747 live Helen Fielding Has a Big Collection of ‘Sadly Ineffective’ Self-Help Books

With “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” streaming747 live, the novelist talked in an email interview about what moviemakers keep cutting from adaptations of her best sellers. SCOTT HELLER

Describe your ideal reading experience.

I love a vacation binge-read — I read all 800 pages of “The Goldfinch” in Greece (that’s Greece, not Greek). I also love it when you’re waiting for a novel to come out and can’t put it down when it does. It was like that with “Atonement.” I managed to escape and hide when it arrived and read it all at one sitting.

What kind of reader were you as a child?

I was crazy for novels as a child and teenager. I read several a week, never distinguishing between heavy and light. Enid Blyton, Jane Austen, Jackie Collins,phtaya casino Thomas Hardy — I loved them all. Ironically, the joy was dampened when I went to university to read English. I’d worked as an au pair in France all summer and somehow failed to tackle the reading list. I ended up trying to read the entire works of Dickens in three days. I lost my reading mojo for some years.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?

I’ve got into trouble for not reading a book: “Bleak House.”

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

“Bleak House.” And I’ve got into terrible trouble for giving quotes for book covers. My quote once got a bad review: “There is only one thing wrong with this novel — the cover quote from Helen Fielding. Whilst it is true, it is also trite.”

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?

“Ernest Hemingway on Writing.” It’s a brilliant collection of quotes about writing from his letters. I don’t know what I’d do without it.

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But the truth is that Mr. Biden will speak at a time of deep uncertainty about the future of America’s role in the world, including the war in Ukraine, escalating conflicts in the Middle East and growing economic competition with China.

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