area and i always had a lot of different friends and i felt that always helped me and i didn't grow up in just one culture i guess you could say and i was treated -- treated racism as acts by individuals more than sight as a big institutional thing on a personal level. >> host: do we in your view here in the states sub-group ourselves too much. >> guest: i think so. personally, i think so. some of it really makes me laugh, it is kind of funny and i live the fact we spent all these years trying to desegregate and go to college campus and you have your black dorm and white dorms and mexican dorms and people separate themselves but that is out of comfort and people go where they feel comfortable so i understand it but it is funny how you fight for all of those things and another generation, goes, eh! we like it like that. >> host: from "i'd rather we got casinos" don't tase me, bro, if i'm a cop and a brother, and they let me have a taser, sorry, bro, i'm tasing you.

>> guest: i love the way you said brother, authentic, good. >> host: look guns na beach, california, 50 miles from where we are now, you are on with larry wilmore. >> caller: a beautiful time, killing time wait norring the dodgers game, actually, first off i am an addict, becoming an absolute addict of book t.v. it is -- and kind of goes my original point, for calling and asking larry, who you got good stuff out there, good shoutick d i have been watching on the daily show and is there a saturation point, you can't sprint forever, right? when it comes to the other media outlets, say, msnbc or fox, on the dark side or whatever... it is so darned predict what you are going to get, i find myself after the campaign of going through the two years, you know, and the build-up to it and, finally, the victory, you know what? i get tired of the either --

extreme right or the extreme left. i am tired of fighting. you know and now i want to let it re, you know? and i have a -- have a margarita and sit by the beach here, you know. >> guest: sounds good me! i don't have an issue with that. you know what, it is funny there is that -- it feels very polarized today in politics in a way that it hasn't felt since the 1960s and i was too young to feel it like that but i think there will be a viable third-party coming up and it will be right down the middle. i really do. i don't think it is going to be a fringe party. i think it will be party right down the middle that is going to have a lot of people who have issues on both sides, and -- but p are passionate about being in the middle. >> host: what are your politics. >> guest: i'm passionate about being on the fence, to me that is the middle and when you play the right or the left, you aim for the middle and the highest score. >> host: washington, d.c., please go ahead. >> caller: hi, how are you?

i want to skip -- i'm a big fan of your program. "the daily show," i wondered if you knew the original name of egypt was... and they never enslaved anybody, they were the most advanced people on the planet. thank you. >> great. thank you, i love history, that is fantastic. >> host: angry black church guy. >> guest: yes. the angry black church guide was written because i felt obama you know, the reverend wright thing, i felt people were kind of upset because obama didn't seems angry as his church. his level of anger didn't match up to the anger of the church and it is kind of newton's law, and the -- that the level of anger of the church should match level of anger in said brother attending the church and i give the zag get's guide to angry black church and choose the

right church with the correct level of achor to mass up with yours. >> host: do you miss bernie mac. >> guest: very much show. doing the e bernie mac show was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, shooting that pilot, and by the way, i never imagined bernie mac would be the amazing actor that he was, when i saw his stand-up it was one of the funniest things i had ever seen, gave me this idea to do the show and spending time with him and getting to know him and the kind of character he was, very devilish sense of humor, but very human, you know and that is the stuff we really wanted to dramatize, where -- were human stories and always, you know when i pitched the show, i said, bernie the show is children and terrorists and i don't negotiate with terrorists and he got it immediately and he said, absolutely. that is it. >> host: based a lot on his own life. >> guest: yeah, based on the joke from his act, where he talk about taking care of the kids and you should be able to hit them in the stomach or the throat and hitting a kid in the

throat and it was one of the funniest things i saw and i thought, boy that would make a good basis for a television show, to dramatize these feelings, and, that is basically what i pitched to bernie. >> host: probably a good segue into political correctness. >> guest: krechlt. >> host: what are your thoughts on that? >> guest: hopefully it is on its way out, you know? i don't understand it to be honest with you. i think it is a movement that started on this left actually where i think a lot of political correctness was just the way society was, until the '60s and a lot of barriers went down and then, it came back because people needed some barriers or something, or you had to be afraid of offending people and i wanted to bring offending people back, that is all i'm saying. >> host: here's the book, i'd rather we got casinos, do you have another one ready. >> guest: no, but i may do a black thugs calendar, something like that, might be a fun thing to do.

>> host: larry wilmore has been our guest for the last half-hour. >> from the 2009 "los angeles times" festival of books, a panel about reading. panelists include laura miller, sara nelson and jane smiley. this event is an hour. >> okay, i guess we'll take it away. good afternoon, good morning, hello. welcome to the panel about reading. i am louise steinman the moderator for the panel and i will introduce our guests. i am briefly about myself, i cure rate the aloud series at the downtown central library -- which is -- [applause]. >> great! presented by the library foundation of l.a. laft and i'm glad so many of you here are familiar with and the author of a couple books, most recently a memoir called "the souvenir, a daughter discovers her father's war." and our distinguished panel well, have a wonderful panel, we have laura miller, doing it in

alphabetical order, owner of salon.com, and a regular contributor not "new york times" book review and her work appeared in many, many publication and is the author of the magician's book, a skeptics adventures in narnia and these are brief descriptions. lizzie is the book cricket on nps and essays appeared in an array of publications and her blog old hag is a web pick and writes young adult fiction for jezebel and jane smiley is the author of more than ten novels and four works of nonfiction and the recipient of the pulitzer prize and the 2001 in dushtingded into the american academy of arts and letters and her laters novel is could ten days in the kilt" and is the author of "13 ways of looking at the novel" which will be relevant to our discussion today and sara nelson is the former

editor-in-chief at publishers weekly and currently a freelance journalist, contributing to the rap, the "los angeles times" and many others, the author of so many books, so little time, a year of passionate reading and i didn't add for lizzie, the title of her book, "shelf discovery, the teen classics we never stopped reading." so i'm going to start as this festival of books celebrates readers and writers, in this panel we get to address the basic premise of the relationship between writing and reading and perhaps between living and reading which is a tall order for 45 minutes and we wanted to open it to you. why and what and how do w read and what draws is to a particular book at a particular time in our lives and how do books that are really important to us change our identity and change who we are and do they and what books do we reread and what is that appearance about and what kind of intimacy is possible between a book and its

reader. ralph waldo emerson said, there is creative reading as well as creative writing and the panel celebrates creative reading. as i said these are very ambitious topics for an hour panel discussion, and we have four writers who have addressed these questions in various and compelling ways, and there is no shortage here of idea and opinions. so, i want you to hear from each of the panelists, and then we'll have more general questions, so, first, i'd like to ask each panelist, and we'll go in alphabetical order they have an interesting project which had to do with setting out a course of reading and would like them to briefly tell us about the projects and jane, we'll talk about 13 ways and let's start with laura. >> i thought i had dodged the bullet there! [laughter]. >> sorry! >> my book is about my childhood relationship to c st. louis's "chronicles of narnia" which were my favorite books when i was a kid.

and which i have probably read... ten to 20 tierjs depending on which volume we're talking about, and the disillusionment i felt when i was in my early teens and discovered that they had this sort of christian symbolism happening in them which i had miss and which pretty much everyone that i have ever met who read them as a child who was not told by an adult they had christian symbolism and everyone misses it when they are a kid so, if that was your experience, it is totally par for the course. and i -- you know, that was a problem for me. i felt kind of tricked and betrayed by that. and it wasn't until i was much older and asked to write a piece about a book that had changed my life. that i decided to go back to these books and see if there was still anything left there for me. and i found that interest -- i still liked them -- they were still really meaningful to me

but in very different ways, and so my book is sort of charting the course of that. it is a combination of memoir and literary criticism and biography of the author, so, those three element sort of are braided together, into the book. and it goes through three stages. so... that is it. that's it in a nutshell. >> sara. >> when i came up with the idea to write this book, it really became a different book from where i thought i was starting. i marks i never thought i was going to write 52 book reviews, so the working title of the book was 52 books, 52 weeks and i was with the sort of con temperatured and the idea was i would read a book a week and keep a journal about it and write about the book. and how it intersected or didn't intersect with my life. and what it quickly became was a

back about my life, and what books i happened to be reading as various things were happening, i marc it became much less -- i mean, for better or worse, and, some places i is for bet and some places it is for worse, it really became a book about a year in the life of a passionate reader, and the books, i mean, i never intended it to be, you know, harold bloom great books or harold blume-like but it really was more about the life of a reader and the culture of reading, with information about the books thrown in. so, some of the -- i think there were some people who were a little surprised and i never knew how to quite describe it and i have taken to calling it a memoir/reading guide. around the same time that my book came out, nancy pearl's wonderful book "book list" came out and hers had a lot of personal stuff in it but it was

much more, this is the list of the best so-and-so to read and so, i mean, they actually kind of work well together, as companions, but, a lot of what i talked about in the book was stuff that would be familiar to anybody who considers themselves a passionate reader. things like what happens when southbound rail, really like, your best friend or boyfriend or parent maybe, gives you a book and tells you it is their favorite book and you will love it and you hate it? [laughter]. >> you know. get rid of the book for get rid of the friend. [laughter]. >> so the etiquette around linding and borrowing books. and when you say, people think i'm crazy because, maybe you all won't but, when i give signs book i say, i'm very specific, this is a loan or this is a gift. and they you know -- i want this back and they think -- a lot of people think tits very ungenerous and it's not the 12 bucks or the 20 bucks or

whatever i might have spent for the book, it is just -- i need my books around me and i need know where they are. and there is a lot of -- a lot of jockeying for position in my house, with -- which is full of books. and i am sure, that is true for everybody here. and i do have a system but it is statement that only i understand. [laughter]. >> the -- that is a whole panel i think in itself. >> so it is as much about that kind of stuff, as it is -- the intention was, never to say these they're 25 books, the 50 books you should go out and read and one of the things that happened in the course of the book was, i did start off with a list and never -- didn't have a 52 list because i knew that -- i had a list of maybe 25 books and i tried to follow my list and as anybody who reads a lot knows, sometimes all the best intentions in the world, you started to read something and you just can't. you know and two weeks later you

can or six months later or five years later. so, i explore those kinds of issues. >> sar -- sara talks about living with someone who is not as passionate about books as she is which i found interesting -- an interesting subject, liz asks an answers if he question i think in her book, why waste time revisiting the books of childhood when there is so much else to read. lizzie, could you talk about that. >> sure that was actually the author who wrote my -- asked that question, thought it was the weirdest thing to do. but my column, book is formed from a column called, fine lines that i writ on a web site, called jezebel.com, and, when they formed this web site, it was for women about 25 to 55 i think this is readership, and i went to the editor and i said, you know, i'd like to write a column, i'd like to write a column about the books we read no one knows we read and she said i was going to call and see if you write that column and what i have tried to do, you

know, generally speaking when you talk about teen literature, right away, you are a girl in -- people's eyes glaze over and they say, talking about boys and fashion and there is this implicit idea that it is stupid and what i wanted to do with my column, each week, was, to talk about these books, and to talk about why they were important to us and they did sometimes talk about boys and they did sometimes talk about fashion, but, they were books, you know, in which a 12-year-old hayes crush on a 70-year-old. or books in which a teenage girl goes off and, you know, has an affair with a hollywood director and it is complicated and i wanted to -- feel that it was wonderful actually when we -- when i was a child, and what i share with the women my age is these books were automatically considered silly. we were given a lot of privacy to read them.

no once had any idea what we were reading. they didn't realize these were really adult books. and by adult i mean not only in topic matter but in the consciousness and the idea that life was complicated and i think half the time as i got older i realized half of the memories and half of the feelings i had didn't come from my own life experience, they came from these books. and that is what i have tried to do with my column, and, you know, not -- that is what i have tried to do to go back and give a voice to these authors, many of whom are now dead, and i think it is nice that you owner book at all, i re-- loan your books at all, i refuse to loan my books, these books are all out of print and that was my project. >> both sara and lizzie's books brought back a mem ref hours spent reading in a tree on a street, in culver city, jane talk to us about your very ambitious project. >> well, my project didn't start

out ambitious. i after 9/11 i was at a loss, as were a lot of writers and so i decided i would read the most distant possible novel there was which was the tale of genghes written in 1104, and i would sit in my bedroom, surrounded by my stuff with all of the shades closed and sort of get lost -- it's a thousand pages long and not easy reading and would get lost in the thousand page novel but it was relevant because a lot of the novel is about how fleeting life is, which is what i was thinking about all the time. and yet it was also very strange, and when i finished that one, i thought, well, i'll try another one and reread icelandic sagas which i actually knew fairly well and hadn't read in 25 years, and they were very relevant, too, because they were about violence and implacable

enmity. and so, as i made my way supposedly trying to escape my own time, as i made my way toward my own time i realized that there were things about these novels and proto-novels that were very similar to one another, no matter how distant the novels were from one another, geographically, or in time. and so that made me wonder about the nature of the novel as a form and i decided to read 276 novels, one each year, starting i guess it was supposedly in 1720 or something like that, and it -- the list shrank. [laughter]. >> and then i just decided to read 100 and turned out to be more like 130, because i counted, say the -- "in search of lost time" as one book, and

it was absolutely wonderful and i would say to the children i have work to do and go into my room and read a book. [laughter]. >> and i -- it was like reeducating myself, like going back to college, but having written novels myself, i had more of a sense, i was less in awe and more respectful in a way of what other authors were doing. and as a result, i now have no critical standards at all. [laughter]. >> i just -- i didn't love every of the but i came away from my giant list with this feeling that they were incomparable to one another. i couldn't say such-and-such was the greatest. i could only say i really liked this one or really liked that one or this other one wasn't too my taste. but was -- it was like having a mid life education and valued the time and enjoyed it. >> and that points to what i was going to ask you to consider

next, in laura's book, dealing with c sch. s. lewis and you ta about his essay or book, the -- >> it is either a long essay or a short book. >> and you have the eccentric notion the delight people take in a book might give us some clue as to its worth. and i think you allal in a sense kind of addressed that in your own work and maybe, we could talk about that a little bit, his list of the criteria for that was people who -- what did he call them literary readers. >> yes, he wasn't using the term in quite the way that we would now but, yes. >> it included rereaders. >> they reread. >> and those who savor what they read for more than just the plot and those for whom this first encounter with a favorite book is, quote, an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion or bereavement

can furnish a standard of comparison. so, what he is saying and what you bring out is it is the quality of attention brought to the book that matters and i think that is something you all talk about, in your books and maybe in your own ways you could address that a little bit. do you want to talk about that, lizzie? >> sure. it is funny, when you talkeded about the delight taken in the book, when i first started writing the column on jezebel.com you can comment and every single book would start to get these, you know, 200, 300 comments, below the column and it would just be screams, people really writing, ahhh! i love this book and what would also cup up were visceral details, things they remembered, and i remember once when i was writing about "ay wrinkle in time" i think i said, liver wurst and cream cheese sandwiches and five or six girls, and they said, actually it is limb burger and i didn't mean to say anything and i'm

pretty sure about this and everyone sort of had those details, you know, i think i mentioned as an aside in the column one of the -- one of the ramona books, the mother and father are having a fight, and the father to indicate his displeasure slashes his wife's pancakes to show her that they are not done and the pancake batter oozed out and this was an image that came up again and again in the comments even when i wasn't mentioning it, the traumatic thing, the father who slashed his wife's pancakes! [laughter]. >> and i think in terms of attention to the book, that that this is funny thing, because what you do remember is not when are trying to pay attention, not when you are taking notes on a book but the odd things that come up later, that you realize, you know, have affected you, and that apparently that is the worst thing a husband can ever do! [laughter]. >>ist that's why i'm not married! [laughter]. >> laura, you talk about the difference between reading, it

is so eloquently, reading "chronicles of narnia" as a child and rereading it as an adult and not wanting to settle for that gap, what did you say, i have the quote -- >> it sometimes feels like people don't really talk about -- well, lizzie and i are sort of engaged in a similar project and they don't really talk about the books that were important to them when they were you young, they are set aside in a special category of less worthy books but when i was reading an experiment in criticism and what cs lewis said was maybe the best way to judge a book is how people read it and if there is one person in the world for whom you couldn't change a line in the book without the person objecting, then maybe, however we might feel about it, we should stop and say, there is probably more here than we're admitting. or we can see. so, i wanted to sort of figure out, you know, somehow in between like all of the things

that, you know, the serious fiction or nonfiction i might be writing about, for various publications, and then, this kind of little island of intense reading experiences, that i had as a child, like, why is there just this chasm between that and why is that not a topic of serious discussion and i think it is probably because we tend to value writers than readers though now it seems like there are many more writers than there are readers that maybe we should think of switching that around. and, i wanted to connect those two people, the adults, and the -- to figure out what that relationship was. >> well, one of the things i discovered or realized from this book was that the book and the novel are two different things. the book is sitting on the table. the novel is in your mind. and so, the novel in my mind as a writer or as a -- reader is entirely different from the

novel in the reader's mind. and i have no access to that. so, the thing i always think of it as, is these -- is that in the mind, there are these images that -- and ideas that precipitate into words and then the words rest on the page. and then when the reader opens the book, they vaporize again into the reader's mind. since i don't have access to a reader's mind, then i cannot judge how that -- judge how that reader is reading. or what the reader is getting from the book. i can only have the reader say, i enjoyed it or didn't enjoy it and when i realized that, i realized that, for me, the reason that the novel is such a jewel, is that it cultivates this inner life among the readers. and, as i look past, back through this history of the novel, you can see that the inner life of readers was being

cultivated and this was a reciprocal thing between readers and writers so by the beginning of the 20th century, a writer expected the reader to have a very full and rich and introspective inner life whereas in, say, the 16th century at the time of marguerite of navar, what were they doing in their heads? i have no idea. they couldn't carry discussions of things that might be taking place in their minds, they couldn't carry them very far. because they were blocked by having no language. to discuss them with. well, by the time madame bovary was written they had a language with which to discuss them, by the time the man without qualities was written, they had still a greater language to discuss them and this fascinated me about how the novel had

transformed because it was popular. it had transformed our sense of who we were, and transformed also the way that we think. so -- and it all up is based in my mind on that idea that the novel enters your mind in a very complex way, and cult investigates your way of thinking. almost through these images that you are talking about. >> you also spoke the other night, jane spoke at the library the other night that you thought that reading a novel was required a more meditative state than reading nonfiction and i of have thought and i agree and disagree and maybe we'll have a little time for that, too. sara? >> well, i was going to say, i mean, you know, everybody in the room has had the feeling of falling in love with a book and it is -- and that is exactly what it is. i mean, it is like, the world telescopes and it is you and the book and the world of the book

and the people in the book, and what i was interested in was trying to figure out why a specific reader -- i mean, maybe ten people in this room are -- were in love with the same book but, possibly for ten completely different reasons, that something that -- what was in the book that spoke to you or reminded you of something is completely different from what the person next to you liked about the book, i mean, it is a completely take on it and it has everything obviously to do with what you bring to the experience of reading the book. a lot of other things that are involved, it seems to me, i mean, sometimes you have an irrational dislike of a book, for -- and because the character has red hair like your first grade teacher and you hated your first grade teacher. you know, and that is... that has the same name as your mother and you love your mother or

whatever. i mean, there are all kinds of ways that the tiniest, tiniest details in books work on us and it has everything to do with what we bring to them. and i mean, what i always find so interesting and i do in my life and as probably fairly obnoxious, is if i'm in a doctor's office or on a train or a bus or something, and somebody is reading something -- >> i always do that. >> you do? i ask them, i ask them and i start to talk to them and if they seem, you know, like they will not hit me or something. [laughter]. >> and i was a young woman recently, in me dentist's office and she was reading a hard cover copy of middle sex and i thought, he was like, i don't know, 22 or something, and well, and it was clearly a library copy and it was a college library copy and she was reading it for a course and pulitzer prize winner and all that but, you know, sometimes you think and it is a snobby thing i guess, we all do but we do judge people by what we see them

reading and sometimes you can be surprised. that somebody who looks like they one be reading, you know, montanya is reading it or the other way around. there is a piece today in the "new york times" about the kindle which i contributed to, and one of the subjects, sort of -- very -- sliced thin subjects in the story is about the problem with reading that way, is that you don't have any idea what the person next to you is reading! [laughter]. >> so you can't engage in a discussion in your own mind or a discussion with the person. [laughter]. >> so, it is like, these machines which i actually don't hate, i'm sorry to say, you know, they are like a plain brown wrapper of the 21st century. >> but the book cover is such a great tradition. >> yes. i mean, i -- i don't think --

this is going off the subject but i mean, i don't think that the traditional book is ever going to go away. i think anything that makes more people read is fine, i'm just a little disappointed that i can't, you know, sort of delve into people's lives. [laughter]. >> can i tell a little story. >> yes. >> one time i had to fly from monterrey to san francisco, to new york, and the plane was really early, leaving monterrey and i fell asleep on the san francisco plane, and kind of like this in my chair and when i woke up, i heard the woman next to me laughing. that woke me up and i opened my eyes and as i opened my eyes i saw she was reading my book, "moo" and i turned to her and i said, that's my book, she said, no, it isn't, it's mine, my bought it! [laughter] -- i bought it. >> and i said, i wrote it and shooech she said, oh, yeah. [laughter]

>> the writer, the novelist, told me once he was writing the long -- riding the long island railroad and three seats in front of him there was someone reading his book that had just come out and he was like, the person is reading my book and he was watching it and enjoying it and the person stopped. and put it down and he was like, not there! you can't stop there! laura, in terms of the -- talking about what -- let's talk about rereading a little bit. laura, i thought had -- and you also talked about this a bit, and talk about the, you know, different kinds of love we have in our lives, and you talk about the mature love, when you go back and reread something and you kind of accept a book, you know, where reading critically -- we're reading critically as adult maybe we didn't as children but maybe you are more forgiving and maybe you are -- >> well, i think one of the things i didn't want to do in my book was turn it into this big sentimental nostalgia fest about the lost innocence of childhood

and how it is so sad that, you know, i don't read now, the way i did back then. because there are better things about the way that i read now, i mean, when i was a child, i was -- i don't know i would just follow an author anywhere and i picked up all kind of bad ideas, some of them from c.s. lewis and not the ideas he wanted me to pick up, apparent, but, other ones. and so you don't want to -- you know, it's not a good thing to be totally laid open to an author all this time. i mean, we want people to be able to think for themselves, for real reasons. up and i also think it's always very easy to idealize your childhood, because you remember all of the great things about it and you don't remember how powerless you were as a child, like that is the fundamental condition of childhood, is that you have no power, and, reading lizzie's book which i was

totally in bed with in my hotel room last night until the late hours, i -- you know, she described the moments where your parents make you move or any of these things, you know, that these books are about, and that you can really forget about when you are an adult and i wanted to say, well, what is the value of the way that i read now, instead of being sad, that it's not this intense experience, that used to be, and i realized that it is very similar to the way, what happens with love, where you have this idealized experience of a person at the beginning and then, you do have a period of disillusionment and then there is a certain way you learn to live with the things you don't necessarily like about them, that makes you a bigger person. and, that is how i came to feel about these books. i always say my reading experiences that i had at the beginning with the narnia books were very, very pure.

but the reading experiences i had with them as an adult are more rich. and i know more. i understand more. i recognize other books in them. that i met later in life that i, you know, had the recognition experience when i first read "spencer" and, you know, jane austen and all kinds of things that are echoed in c.s. lewis's writing because he was probably a more obsessive reader than even anyone on this panel, and so now when i read them i give credit to that experience. it is a little bit less like a complete and total immersion. but that is because i am more of a person now than i was then and i also -- i always felt like when i was a child i wanted to grow up, like i didn't want to be innocent and i valued experience and so, i thought of the whole sort of william blake, "songs of innocence and experience" that you have to understand that it -- that

experience has value and that was the thing i brought to the books as an adult reader: that interested me so much the fact i didn't know what a reference like dewey

defeats truman, and it's sort of spoke to the fact these books were operating on some more interesting level because i did understand and then again maybe i won't, he had moved to a new place, he was nervous and was having problems and that was the fundamentally interesting thing about the book. i didn't know that sally jay freeman, i didn't know who margaret o'brien was and this was before wikipedia -- i knew it was like the s.a.t. test where you leave the word out and you still with the word is supposed to mean and i think that as one of the wonderful things about going back and reading books you read as a child, you don't fill in the blanks. you see those blanks didn't really matter and that isn't what the books were about. so that was the most fascinating thing. >> sort of like how i read novels in french now, there's that word and then we go on. >> that is one of the things i

love about the unlawful. i have reread a lot of books over the years and what i adore when i open the page i see the words and remember them even though i hadn't been thinking of them so i am simultaneously getting these to pleasures which is what it was in my mind that was a pleasure from that remained from reading the book before and then sort of reconnecting or getting reacquainted with these words in this order that is the author's style that always feels like you are were often feels like you are free experiencing even more vividly than you did the last time that you read it, and to me is the wonderful thing about pros, you cannot memorize it, so it is they're waiting for you on

the page to sort of stimulate you all over again. you want to add to that, sara? >> no, i had done some reading in the course of this book and you know, i just the title of my book if really is like i've got other things to do. [laughter] >> have you read it thomas friedman yet because it's on your list. it's very important to read this. >> i know. it's risky and it brings, reading brings in all of the emotions we are talking about before and so much of my -- so much of what i remember about books i often remember lines from books i read ten years ago and i think how many books ago was that, look a lot of it has to do with what i was doing.

i can tell you i read the liberals patrimony and i can't tell you it was either 1990 or 1991 and it was the winter because i remember it was snowing outside and it was 90 or 91 because it made me think of my father who was either dalia or had just died, it was very much in my mind, and that is what i remember about that book as much as a line or two so that to read it in a different context you're going to bring something different. >> it's interesting when you were talking in your book about why we choose the books we choose and when we choose them of all the books are around you and books you will pick up today what is it about this moment it's going to make you actually pick up one and read it? and you mentioned in your book after september 11 talking to people about what they were reading and j and, you went to the tale of benge so i went back to my journal yesterday and thought what was i reading after

september 11th, what novels i reading because i usually have nonfiction i am reading and a novel at the same time, and i was really surprised because i couldn't find a lawful and i realized i was reading poetry. and i think maybe a lot of people work but do you remember where you were reading? >> i was reading what i always read probably in times of -- i read a lot of wharton in a time of distress, but i often go back and read the little house books. [laughter] which sounds funny because what i found every time i read them is it seems like you're going back into that to escapes that there is this idea -- >> survivalist books. >> of those people actually could not catch a break. they would look around and their house would be burned down or it would be moved into indian territory or they would lose a child and then the locust's would come and --

[laughter] there is this idea of this resilience, mom is constantly saying i think this work is there is no great loss without a small gain. when the locusts each of their crops the idea is the chickens eat the locusts so they don't have to buy chicken feed and as stupid as that is it is actually true and during the housing crisis i recall my about the long winter, which is one of the books for those of you that don't know when the entire town is snowed in for nine months, and i was so fascinated when i went back and read it it wasn't about the winter, it was about a housing crisis. the same thing happened, these people staked claims, the government did not support them and then they were isolated and left out there in the winter by themselves to fend for themselves, so i don't -- i don't really know what i was talking about. [laughter] >> do you remember when you were

reading? >> dad that is because i was working so at the time i was reading -- at the time the attacks happened it was the corrections i think i did an interview two days before that and then after that all i read was like books about islam because i needed to write about them so i just kind of followed everybody into that little tunnell. if i read anything for a steep i don't remember because i have never been able to keep that journal of things i've written. >> i don't even keep of what i've written. it's just usually i will mention it in the course of keeping my journal if there is something -- >> i would also have to keep a journal. [laughter] >> did you want to add anything, sara or jane? jane mentioned in her book and i -- close to the beginning in a world where weapons of mass destruction are permanent features of the landscape i cannot help believing a lively

sense of the reality of other consciousness on the part of those whose fingers are on the trigger is essential to human survival. and i was thinking how fortunate we are right now to have a president that is not only a writer but the reader so i was looking at his reading list. first let me to come across him reading where the wild things are to a group of children which he did very well, and i noticed on his list he had for whom the bell tolls, invisible man, the golden notebook, which i thought was extremely encouraging. [laughter] the song of solomon, poems by derek walcott, hamlet, the autobiography of malcolm x and moby. so are we encouraged? >> i don't believe that list at all. [laughter] >> we were thinking michele has something. >> mckeown his to read list and he will read them, but there's got to be -- i love him that there has got to be james patterson or, you know, there's

got to be and escape. >> he has been carrying -- his thumb is only on page one. >> i don't put them in the same category. [laughter] i think that sounds like -- >> actually i did write a piece about the literary influences on him and those books are mentioned in "dreams of my father." >> james patterson? >> no, not james patterson. [laughter] but some of them you listed, i think that hemingway is the wringer. >> you don't think that the lessing -- >> i don't. >> i can't imagine a guy reading -- how many men in this room have read the golden notebook? [laughter] i rest my case. [laughter] how many women in this room? how many women in this room have read the golden notebook? that's the one on a remember where i was when i was reading it. >> he also had a -- which you

don't see him talking about. [laughter] >> i know that we have passionate readers in this room and there's a lot to talk about, and i want to open it up to the audience, so if you have questions or if you will come forward to the microphones and we will continue this discussion with you. we have a question coming down. boy that's a steep break. watch your step. >> talk about their rigor. hi, david. >> with the exception of shane by my count, the rest of you have written a book of peace after, you know, child woods end greenup rating. i'm wondering how the experience of writing and publishing your first books changed how you read it all. >> i've actually written like 11 books by sure you didn't read them because they were sweet valley high. [laughter] >> you're the one?

i'm so happy to meet you. [laughter] >> no, i don't know. these were very different from publishing those books. i also did publish a book of poetry. i guess it's nice when you have an editor and press and publicist but i feel like the main difference is when you read your in your room and when you publish you have a coach of all, you talk about it to other people. you don't have to read yourself which is horrible. >> i just had the experience -- the idea is i was going to read whatever i wanted for a year, and i explain in the book i bought books, i was given books, books i already had, i got some free books i owned up to that at the beginning. but when -- you are still reading for work. i had to read a book a week for a year because that is what i

had been contracted, that's what i set out to do, and even though there are books in the booklet didn't finish and that becomes the story that the list changes as you go along, when you know you have to write about something a letter to are going to be writing about it is a different experience from what you've read when you just pick up what's next to you or across the room. it's closer to the experience i had as a magazine editor where i had to read certain books for the magazine because that was -- i had work to do but it wasn't an entirely free experience. i don't know if that really answers your question. >> i would say in the souvenir and even now writing another kind of memoir one of the things i really love about the kind of reading -- i do a lot of research reading, a lot of

history, but when i am reading someone else's memoir or lawful i love that moment -- i've become very attuned to win all of a sudden something springs open in my head like the problem i am working on in my own book springs to light like something about the quality of the voice or the way ideas are sleeping together. it may not even be relevant to the subject. it would be interesting to track to the contract because it is on a different subject and can have that little opening moment, and that is a real special delight about reading when you are also working on your own material. >> i have been reading for the man booker international price, which is a book -- a price for a body of work, and the winner four years ago was cavari. i've been reading steadily now

for 15 months and the interesting thing to me has been that i don't mind reading stuff i have to read even if i don't like it. [laughter] >> i love that about you, jane >> i read a book every three days, depending on the land, sometimes every five days, and i've loved this experience. and there are books i would not have picked up voluntarily that i had to pick up because the other jurors like this author, and i feel like once again, my world has expanded in a way that i kind of didn't expect and kind of figured. i thought if i followed my own tastes i would reach enlightenment, but actually that isn't true. [laughter] >> jane, what you read this passage?

about authors reading authors. >> a lot of my recommendations for the books that i read for this book came from other authors i was reading so i came to realize that there are only 2 degrees of separation for novelists. and we know from their own testimony that forster read james, james read dickens, dixon said savante is, he tried margarita vara and she read [inaudible] and of course forest dickens read scott, scott rett savante fielding read savante is, will fred alston, dickens and chains to the code james, james red balls -- [inaudible]

and so forth. [laughter] [applause] >> so what are you recommending at the moment of when you are reading? how often of when you read to you immediately feel like other people need to read this? how evangelical are you? >> i will say one thing when i read maria vargas novel the war of the end of the world i wrote in my notes this is the book that war and peace wanted to be. [laughter] >> i read it on my kindle on the we ought hear all of kittredge, it was fantastic.

and elizabeth stroud, it's linked stories, but it is really on novel. it's certainly stories. and the real test that while i don't hate the kindle by any means is a lot harder to get transported to the place you forget what the format is. i think this is going to be the test for books that get published now because you don't have all of those, and you don't have the cover, all of these subliminal drawls having the weight of the book in your hand and the font and all those things readers love, you just have you and words on the page and if you love the book you sort of forget what was to forget you are pushing these buttons rather than having these other but on the pages with to be harder. so anyway, that's my very, very

high recommendation for all for kittredge. >> i was going to say all with kittredge that i tried to get hard to get to. but i would recommend -- i write essays but i don't really like them and i don't like nonfiction but i did read a book this year i thought was wonderful called notes from no-man's land. she is an essayist and i was familiar with her work through poetry so i picked up the book and i think it is these are the most wonderful essay as i've ever read in my life. i think that she is terrific and i would love if everyone here would go by this book and make her famous because she's a wonderful new writer. >> because i am a professional critic and if people don't like my recommendations they will let me know. [laughter] especially my sister who isn't

here today but really doesn't hold back at all. [laughter] i always make the point before i recommend a book i quiz them about what they like because one of the things i learned about the book we've just been talking about is how could you like her? choose an excellent point but that doesn't bother me as much as this other thing attracts me so i know what you mean. i feel like there are so many people i also have charged that same price someone is sitting there doing it so beautifully written and i think you have got to be kidding. [laughter] so i quizzed people extensively before i will make a book recommendation because i don't think there are very many books you can universally recommend, and i think some people say

2666, great, you should read that or the arthur phillips book, but i know some people are going to hate that book so i think probably the most reliable recommendation i could make would be in the woods. i think anybody who picked that book up would enjoy it on some level or another but that's because i feel it has the most universal appeal and otherwise i need to know who you are before i recommended it to you. >> we have one patient questionnaire here. i'm sorry i didn't look to my right. >> this goes to what i going to ask, i am going to blow my cover, and a librarian. [applause] i am a library and in a girls' private school, high school, and what lizzie said about the kind

of matured themes and i don't think, and i'm blogging my cover here, i don't think the administration knows about some of these books, and i am totally supportive of the girls picking up these books and reading these books in having these books be available to them in this format not just in the public library. so, but my question is and i am glad you write sweet valley high or are familiar with and is there such a thing as a bad book to make available to a kid no matter what? i mean, the series, the gossip or series, all these collections, maybe they are flat, i know there is a big discussion about is there such a thing as, and you know, not a

feeding yourself book and is it okay to have those -- >> ascent twilight one of the ones libraries -- when i wrote a piece on twilight i got so many e-mails from librarians how reluctant they were to cultivate -- >> and my feeling and i guess the way i grew up was there's no such thing as bad readers. >> i think that's true. i think one of the most important things at least for me what i loved about my reading youth is no one cared what i was doing and so i had privacy, and i think privacy and ones reading choices is more fundamental than the reading itself. so i would say absolutely not. i read everything when i was a girl and i really think that richard balk was much more for me and everything nicholas and alexandra and -- >> or the rise and fall of the

third reich >> i have to tell the story when my 30 year old was my and my 26 year old was five am i 30-year-old had a sweet valley high book in which one of the twins fell off the motorcycle and was in a coma. >> they did that in several of those. [laughter] >> when the girls went to bed i read this book and i was a little shocked that the line-year-old would be reading about this so the morning she got up and i said could you possibly -- do you really want to read this book about this, and she said mom, it's not trauma its drama. [laughter] >> i think that's great. i think we are going to probably end on that note. this is a great weekend to celebrate reading and writing.

thank you for being here. thank you to the la times for sponsoring this panel. remember, support your independent bookstores so that they will still survive. thank you. [inaudible conversations] for more on the festival of books, visit latimes.com/extras. this summer book tv is asking what are you reading. >> my name is michele bachmann minnesota sixth congressional district. i have to great books i'm working on now for the summer and early summer and i will switch and do something a little bit later but the first book is by mark levin called liberty and

tear it. it's been on "the new york times" best-seller list nine out of the ten weeks. it's sold over a million copies and is essentially a treatise on white conservatives believe what they believe and it goes through a number of different issues. it is a fabulous book. i've read it once and highlighted it, it is all dolled year, the pages, i've written notes on the margins, quoting dr. levin's book on liberty and tear me everywhere i go and i urge people to read his book. it's fabulous. i am going through a second time and taking more notes. i also working on another book by a great lady i have heard several times speak about the book and it is the forgotten man by amity shlaes. it is timely because she is writing the history of the hoover years and fdr and the great depression, and the forgotten man is the american tax payer who is paying for all of the expense for building up the welfare state. and so it is a fascinating story to see how the american economy

is taking a parallel today and 2009 with the same course you might say of action that was taken back in the great depression so this is instructive for members of congress, very pertinent to what we are doing because if we are going to apply the principles of big government intervention as of we see how it played out in the 1930's and it prolonged depression rather than short and depression. so the forgotten man is a great book plus we've been able to hear from her personally. we had dr. mark levin duralast summer speaking at a luncheon, and he had not yet written liberty and tyranny but since his book liberty and tierney, they're has been so much excitement in washington about that book and i am hopeful that dr. levin will come back and allow us to hear from him personally. that is the number-one book i am encouraging all americans to read, liberty and tear ready, and also amity shlaes, the

forgotten man. >> to see more summer reading lists and programs visit our web site at booktv.org. columnist robert novak and died august 18th 2009 after a battle with brain cancer. in 2007 book tv visited his home to discuss his memoir the prince of darkness and talk about his writing habits and books that have been influential in his life.