The author of Harry Potter and, now, “The Casual Vacancy,” says her favorite literary character is Jo March: “It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo.

What’s the best book you read this summer?

I loved “The Song of Achilles,” by Madeline Miller.

What was the last truly great book you read?

“Team of Rivals,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I lived in it the way that you do with truly great books; putting it down with glazed eyes and feeling disconcerted to find yourself in the 21st century. I met the author at a reception in the American Embassy in London last year, and I was so excited that I was bobbing up and down on the spot like a 5-year-old.

Any literary genre you simply can’t be bothered with?

“Can’t be bothered with” isn’t a phrase I’d use, because my reading tastes are pretty catholic. I don’t read “chick lit,” fantasy or science fiction but I’ll give any book a chance if it’s lying there and I’ve got half an hour to kill. With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.