Beth Allen stars on TV 2’s Shortland Street and has worked in theatre – most notably Killer Joe in 2009 & The Vagina Monologues in 2010. Allen is an avid reader and here she shares with us her idea of happiness, what books she currently has on the go & some other interesting tidbits…
Which book caused you to love reading?
The first book I read on my own; I can’t remember which one it was, but I remember lying on a blanket on the living room floor as my mother made dinner and escaping into a quiet little world that was self-sufficient and felt grown-up. I was about 6 or 7. Then the book I read that really moved me for the first time was Loving Ben by Elizabeth Laird, when I was about 9 or 10.
What are you currently reading & how did you come across the book?
Dog Sense by John Bradshaw, a re-examination of conventional wisdom about training dogs. We recently got our first dog and I got really interested in the information that is currently out there about training him. My father read about it in The Economist.
What is the book you have re-read the most?
As a rule, I don’t reread anything! But I have read Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything a couple of times, and I love love love Vice Magazine’s Book of Dos and Don’ts; it’s not literature, but it is hilarious.
Favourite book to movie adaptation?
Atonement. I liked the book but then the movie utterly destroyed me.
Who are your favourite poets?
e.e cummings.
Who or what impresses you most?
In general, circus performers. In reading and writing, anyone who can write anything and get it published, because I bet it’s hard.
What books are next to your bed?
Three plays (Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley and two others whose titles I’ve forgotten), In Cold Blood (my husband is reading it but it’s so good and I snuck a bit of a reread) and Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, which is next on my list.
What’s your idea of happiness?
A hot day by the beach with nothing to do and plans for the future.
Favourite literary quote?
“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
– Oscar Wilde. It might not be my all-time favourite, but it’s my favourite today.
