Sonya Walger talked to Erik Pedersen about her decision to write her autobiographical first book, “Lion,” as a novel rather than a memoir. As well, the actor known for her roles on “Lost,” “For All Mankind” and “The Mind of the Married Man” shared what it’s been like after losing her home in the Palisades fire. A lifelong reader, she also took the Book Pages Q&A and shared some of her favorites.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
Several I have found myself urging on people over the years are “Light Years” by James Salter, “Her First American” by Lore Segal and “The Fortnight in September” by R.C. Sherriff. All exquisite in their different ways, nuanced and unerringly observed.
Q. What are you reading now?
“The Last Samurai” by Helen DeWitt. No, the movie is not based on it. It’s sprawling, undefinable, it contains multitudes. I’m glad I didn’t read it before I started writing because had I known a debut could look like this I might never have picked up a pen.
Q. How do you decide what to read next?
I have always a stack to choose from. I will hover over what calls me, what I am in the mood for, or what research dictates I should be reading next. I often have one book by the bed and at least two others dotted around the house – a kitchen read for while I wait for pasta to boil, a desk read for when I can’t face the blank page.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
“David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens. I was riveted. As stunning a depiction of childhood and loneliness as anything I’ve ever read before or since.
Q. Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
“Moby Dick.” I will, I must, but I haven’t yet.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
A fragment that echoes in me at the moment are the lines from Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”:
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
I think of it often as those of us who have lost everything in the fire gather and weep and share our stories and clutch each other’s arms and hold each other’s grief, and meanwhile the children must go to school and the bills must be paid and dinner somehow arrive on the table.
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
Love them. Always have one on the go. A favorite is “The End of The Affair” by Graham Greene, narrated by Colin Firth. It might be his best work. “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, narrated by Juliet Stevenson. In fact, anything narrated by Juliet Stevenson. “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf narrated by Nicole Kidman. And, niche, but just as brilliant, “The Weirdies” by Michael Buckley narrated by Kate Winslet – just incredible kids’ book that we all adore.
Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?
I read fiction, and I love forgotten fiction. I love books that have been overlooked. I love English female writers from the ’50s and ’60s, Margaret Drabble, A.S. Byatt, Penelope Mortimer, Doris Lessing. I love books about intimacy, about the tiny moments in a family, a friendship, a marriage that carry so much weight.
I’d like to read more poetry, and more international fiction. I get locked in my own interests. My podcast, Bookish, made me a much wider reader (I interviewed interesting people about the five books that had shaped their lives) but for now I don’t have time to do it and write my own books. But I loved how far it flung my net.
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
No. Like picking your favorite child!
Q. Which books are you planning to read next?
“Audition” by Katie Kitamura – I just got an advance copy and cannot, cannot wait. “This is Happiness” by Niall Williams.
Q. Do you have a favorite character or quote from a book?
Isabel Archer from “The Portrait of a Lady.”
Q. Are you a re-reader of books? If so, what are some that you return to?
Yes, but sparingly. I re-read the classics. “Anna Karenina,” “Madame Bovary,” “Middlemarch,” “War and Peace.” I re-read those within the last five years and it’s really a re-reading of the self that happens. It’s so confronting to realize that what you thought the book was about in your 20s or 30s (unrequited love, despair, passion) now in your 50s is about steadiness, devotion, faith.
Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?
I have favorite stores in every city. In London, I love Daunt and John Sandoe, in NYC The Strand and Three Lives, and in L.A. Book Soup was the first place I felt at home in the city.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
It was born from journals, every one of which I lost in the fire.
Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
Keep journals. Hold them lightly. Hold everything lightly.