isho wants to have the abortion, doesn't want anymore chilen, that'sutth tihexedtopp c a it's born. there seems to be -- >> host: edward, i think we got your point. nain? abteurs ois pantso rr t term, the law says he has to help support at child, but that if she has an abortion, she ge to make that decion o h o of tgs t t

suo ways, it thee most complex issue that we face becauset's n li hils l ettsto ogt e ed fre coio in which i offer hospitality of my body to another human being towan os ot yt whhaea because it is within my own body, is that i have certain responsibilities in th f lsha irtys a huge number of rights because it is, in fact, a part of my body, and i know that i is something thateetond

prus calr wa saying about the pbs programn which i appeared on which males were toeatecn.n it the sdon host: lydia y e-mails you, and hopefully she's back from the soccer gam toear the beig oouvhis. e eaoupeng laye. wa naity 15-year-old daughter which is why i miss your live sh sunday with a12 no soccer g i'llatch a rt. ee ok i,ut i kab it, i do fth at any

point in your career, and do you have any suggestions as to a process i can follow to get titug 5rrthto make it feel les o dr,yeld a enhe 15-year-old. >> guest: well, first of all, to make it feel less as bk.ng, n't ink it wiiz b.se n

re w aoo y do f o mp. there's no two ways about it. you can think about it until the cows come home, but nothing gets written until you actually write it down. ist whu'ri ememr day wsin okarr n sa yel wdo want to say, pound it out, you know, do a thousand words. here's the thing, if you do a thousand woryor5 [iib],rd , ant' pretend there will be not be rriting and revising, of course there will be, but you just have to make yourself do it. and if u ca f enow p,cq wrg l,ot mle let the first sentence be as stupid as it wishes, no one will

print it anyhow. you know, that idea that, you know, you're just li th netnne no ad u' in oinck kihe noodling better. >> host: well, "lots of candles, plenty of cake,"82 pages. how many words isthat? ho w iouknowi'otu tht asu ler ok gh th bseowse srg st at tink yo can read it from space. so i finish a book, and i think, oh, this one's so long. no stot-fo aeone in my i a g lh,a, ar 2 pages. >> host: do you know offhand how many words areon the page -- >> guest: i don't if itouey t ibo0-00d

urrael5, yb ye long writer, 120, 130? >> host: so bleak house would be -- >> guest: wevelong it is, it's not too . osusouti nandth ano 'sitbirer si hhoear. >> guest: when i realized my kids couldead, it was one of lie st eitingmos o cait eleme p o e gs' st toab to talk to them ant those things. and, of course, we all know when we talk about books, we are not always talking aboutk metis e inou ouve urc. inibomfo. and en it became quite clear to me, um, that they each had very discertain bl writing

voices which, ofrse, ie wr, as ang dl rortheay hib erimer assistant at scholastic and said, i sold my novel. and i said, what nov? thwit teg anenathe d anentooa o, i a mioti morexcid than i was for any of mine. it's just, it's just an incredibleoment when your kids ischngndn iyn lyl.

and we are back live at our new quen studio with authornna nct s,x n s sinoo jeles,ngrue, plaque and blue, blessings, rise and shine, every last one. we have about an hour left with ouruest. put the phone numbers u o the msin.lkit t

saou win rry he nonftion -- another fiction. right. can you give us a topic, anything about it? >> guest: no, it'still kind of mushy in that way yon'enea ki yo tliinen ok. >> host: um, do you when you are writina booo y ge i i gnghrou ann d ce thho yea t characters develop? >> guest: actually, you learn e plot as the characters develop. freaemesly happens a heit iowi s st, di ds it's the middle that's the problem. and it's not so much keeping

that dramatic string taut isasu ie b- h toyoowet f ll km u mapquest that there are three or four different routes. with a novel there areeven more than that. so it's, it's those coice u a t thou wenthek, aheu k, aows en >> host: this e-mail from bay yard pigeon in oregon, i had great hopes that the success of the mi menou keiend eci t inorn emlu sitiou t w eon twa gentler for men as well as for women. this, in my opinion, did not happen. instead, women seem to have been of sarkhiannthe same md me

nsntstem f ly oid . your thoughts? guest: where's that fr? >> host: klamath falls, on. >> gst a aoto vefe theau th.olyhtut atil ssu of betty friedan in the mid '60s writing "the feminine mystique" which began some of this, in a relativeort rif twechd . whhameis t vego iht y me slovts eiaic you start out with a thesis. so the thesis is, you know, woman as wife and mother alone. and then you go to an dot a b afe n'reutng thitll ait d r heor eval yomh a synthesis which is, gee, some of the old ways were really good, and some of the new ways are really terric.

buveefat puheet ofe th sfldr thwhapd ys was that youad a lot of women entering the workplace who found it safest and most productive to i ,emre mveliceile the ur rte and then someone came running up to me and said we don't is ask for paternity leave, and i said, why i an, i was doi w ouwae outh d sths adme ouwae ouswo g. i rynt ve a paternity leave, and i really thought we should have. >> host: did you have to rescind the offer? >> guest: somebody else hato ineer wt cytnt sodo t thha t opt i

ulllth male model. i have great, great hopes for the generation of people who are now in their 20s and early 30s. the n nply fft d,hese t re tanan a rafond d ineyll really have a thirst in part because of watching their parents for a whhaanis tea rinpar a erstioayy veokt yw, they don't want to work the hours, and i keep thinking, okay, we now have 80-hour weeks, and that's not including the time at home whenu'n hoor yurmp. we'tt k -hi wh orandparents were and work a 4hour week, i think that makes a lot of sense. the mena wing, rd swi

adipit aor o e g leth dien elyay you highlight. >> host: do you miss being in an office environment? >> guestum, metis d en aigstre neomtng puitouofekg and i was doing an event at the chicago tribune, d someone said to me, would you like to go our newsroom? i sa, wuld pe bse j sin wss ci. iner otiork done, i get more work done at home than i ever would in an office. >> host: little less than an hour left inpt fr a,nekas niyoreth. >>lehaouin my call.

it's really an honor to speak with you. neinndenntryfy from the my ame ma te mad din t i urlyor o my first ok addressin some of the isss you have discussed such as abortion, feminism. arthromme ttion and t dnope sentvi o molestation and know a numer of girls who have been raped. excuse me. nale g g nre oud eaking out or participating in community activities. [inaudible] you're cid cpt i rkg mr'in

nursing. i am not married, nor have any chdren. i feel very strongly about women issues and addressing them, but among ou aeueion mf wi c wok at aeld gi, paof the world who live under conditions where freedom of speech is limited and ru t risk of ing unmried, run t skap dmmat dha? ku. >>t:nk,ic on tirhi ti would say is that despite the fact that we still have battles to fight and issues that need to be taken caref,er w ne ti seve thy't er w woves d he ytime had a page 1 story in yesterday's paper

about a young woman in afghanistan who was speaking out abbependetr mimb s sf meg t a t ilsta k h kng is the only way to deal with this if the government won't do so. so i countries aroundeor er aen fg at ahug f r nmues because of being victimized themselves. and, you know, the one thing i would say to you aboutbeing afraid um, ouut thre w nng idlethnu as s writing them i would think, no one else thinks this way, no one else cares about this, nobody's going to respond tolamnen is co, tilour

roopyi, k you. thank you for doing that for me. thank you for giving voice to those of us who sometimes feel anhsp gme. lloepn gha d, inkt i e out some of the things th you're talking about, that you would find that there was a community out there that would or,h fin i ckil, on ' cum uaries fail to reveal the reality, open my freshly-broken heart to the truth that reading like readinghe lisrw wmndpeelnd y ndl s anum g or e e o m l your observation that we are defined by who we have lost has allowed me to internalize a

person's loss and keep them alive invayfe wiwle urorore he ththu l icokatp t dend world. >> guest: the column that she's talking about is a column that readers frequently cite to me. it was a column that i wrote abthtufrisistein-lied d edm wi wlsk,we dd in that column. it seems to have provided some soce for people for which i'm deeply grateful. wi i chif 'sro s, yon of vbein ouitist you can bring the dead back t life again so that, for example, there are a number of times in this newook w tgh an ok hn aid

ouayshiv the page. and to be able to do that is one of the best parts of doing what i do. >> host: '94, that's 16 years yoett tto ? >>sthaiulay , onhe r a asce dg any given appearance somebody will pull that clip off the their bag or mention it. >>ost: do you enjoy book tos? dr ah wllay t tos not being sent on book tour. and, you know, traveling in america is no longer as pleasurable as it once was. and eepin l r t en yan b woinybsadg res on the road is just fantastic. that part of it's really, really good. >> host: longtime fan e-mls in: i'm very intereedin w

tas enck sinceian hard-heartedness which seems to be so contrary to the christian ideals espoused by g: llnt.s. prd olthssof theqou do is dnto others as you would have them do unto you, to love your neighbor as yourself, and ifou have two coats, you give oneo m was mee heew tme itll ced me to believe that all kinds of institutions including government have a moral imperativ to take care of ose o te se imond t t i uatan b odis atl

like everybody's on their own. i mean, i read christianity as a call to community. dintoo mrsho ed help. and, you know, i wouldn't feel like a good citizen if i discounted eerly citizens who 't have engh tety. , u malrooe ra eael erm e ceos tod e vernment ofrs, um, to our citizens from social security to civil rights. but it is tied toitnd tdend i't hinew amthugs at mean-spiritedness and the view that everybody needs to take care oemesfrnd

er prta, en o di fe to male. >> guest: depends. you know, sometimes i'm asked to speak at allemal-- eqlym aoak l-le oizns sacaal/5nto but i would say a disproportionate number of the people who really, really love my work enough to come out to a book signing, for exale, male soicn t d, isisda,, b ia dt andint. >> host: phillip in san diego, go ahead with your question for anna quindlen. philu l u al y m in fheit, d soa cte m opinionated than other people.

for instance, if alexander hamilton were alive today, he'd justay tgr j t det orabt. w,heopul s that won't work because whereas an east coaster would say, look, politicians knowow t d an tayen s pael that's a half a million words. >> host: thank you, phillip. and we will move on to b edap-- ar rapids, iowa. hi, becky. becky, you with us? we're hang just a little trble, if cl treickin l

el co i sp"tewk mesouefiv significant other. as such, are you capable of critical thought of the times? i'm a consertive who read the a section and the op-ed daily no lrn strtilecely otpoofw ke aerntew that's frankoyce in virginia >> guest: um, i don't agree with him about the news columns. i think that no one should be pafe yomeo to lilid t i saying to an earlier caller, that doesn't call out for not reading "the new york times," it calls out ti heewernor zite ea i tt tno as many sides of any given issue as we can. so, for example, on any given

night i will watch racl maddow smstpln nen is of th knhaer ngto t arlau um, look, it's hard when you're a newspaper reporter. you're pting aor tet ryor cethe uryove tiyotnt g. tiyooureng you, and you're not sufficiently aware of that. sometimes the people who will talk to you are not the people who provideostbaed . hay wyoult e m iin bve yo to remember i used to say that we put out a completely new product every 24 hours. but the truth of the matter is with the web now rts w toirorsryoung

ur and when you're doing that, inevitably you're going to make mistes. i will put "thnew rki' baop t aagt ontsodd usu'teea wol lot of, you know, american corporations saying, oh, d by the way, we sort of messed up with that proct idtu oorky . thmeestve soouguatf ineme i l of center, what that says is that you ought to, you ought to balance it with two or thr other things. hinnye he., lo th. b, i eagerly await your next one all the time, and i've just finished "ls of candles and

plenty of cake. i ally eedbumy ess,yo a ul cailt ywe e ecrs e ecmaet the power walking and the oatmeal and everything. uld you just share o or two of yr faults? >>stller aol th aromth hohithms etar gh i think that if you read it with a dispassionate eye, what you see is somebody who's goer at some things and n s d g i w th ti' n gt. [laughter] >> host: y also reveal that you can stand on your head at any point. we're not going to ask you to do it, don't worry about that. ue: younow,snt buescai 't ae stonad nyubce a

re i wearing a skirt, the chances were pretty sl. >> host: did anyone ask you to? >> guest: no. [laughte nealmeom'es ,ow leooten,yo okn cn2 al h nam suet ever read any of your books. i've read many, many, many books in my life ever since i learned in school that ach stean o bue heinh gee ance to speak out like you do, and i'm old enougho be your mother, but m a liberal christian whospt m mng ch. fahaeveanh inl wr these abortion os. abortions. and the fella that called in and said these poor guys tt have di wwh d'tyo

dowaoaids y t sif re not planning on tending the harvest? i would call -- >> host: all right, thank you. all right. gue: or n eeave it there. ct hbo com i khaigkhe rsme thard been used on this show and maybe even on c-span. [laughter] hos probly t. are renek. u eut aot fiti whan ex-reporter/columnist on that we haven't talked about 9/11, and nobody's called in the about it. as a new yorker, what did that mean to you, and does n it mean athinnowar s >>st, iny meg ll. w,nod epr icte the event i would

go to other cities, and they wouldn't ask me fo a picture id before i went in an office building. ori d blkinn saouy?wi wo there's just a resonance to the events for those of us in new york and in washington, too, because of the pengo t i ththst bee wento r. e 'sttre it's so disconcerting for me, um, when i'm down by the river to suddenly see a buildg in usothadteng erndotst inptdocon having the lights that they put up as a memorial. annow we're having to get used to having a new, um, a new building there t, mn,u tk

less than we once did because of the passage of time. it's like grief in that way. it's not that it'sone, it's just thit mo od.-- rp t iesow a w-ngne onhn l th aility to be felt at the base of your spine by most people in a wayhat's not true anywhere else on earth. quen o "ptnn katherine in illinois, go ahead. >> caller: i he so eoyed the conversation today. i have two quick questions for you. wi a iust tin high ho i was keas y nn h di l tbo my grandmother who was in

her 90s said to me, you know, you don't have to finish it. anat w aleewon m ne ed ha ularbo n h hayo e nis ok and my second question is, do you ever read books that are just for fun? iallemhe reerr ai tare g a id towheceou start. >> guest: i used to call those books airplane books because i used to think of those as t kind of bookthat i would buy in paperback, take on a pla, a helslono cai infst ermiisd bourli,nd d l ine atke front of me. that's how i thought of them. you know, i used to say a lot of them we mysteries, but the truth of the matterow e' m ele i ,uy l george pelley

can know or ian rankin or p.v. james. i mean, they'reerrific i atysyve th e fiha iad lar fiction, i pick up other people's ticks. so i kind up reading mysteries then. tht iryuears i had to finish a sayii'otsong tk, k inr me, i had to finish it. and i think it was probably about tenears ago, about the same time when i suddenly opped carihayo th winonatn w loenod t rshyou sh you clearly don't like it, you don't care whatappens, and i went back and forth with her on

that, and eventually i decided that it wa in fact,cab bo et ot fsh a t ilnd ryrd at >>t:, tonul books that could take you a whole summer to read but aren't beach books, this is anna quindlen'sist. >>t:ilwh e? ueoh'sonul iter i mean, i would say that if you took a cross-section of 500 stiswr ed em roro t rfate d

llulob wp m stth anybody else except maybe phillip ross and russell banks probably, i would guess that. if you were talng about soy leve,s ,riters, ofur h uhi f j rraihebe 80 this year. so, anna, you aremuch too accomplished to say from my sister and is you d a f tego m aas ctir rluc hoc hoth dht coc thfe ot ithe church at 23 partly because of the rules for wives imposed by the encyclical on predth phrcpartly because i caic when i don't believe the dogma. guest: well, i couldn't say it bter myself, and thank you for the grammar correction.

sometimes when you're talking off thtopf yhe,le ad n tre f yo yotiton >>t:t fa quindlen comes from lillian in highland beach, florida. lillian? e an li al hi ll >>t:aso d. wstg, m. >> caller: i just want you to know, i'm an 87-year-old canadian woman who's loved anna quindlen for years, a i'm solited beblelr t isoat le sie responsibility now that you're not at the newspar, you have a responsibility to do shi ic n ae e pei cmn,

um, television people who are telling lies. actual esabouhe cti abon tonon n, gimer language and who need to be corrected so that we all feel that warisngut de irtngfa hust it i m t a feminist, i'm not a masculinist, i'm a humanist. wium is.we'ea unpe b s atse mandt ifss toany gender or any race, will we become real human beings. but i'd like you to t -

lin,llve e. dl >>stll, a l of great journalistic outlets taking on some of the big lies of demagoguery whether it on heatngoury inetot veanio t checking so that you can watch a presidential debate, and at the end of itthey will fact check varis of the conttith have mby the dirsatilwis anga behooves us to do as much reading as w can in all these areas so that we can recognize the big lies mein draea we ho ita bee rngatps

us understand when we'rbeing lied to. and because of the internet, we do have a hisricppounity re g o tldth oshoeol? >> guest: george elliot wrote "middle march." her real name was mary ann thact tja aenhen yoth is dend pdi r ena a lady, and yet that novel has never been out of print, and people read it today it20oarag inksvind is. it's astonishing. "middle march" is, in many ways, almosthe perfect nov. the ore thing about gege otshs g llal are w

thsturha w aie er. i asel a cerin kind of kinship with her because, as i say in the book, wo, shewas notttiv enhe m, heket r.it and this some sense -- in sme sense it was both insulting to her and libatin buser wae e tt shs g ho om o. inibntge ahi umshe wa almost liberated from being a sex object, um, in that way. th dtave of 5--oi thac of a grown-up person. and one of the reasons why i

haven't been as bothered by the signs of physical agingas some yonteorarsbee myfa sengut i cas,pl o cake," you mention a yearly botox visit. >> guest: i do. >> host: some filler visits? >> guest: it's funny. everybody ses tat ree bseevod a i yblibo i tawi w will say to me, you know, if i ever, if i ever had anything done, i would log rngh,yo x, y and z, d i'm [ltedire gototeer about my face and about the issues that develop in terms of aging, i had to take note of the fact that about tenrs h my eownd ics

oui edeas a an w imeioned that t my lovely dermatologist, she said, i can fix that. and so she did, and i did. >> ht: nt caor a dlenabtemisef urgr, sro pl, ahead. >> caller: good afternoon. it's a pleasure to talk to you, anna. i think of myself as recovering caol,ho cdh s ly sedinme a t ber. d hifit a beg raised in a 12th century -- [inaudible] and it was really quite a terrle form of abuse in that oo desoreo rtnprdct wde ie acty now, i still think our culture ishorribly masculine, that it

goes back and it's rooted in the teen hs rydontof uentowav an abusive churl. run by -- culture. run by authoritarian, ctatial m. iinth spl aiwh aan tgs in ece 22 s,nd s enormous resources spent on chasing, futilely chasing drugs and drug dealers all over the countr myeresen c mf ovg lewhen inmedhiren, that would pretty much happen by happenstance. there was no real focus on it. i don't think there's any real i k isanbte tod. sg tme dee chent beus e i hre t'r

edry and i would hope -- >> host: all right, thomas. thomas, let's leave it there. >> guest: well, i actually would argue that things arebett f ioofr w . cr pcu f m arndemd t en f started in that business, um, you couldn't bring a rape prosecution unless you had a third party witness. iumeear o ce oer oomng mo the is more prosecution of women who are being abused, and even of kids who are being abus although bu,ul ae u, for t teen mli o i will say that i was raised by, i was educated by a nuthtefe prosiveordef

il grp v t stt-dig environment. and i think for many years that made all the difference for me. ihad to bedir it,o'tve stasle osoniookat udendrl anna quindlen's list: >> host: how we die, sherwin newland, the unredeemed captain by john demos, the second sex, d po bery er can.reed >>st ie g tt

a would add "behind the beautiful forevers" which s published early, earlier this year and refles about inumumchis j worthpog teio art d shielded from the view of the peopl who come and go from that airport by these huge billboard-type sig. its the most astonhing anen nokou tll aer b a well as my own because i figure why not doub team it, and i've been talking about it because it's really an astonishing piece wrn, ath rti t ebeed osomheew acliia il a bookstore owner for 15 years, i immensely apeciated how reading changed my life. i closed my independent store stusi o

ho-b, ond t sshuds ndde bookstores affect you? >> guest: well, you know, it's -- ere are cities where i ed to go onour that wre anoryn inden anead nekedea d n' oouo s ho cs anymore because they don't have an indie bookstore. you know, people will say why do wemof go dr ust c d heth blicity's collateral. why do you go to kansas city? well, because of rainy day books. so independent bookstores are valuable, and e ofhe ingsha iery ee istheder, neattscty wlkever an independent

bookstore which is in nashville and, aparently, is doing quite well so i'm hoping, um,at nnnloso ies wen ea tmeas osavbrs ed up at all ere the independent bookstoresave closed? have local libraries picked up the book tours at a? >> gue: we, aran in as imo rehiou se uw? ane erf librarians who helped me out when i was a kid saying you led heidi? try "little women." mean t rly ed in bio iompl t ar brs h tv en e adiaeeib, mp has fantastic author events. but indie bookstores are still a follrum f liraeo oitwh w tow

to ,ndve h jan e-mail, wanted to ask about book clubs. she says our group of women met in a class 20 years agand intot wlyun bl ser. h mbfhe s are ms. quindlen's other list. we represent several commitments and are in our 50s to 80s, wh do you think of reang g: the b ea e tsoe e,e d r ym iayat o usen g t d different events there's at least ve different book clubs represented. and, in fact, when i wrote "one true thing got in draft about a mo aug durhe l hsth mr' , itai t, so if sanwa that makes -- substantive way that makes how they are with

each other and how they arn to be with each other more vivid. re shi c goirknd b toery rng books to talk abou because, of course, when we tal about books, we're never rally talking about bks. we're talking abt ouves. th wboluar s t use nun moemow their lives are. >> host: burbank, please, go ahead, ma. we've got a few minutes left. >>lem,a. , aslo le ie enin hfo 1rs t yeprto that i live inside hoboken, new jersey, and i loved it. and i know that you live there so, sroehoatw you spea at, i u'iv iw c

asstondenghu ftoboken and why you left. >> guest: we left about, um, 13 years ago. aly g sc iewwal ev d.ko mat and this got older, their social lives were increasingly in aneewnns'vlt an decided that i should come home. and that's what i di >> host: and this is an e-mail from peggy sage inli re jinan inty th yroms t11 s t whe edlo terms thri fear and flashback. >> guest: oh. >> host: i want to thank you for your writings, i lost my mother,

too, at age 19. meng o gef h hed w reing an iflt u cd rmy m isine w w tta of more onal stories than we ever get. is this, do people relate to you in that way? me a, bret. as oyau i me rngaboys line '30s." and my mother died when i was young, too, and there's really a sense of people wi say to me limetimes yove bn wrinmy dt ayohe igh a yauyo b i dt woure >> host: anna quindlen, what are you currently reading, and what is on your summer reading list? guest: wh am i curently i'stis"b he es er tirf t

ilth'sngoo on thomas cromwell i know a lot of the tudors, it's teg tth tte o ldt in ian anisme iro going to read a new novel called "the age of wonders." it has been getting a lot of attentio moecbjbot, b rty have it ony bedse table and will be reading it sometime this summer. host: and barbo in dallas, ca.are probablyur la stewut l g d. >>leoorn t ani tllo i iir you so much, i read "the new york times" even though our political views probably differ somewhat. i consider myself a nservative. i believe we should have sety

ne foput istwa tyohaot ok ve h b write in the page, go back and read a page, so i've never gotten into this e-book thing. i love books and thank you for all you' de. i'veha errts thre anouc uewethyo ch wo'tbeef erved liberals in congress could talk to each other with as much humor and respecas you just spoke to me? as acaopago american government was as good as the american people. >> the have conservative friends? >> guest: i live in manhattan. is istral hof raonmeo idg kd