends whose survival I am trying to guarantee. If we're talking about my own then A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White.

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you do doing?

Tennessee Williams in Key West in the 1970s, when he was behaving very badly indeed. We'd be drinking mai-tais on the porch of his tiny brightly-painted conch house and he'd be reading out lines he'd written that morning while we both waited for our respective gentleman callers.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of. . .the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

Just. Not. Piggy.

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

I would never ever burn a book.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.'

Image courtesy of Daisy Honeybunn.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1077672 2011-11-06T19:00:31-05:00 2012-01-06T05:12:01-05:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/

An Auden devotee and active crusader against gratuitous uses of Times New Roman, 24-year-old Jacob Denno also serves as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Popshot. A bi-annual poetry publication, Popshot has featured the likes of Murray Lachlan Young and Polarbear, as well as original commissions by artists Esra Røise and Sam Green. Its latest issue, 06. Love, is available at selected bookstores across the world.

1. Best book about trips or journeys.

Probably Alain De Botton's The Art of Travel. It's a refreshing take on the travel guide - not so much as a guide as to where to go and what to see but more how to see it. I think we all suffer from the syndrome of not truly appreciating what's in front of us due to our own petty worries and expectations at the time. The Art of Travel is an important reminder as to how to view travel differently.

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to take this question literally, but I will. Since human survival rests upon food and shelter, I'd probably take The Illustrated Guide to Edible Wild Plants. Hopefully it wouldn't have the same ending as Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild though...

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you do doing?

If we're able to bring him back from the dead, I would take Charles Bukowski and sit on a porch with him with six crates of beer, 11,000 cigarettes and good lighting. Then I would ask him to tell me tales of pickle factories and repeatedly read out his poem The Laughing Heart. It might not be a relaxing vacation but I wouldn't have it any other way.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of. . .the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

Gosh, I haven't read this book since school so my memory is rather hazy. Whoever is the kindest one, I would want to be him, even if it meant meeting my demise. I definitely wouldn't be Piggy...poor thing.

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

I don't think there is one book that has ever repulsed me so much that I would have to burn it. However, I might tear every other page out of Malcolm Gladwell's books. I don't need 100 different examples of the same thing to get the point. I'm sure 50 would do.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

Big question. I'm tempted to go for some W.H. Auden or Mary Frye's Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep but that might be a bit morbid - and a bit predictable. I might actually plump for the aforementioned Charles Bukowski's The Laughing Heart. What better message is there to leave to the world than that?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1029376 2011-10-30T19:00:00-04:00 2011-12-30T05:12:01-05:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/

Sam Leith served as literary editor of the Daily Telegraph until 2008 and is the author of two award-winning books, Dead Pets and Sod's Law.

His work has also appeared in - amongst other publications - the Evening Standard, The Guardian, and the Sunday Times. Leith's first novel, The Coincidence Engine (Bloomsbury, 2011), was released in February.

1. Best book about trips or journeys.

Moby-Dick

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you do doing?

Kurt Vonnegut. He'd be talking and I'd be laughing.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of... the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

The conch.

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

Gosh. If only Paulo Coelho wrote longer books. I'm going to be chilly.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

Can't really better the end of [George Eliot's] Middlemarch, I don't think. "Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Image courtesy of The Oldie. Special thanks to Sophie Rochester and the Soho Lit Festival.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1009793 2011-10-14T19:00:00-04:00 2011-12-14T10:19:02-05:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/

Philip Kerr has written over 11 standalone titles of fiction and non-fiction, and is the author of the two best-selling series, Bernie Gunther and Children of the Lamp (the film rights for which were sold to Steven Spielberg). He was the recipient of the prestigious Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2009. The latest addition to the Bernie Gunther series, Prague Fatale (Quercus 2011) will be released this month.

1.Best book about trips or journeys.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence; Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchins

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you be doing?

I should like to go on vacation with J.K. Rowling. We would be spending her money, of course...

4. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

The Bible.

5. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?

"'Wendy,' Peter Pan continued in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, 'Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.'" (J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan)

Image courtesy of The Oldie. Special thanks to Sophie Rochester and the Soho Lit Festival.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.999659 2011-10-07T19:00:00-04:00 2011-12-14T10:20:45-05:00

Marissa Chen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marissa-chen/
Yet with time and money running scarce (as they tend to do), perhaps it would do the reader well to retrace his steps, past the protracted ubiquity of the best-sellers list, and back to the individual authors who made them. What was it about Tolstoy that made Norman Mailer tick? What novels inspired Joyce Carol Oates or Margaret Atwood to write the way they do? (Crime and Punishment and Hjalmar Söderberg's Doctor Glass, respectively). "If you were stranded on a desert island with only one book to read, which would it be?"



Canadian-born DW Wilson is the author of the short story collection Once You Break a Knuckle (2011, Hamish Hamilton). A graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, he is now completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing while working on his first novel, Ballistics. His story, The Dead Roads, was awarded first prize in the 2011 BBC Short Story Awards.

1. Which book are you likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?

DW Wilson : I'll go with Richard Ford's The Sportswriter, because although it doesn't help with the avoidance of death, it would act as a spiritual reassurance through the worst times of desert-island-strandedness. Also, it'd remind us that no matter how grim our situation, someone, somewhere, is sadder.

2. Best book about trips or journey?.

Best? Not sure I can say. My favourite? Tim Winton's The Riders, though it perhaps doesn't work as a how-to guide.

3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you do doing?


Bill Gaston [author of Sointula and Mount Appetite], and we'd drink a lot of beer and fish off the coast of British Columbia, and after a tough day of trawling for salmon we'd blitz back to his cabin on a nearby island, where his wife or my girlfriend would decry us two manly men for the softies we really are, and then we'd all spend the night playing inane parlour games and thinking about how good everything is. Actually that already happened, but I'd go again in a second.

4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of. . .the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?

It's been a good long time (maybe twelve years?) since I read Lord of the Flies, and the only character I can drag from memory is Piggy, who dies in a horrible and not-altogether-honourable way, and is a bit of a hoser the rest of the time. I'm more inclined to liken myself to someone like Sodapop, from The Outsiders.

5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?

Probably one of the Twilight series, or all of them.

6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would serve as your final 'message in a bottle'?

"All alone now beside the humming train cars, I actually do feel my moorings slacken, and I will say it again, perhaps for the last time: there is mystery everywhere, even in a vulgar, urine-scented, suburban depot such as this. You have only to let yourself in for it. You can never know what's coming next. Always there is the chance it will be - miraculous to say - something you want." (Richard Ford, The Sportswriter)]]>