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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> and its book review literary life panel will begin in just a minute. they are running a minute or two behind. this is live coverage on booktv on c-span2. this is the first panel of the day. pamela paul, book times editor will be there. walter mosley will be fair, ann patchett as well. after.com a call in with randall kennedy for discrimination, race affirmative-action and the law. he is a law professor at harvard. after that, david brock, david rothbard, his most recent book called national insecurity, american leadership in an age of

fear. we will do a call-in program with them so you will have a chance. this panel is just starting. >> good morning, everyone. good morning and welcome to miami book fair international. this is our 31st year, as you know, and it is truly a pleasure to see all of you here on a wonderful, sunny and bright south florida morning. thank you so much for being here. a special welcome to our friends of miami book fair international for your support it to really goes a very long wait in enabling us your future year. those of you visiting us how about the men we hope to see you many, many more years. this book fair could not take place without the generous bob airship of many, many organizations such as the night

down bashan, o. h. l., american airlines and so many more that every single year come together to provide support. the book fair is also supported by hundreds of volunteers miami dade college and throughout our community this middle-school, high school, college students and others from our community come together and volunteer their time unselfishly every year. with that, i would like to thank everyone. as you know, booktv is covering this event. i would like to get a especial love him to use. to introduce our panel today, we have judge marsha scott from the u.s. district. please help a welcome edge of. [applause] >> good morning, everyone ended ornate everyone who is watching you take elegy.

this morning's panel is going to be fascinating and i know you all are going to have a great time. i'm not used to having this many people show up to sing it without a court order, so i'm certain this is going to be fabulous. our panel discussion this morning is "by the book." our moderator a pamela paul. our authors are ann patchett, nicholson baker, transcended and walter mosley. [applause] ms. paul is the editor of "the new york times" book review and that the popular interview column, by the book. her new book, trying to buy "the new york times" book review brings together a guide to the

most intriguing and fascinating exchanges over time. she is joined this morning by ann patchett, the author of six novels as well as the co-one of the bookstore. yay for bookstores. [applause] her newest book is this is the story of a happy marriage memoir and for the publication of her first novel, she was at 17 magazine. nicholson baker is the author of 10 novels, including human smoke. his latest is then the chronicles were polar protagonists all chowder appears again. he is joined by francine prose who is the author of 20 works of fiction. her latest book is lovers at the chameleon club: paris 1932: a novel, set in paris in the 1920s. also on the panel this morning

is walter mosley, who is the author of more than 40 books, most notably and i'm certain there are fans in the audience at the easy rollins mystery series. slater is rolled gold and even wrongs mystery here the story takes place during the patty hearst air a radical black nationalism. is an gentle, our panel. [applause] >> so, in 2012 when i started "by the book," i had a few motivations. while i would like to believe as editor of the book review the only reason people up or buy books is based on their book reviews, especially those at "the new york times." occasionally there are other reasons people pick up a book and one of the ones most commonly cited is word-of-mouth. the book everyone is talking about in the office, the butcher veteran recommends, the book

that is stirring controversy. so i thought, how do i get at that word at the mouth in the book review. i came up with this idea that i kind of think of as a dorky year and she's a red carpet question, what are you wearing, where i would ask the people that we read, what are you breeding and why and what are the books that matter to you quite and i thought of this while at the apollo theater in harlem. david taveras was given a talk and he always when he goes on his speaking tours recommends a book and i thought that is so incredibly kind and generous. it's not always a fine book, but then i thought what are the funniest books you've ever read? though he was actually the first person i announced to do a "by the book," which is now booked through 2015. it has become so popular with authors and also with other on writers like ink sometimes like to show the need to like to

read. and i feel like one of the times were in it was truly working, other than the fact people wanted to be in the column was on three separate occasions, bookstore owners told me that they had common to -- customers have come into the store with a ann patchett page torn out and titles highlighted fan i want these. one person just that i want everything to ann patchett recommends. so i have four great authors here, all of whom have done "by the book." i feel there is a spectrum of authors, those on the one hand can talk endlessly if you ask them to come to a reading, there will, talk about the book while they are in the bathrooms all. they will talk about their book whenever given an opportunity. on the other end, there are

people like thomas pynchon who will never talk about their vote. in the vast middle are people who will talk about their books, but also get sick of talking about their books. so this is an occasion for these writers to talk not about their books, but other people's books. i thought i would open it up. we should -- "by the book" is something people have time to think over and come up with an example of what book was the most important as a child and here it is on the spot and nobody has cheat sheets in front of them. as someone with a terrible memory, i just want to issue that excuse for everyone here in case they don't remember the exact answer to their question. here is an easy one i will start with, which is what did you read on your way to the miami book fair? we can go down the line. [inaudible] >> because i own a bookstore, i only read books that won't be out until march. but i am reading the new vichy

guru book called the very giant that will be out in march. so unlikely. it's medieval. it's got ogres and dragons in it. i would have never wanted to read this book and i can't put it down. i got up to 5:00 this morning so i could read for a couple hours. >> this is how you know ann is a bookseller. within two minutes she was waving the galley at me. >> i want to make sure he gets a good review. >> i was reading -- well, it's nice to have a machine, so i had this path that is now disbanded by the app maker and i was reading george sainsbury's criticism. it was the 19th century ahmed this book reader. he has read everything everyone has written and he has this

wonderful kind of flowing style that helps me think. so when i want to say things fluently, which i was worried about saying today, i sat by the recent sainsbury. >> well, for reasons that are probably too dark and personal and weird to go to, i have been on a huge thomas burr kicked so i was reading what cutters on the way down. i was reading in a strange way because when i woke up early in the morning i was reading on a kindle that i had a little tiny bar, so i was afraid of is going to run out. so instead of doing the obvious thing, to read until i ran out, i would read a few pages and into a sudoku puzzle an adult magazine magazine and read a few more pages. so going back and forth.

i thought thomas braveheart would love it if you loved anything. >> yeah, it's hard for me to remember. the war hound in the world's pain by michael moore, which he wrote in 1981. i started reading when i was 16 on american history for an trip to england. i realized when i started reading him that i loved his language. you know, this is one of his books. he's like 100, but this is one of them that i had read. i love it because of his -- he's a science fiction mystery writer, but what he does, he asked these questions, which i've always found really interesting. and this one, there is a soldier who didn't want to be a soldier, but became an evil soldier who somehow came under the purview of. has decided that he doesn't like being anymore.

he wants to go back back to heaven and he needs this guy took a while to find a way for him to get back into having. i just kind of like that. these are the problems i feel like i live with all the time. [laughter] in a very pedestrian way. but i like to think of it in a larger way. >> these answers are the bookseller's nightmare or the book publicist nightmare that they are either book that came out long ago were not yet out. i am curious because walter consulted a gadget or was that an actual book? >> an actual book. >> you admitted to reading on a kindle. i am curious how people read. do you use a device? to use old-fashioned books? what are your book have this? >> paper always. >> i owned a bookstore, right. you get a vested interest in this. >> well, i have this thing.

i get up in the morning and go and drive somewhere and i have a stack of books in the backseat and i read aloud from them. and somehow reading aloud in an empty car to myself from the book on paper helps me. in the middle of the night come as a whole different name. because in the middle of an aikido when awake your wife or spouse up, so i usually read in the hours between three, four and five. i read on an iphone because it's a lovely little machine and when it flops over a dozen hits you in the head. >> i get the sales of that that used to be the big thing have probably plummeted. >> i'm sorry for the itty-bitty book light. that was a wonderful thing. >> i only read on a device on an airplane because i used to travel with 100 pounds of books because god for that i got stuck in an airport somewhere, so now i don't have to do that.

but actually as i sat in the column, my favorite place to read this in the passenger seat of a car going really fast up in new york state. >> ladies and gentlemen, someone who does not get car sick with doing that. >> it is interesting because the question is another question inside of it. you know, it is like loving cell phones, but being against killing people in congo. either you like cell phones or you don't like killing people in congo. you can't like both. if you run your cell phone, you are someone with men. >> what are you talking about? >> the main chemical and cell phones his mind in congo and the reason their polity does that work is because people are

making profit off them and they don't want a democratic nation stopping them from getting the cheapest possible poll taken to put in their cell phones. i much prefer reading books and paper and i do mostly. but i am so excited about electronic books has children who can't afford books can download thousands of dickens, twain, hugo, all of those things onto their little devices and pretend to not have to pay for them and not order millions of trees. so it goes both ways. >> they can go to the library, too. [laughter] just saying. >> when you live in the hood, there's many other issues that come up that don't come up in other places. >> the thing about murdering trees. i live in maine and there are so many trees. you know, when you stop cutting down the trees and making paperweight done, they are

closing big paper manufacturing places. when you cut down the trees -- when you stop cutting down the trees and a keen paper, what happens is little condominium develops trial. those are the real enemies. those are the real engines of sprawl. you've got to keep buying things on paper in a order to save the forest. >> all the political issues and e-book versus print book or you didn't even think of. walter, this is a bit of a cheap because they are denying your answer to this, but who else reads in the bathtub? who else because i know you do. >> who else reads in the back of? anybody else here? one of time. [inaudible] a drowned kitten all is almost a life-threatening situation.

there was a question that someone stopped and asked in my own workload just two weeks ago. it was such a basic question and get it stopped all of that. it was in the middle of a heated conversation. and she said, why do you read? why do people read? and i think it is an interesting question, so i want to pose it to all of you. in any order. >> i read because my parents read. very simple. >> i like to read because i am usually a question of some rain. i like to find out something. sometimes in my 20s i was reading because i thought without there. who are my competitors? i was postadolescent competitive thing. now it is that i want to find out something. i want to find out the truth about some name. it is much more fun to have a pursuit, so you are led to books that you never would have looked

at otherwise except that you need to find out some tiny piece or in my case a buildup to world war ii or whatever it was. so having a quest helps order this impossibly intimidatingly enormous amount of books that help sort names. >> i read because i love to read. as i get older, it is really the most important thing in my life. it is the thing i plan my bare ground, the thing i always want to be doing. it is the thing that i love the most. i don't want to go anywhere anymore. i don't want to travel. i don't want to go out to dinner. i don't want to see friends. i just really want to read. >> there was an author's party here last night. >> i didn't go. >> francine. >> even when i was little kid coming seems so unfair to me

that you only get one life. reading in a way takes away the sting of that. you can all these others you get to inhabit. >> one of the things that came on in the conversation in my book club is that answer can change depending where you are in your own life, that a certain point maybe after a tragedy you only want to read to escape or you want to read to be transported. other times you want to read about people going through a similar thing. i wonder if you have found that your needs, your reading needs or desires have shifted over the course of your life. >> i am not sure i'm going to answer that question, but something you just said you my brother-in-law died. my sister's husband died in january and he was one of my best friends. it was just a horrible loss. and i started reading the saddest books i could find. waves. so helpful.

so helpful to just sink in with other people sadnesses and loss. rather, i am dying, and the suicide index, john wicker sun, which is such a fantastic work. i can't recommend it enough. it was like going to see your friends in saying we are just going to stick together. >> raise your hand if you misery read. does anyone else out there? misery read. you read about people that are more trouble than you are. i am going to go back to the question. is the reason you read change depend on where you are in your life? >> i really like reading -- i like to dip into things and there is this writer used to write for "the new yorker" named mays brand name. she was a long-winded baby. i love this woman.

she would write a blog, blog paragraph. usually one paragraph and she would just go into a restaurant and a scribe who walked into the restaurant. she wouldn't actually talk to them. she would just as speculations about them for she would be riding the subway and see someone reading a magazine. and she has such a beautiful, beautiful describer. it is really thrilling to see somebody. so i think that my motive and reading the long-windlong-wind ed lady is just to imagine myself back in new york city in the 60s, riding a subway and lucky not new york and feeling "the new yorker" when it was a big-time thing, that feeling new york when i was a different place. so the motive i guess his escape, but it's also this desire to be immediately went a person standing in a subway.

>> lately, this may have something to do with the thomas bernhard and, i find myself drawn to writers to be outrageous, envelope pushing weirdos because there's so much pressure. >> are we going to name names? >> i could go on. roberta blondel, hans christian andersen, james bowles. on and on. there is so much pressure on braiders now, the way there is pressure on everybody to do some name that is conforming or write tidy, well-made conventional novel. and to read writers who make you say i didn't know you could do that is extremely helpful. >> walter. >> i'm trying to think of an answer to your question. i don't know. i don't feel -- my reading may indeed change because of my

situation, but i am not keeping track of it. >> to you -- how do you decide what to read next? >> i have some books on my shelf. of course, as you know -- as i said, the big thing about reading is rereading. a wonderful friend who lectures at nyu. one day i was looking on his books and he has read those books, each one a hundred times. when he is rereading it, if i happen to be around him, he starts talking about the book is if you read it for the first time. there is 100 or 200 books that i do a lot of rereading out. i sit down and say it's time for 100 years of solitude again. let me see where i can go with that. i feel the same way about movies.t other books do you like to reread? >> there is a few of marquez but i think it's wonderful. dead souls by goebel. i am kind of amazed in some of

his short stories. only the stranger in the play. i just kind of go over them again and again, always finding new stuff. and poetry. i still haven't understood it, but i really like reading it. and my misunderstanding changes as i reread. >> francine, do you reread? >> yeah. well, yeah. i reread the russians a lot. i check off as often as i can. i'm trying to write some day now and everything else getting in the way. >> we have a russian review coming next weekend, so do thanksgiving counterprogramming and francine wrote an essay about answering the question, what is so great about russian literature?

why you keep returning to the 19th century russian novelists. do you reread? >> i reread green eggs and ham all the time. actually, my mother taught me to read. i was kind of a late reader and my mother was worried about me. first grade was looming and i couldn't read, so she gave make reneges and ham to read. i had this horrible time with it. i remember crying over the word dark because i learned they were the sounds they made him a racist hybrid salad. i got to the end of it and she made a great next and ham with food coloring and it tasted good, but it looked very strange. no, i like to read. i truly like to go back and read. dr. seuss is good. speak memory is the book that i always go back to.

it is actually a supernatural book i have to say. it is in accord and book because i have read the book sorted through. i have read every page, but not in order. but i did. and it is as if i haven't read a page. there is always some peace i am reading for the first time. so it is actually a miraculous book that way. >> do you have time to reread, ann? >> i don't anymore. i used to. i used to reread james all the time. and it's gone now. i read not only things that were the -- i don't read things written a long time ago, i've read things that haven't been published yet. >> do you find you do certain reading for work in certain for pleasure or does that totally overlap? >> it is all the same because all books are pleasure for me and if they are not, i sat reading them. we have at the bookstore of

first editions club, so we are we thinking about what book we are picking and three or four months. everyone in the store is fiercely reading. there is this feeling of trying to hold back a wave all the time. we've got february pics, but what about arch? what about april? >> you brought up it can't be lovey-dovey. you brought three things down you don't love. are you willing to name a book you picked up and couldn't finish or didn't want to? >> i don't even know that i looked at the cover, but it probably happens five times a day. no joke. every single day of my life. people are sending books to my house. people are sending me books to the bookstore. it is never-ending. people want me to read their books. if something doesn't catch me really fast, unless it is a friend or does come with a personal recommendation, i don't give it much of a chance at all. >> nick, what about you? do you feel the need to get to

the end of every book or do you put things down? >> i love the sound when you're in a bookstore you open a book and read the first lines and then you walk that. now, we've read that. it done. forget it, go back. i do that a lot. but then, i hate saying that it's about looks in any specific way. that is why i stopped writing book reviews. i just think it is unkind. there is a huge world of books and everybody has a different universe of interest. i have gone through phases where i was certain books that i now don't love as much and i've also discovered oxidize it is that i thought i would never, ever read. it is always a mistake to say bad things about other people's books because you never know what saves somebody else is going to be in. i just say yes i do reject a lot

of books. >> one of the things about negative book reviews is that i think there are occasions, certainly as happened with me that i've read someone and ended up disliking the reviewer more than i dislike the book and actually wanting to read the book week as i disliked was the reviewer had to say. you did not write make a different use for many, many years and have only recently returned to that fire. >> iran middle-age of thinking that is something you people do. they trash everything and have no conscience about it. now it just seems to me -- i will say it. there so many books out there that are taken seriously as great books that i feel i can't not say it. it's some tourette's part of me keeps wanting to say it's bad. >> i want to go back -- >> i want to say something about

that. i am here at the yen, but there is a book recently written, a so-called nonfiction book, which said all of this really irresponsible stuff about ebola. that you could catch it from the air, that it's about to destroy america. it was a real fear mongering vote and a lot of the things that were not true, written by somebody who had to change his name at least once. and it got really bad reviews. i think it was in salon. i'm not sure. i kind of applauded that review. they're a certain times, certain books that say certain things that maybe you want to say something against. but that is never about technique or story or things that books do that deserve to be countered. >> i want to say something that will give solace to many worried grandparents now about what

their little ones are reading. you started operating, looks at a child to what was it that appeal to you about comments? >> well, it seems like they understood a life. >> you were a superhero. >> i wanted to be a superhero. spiderman especially. i figured he was a black kid. all this power, all this ability, can't make any money. when he does make money, it is by make and fun of himself. the police are after him, the public fear him. but it does wonderful things in life. i felt the same thing about this thing and the fantastic four. and they are beautiful and artistic. >> what did you read growing up? >> i read comics also.

i loved mad magazine when i was a kid. i thought finally, someone has the same sense of humor as me, unlike my family. [laughter] i just read everything. i was completely omnivorous. not until i was high school, i don't tank anyone told me or any of the difference between a so-called good look in a so-called bad book you i just didn't care. i'd read all these novels. i thought i did know the difference between james michener and henry james. they both have the same name. later i realized, but i didn't care. i just read everything. >> next. you're right tintin fan. >> yes, that is true. i love the way he drew and when he got drunk, the way he would fly out of the snow and go chasing. so i read a lot. then i was hit by a "lord of the rings" and that was sort of the

things that i try to read in second grade and i really, really didn't get it. and i was confused, but i have this big book that i carried around and i read it again and to grade. it was really the most incredible reading experience. i remember laying on the couch, this crushed velvet couch that we had and just trying to find different positions and counting the number of pages in the excitement of being in the mid-is something so enormous. i loved that. and then i got into science fiction. a friend of my fathers with a science-fiction guy and he just delivered this massive stack of very well found sites, yearly anthologies, that kinds of things. i remember they were on the ironing board and i just kind of took them away and read them all and loved them. i thought, well i want to be a writer and great science

fiction. i actually wrote a couple of stories based on the science-fiction. one was called gasp. that was when the worlds atmospheric -- >> who are your favorite nonfiction authors? >> i don't remember now. i loved the guy's name. the guy's name was robert shackley. shards of space. i love that one. >> ann, what rewritten at the time? >> i read whatever my sister had finished reading. i read charlotte's web which is usually important to me and changed my life. still to this day i am living in charlotte's web. i read the little house on the prairie book, nancy drew. nothing interesting, just exactly what everybody was supposed to read. and then when i was 13 i read humboldt's gift. i just went directly from little house on the perry to humbles gift, which was playing around. and i reread that book this last

year and it was a canadian because i remembered every word of it. it was completely imprinted on my brain. and also when my grandmother was dying 10 years ago, i was having a heart time finding the right and to read to her and i ended up reading her all the little house on the prairie books again, which really have a lot of problems. he was really difficult. again, i could almost close the book and recite the next page. your brain is such a sponge when you are young and those things really stick. >> one of the great things i recommend actually listening to charlotte's web, there is an audio recording that eb white does himself and is so amazing to hear how he imagines the goose in the idiosyncratic speech patterns. when i asked you for your letter wary your letter wary hero was, ann, you said wilbur. >> i lived on a farm in tennessee when i was a kid and i

got a pic for my ninth birthday. not one of those vietnamese potbelly pics, but the way pigs used to be. it was small for a couple of weeks. and it was my dog in a grew up to be 350 pounds. and i became a vegetarian like three days after my ninth birthday because i would meet my dog and i would meet my and that was it. i had a huge impact on me. >> do you have a literary hero? either then or now? >> i suppose as a child it was airborne stridor and captain had asked in a mixture of the two. >> francine. >> well, i liked all of those very basic, empowered girls, to the longstocking. it was so to speak textbook, but they really meant a lot to me. >> walter. other than spiderman.

>> it has to be other than -- no, you know, i always have like a problem with talking about writing to readers because readers think a lot about routine. i don't know what writers think, but i don't think a lot about reading. i rarely think that reading has anything to do with writing. i don't equate them. they are two different tanks. i like them both. so the guy who i like the most is homer because not only was he a literate, he was also blind. so while he could do was tell stories about things that he had picked up. and that is kind of the way i think of writing. you are telling this kind of large come of big story in their head. it doesn't have to do with other people telling stories or writing books or anything like that. the books are something different. they are wonderful and they do

connect and you tell the story and it gets published. that is where it ends. >> i like to believe everyone is readers a month as we know, only 50% of americans have read at least one book for pleasure in the last year and masochistic kind of remain static. so i do think the world divides into people who are readers and those who aren't. do you remember, was very time when you became a reader or someone who would fire due? walter? >> same thing as my parents. they would get there and they would read. that would be the same day they would watch television, tell stories, do all kinds of other things, that they would be reading books. they got me books. there were books everywhere. i just said, this must be important. >> francine, was a preordained with your name? was there a moment? >> well, i was a very early reader. i was just bored and i have learned the way it a lot of kids

do, by memorizing and pretending i could read and sadly i could read. it was a party trick for me because my parents with a look at her. so there is this weird little or performance and then i discovered i liked it. that is how it happened. >> well, there is nothing wrong with you if you don't like reading. honestly, i think there are lots of people who have very complicated, interesting thought, whom i'd only read a couple of books a year. my father was in a reader. i mean, he was a reader. the red words, but he wasn't a book reader. i was amazed by how much he knew by reading the kinds of things he read. art, catalogs, "new york times" and just more ephemeral things. i don't think people necessarily have to read books.

i am not a very good reader, honestly. i am not a terribly good reader. i read a lot, but i look the way my wife reads books that she has read all of trollope and she reads it and there is a kind of joy and it sorts out her life as she is reading the book in a way that doesn't happen for me. i am very jealous of it in fact. i am not that kind of reader and yet i manage to survive. it is okay. you know, what i have been hit with recently is the flashman series. george met donald fraser is a terribly actionable, british empire and he goes around doing terrible things all over the world. and he is sort of a pg woodhouse combined with the sharpe novels. he is funny and objectionable and i actually felt some of that feeling of wanting to go from book to book the real readers feel in reading these flashman

series. >> ann chimera doris karen goodwins completeness. are there other writers you feel you have to read every single thing they write? >> ask somebody else when we think i'm not. >> i'll let you think i'm not. the cheaper up surrounded by books? did you come from a reading family? how did you become a reader? >> my parents were great readers. i have no memory of either of my parents ever reading to us, but they were always saying go away, we are reading. and i can remember -- >> that's the way to do it. >> i think that actually is the way to do it, that show the child you are in an important relationship of the book. my parents were divorced when we were very young and we only saw our father a week a year. long, sad story. it has something to do with the price of plane tickets. i remember when a spirit of

going to visit my father and he was reading the godfather, the first godfather and he couldn't even look. he loved us. he was really happy we were there, but he was so stuck with it. i remember so well. i was eight or something insane he cut the head off the horrors and he put the head in the guy's bed. my father was a cop in los angeles. we were like no, they cut the head off the horrors and somehow i think that was better than him reading green eggs and ham. last mac >> i have to say i feel that is one of the beautiful points to reach in parenthood, where your child is independently reading so at night as they would you like me to read to you or should we read our own book side-by-side? >> it is bittersweet. do you have a favorite author? this is such a month such a man for questioning. everyone is probably going to name someone dead.

nick. you can answer with like five names. >> to be honest, as soon as you said they've are not there, it was like the old eightball toy, where something comes up. it has to be in a block off. he is not an idiomatic writer of english and yet he had the desire to match up words with being sent away that just so when i read them, i think oh my god. when it was 15, i read this description he made a riding in a train, looking at telegraph wires in the telegraph wires were beaten down every so often and i thought my god, i know i've written in the back of a car that looked at the cars and telephone poles and they do the exact same thing in the exciting feeling that somebody is able to look at the world, pull it down and put it into words and it

goes into my mind in the same thing happens. so he has to be still my favorite writer. >> francine. >> i couldn't possibly. that question -- every time i've ever written i feel than circling the drain in going down. >> that is like when someone comes up to you and says what should i read next in your mind just and devout. >> bread in a good books lately? there are hundreds of them. there are hundreds. >> i don't think i've read any good books with lately. that means they want sex with you? write? last mac for me, it is never authors. it is always books. i love cortés, but not t.s. eliot. this is just an incredible book, but when everything was that i don't love, i really like david

copperfield, but that doesn't mean that i am reading everything dickens wrote. he does writers are anything. writers have different interests like me. so there are books that i like and i have nice feelings towards the writers because i wrote them, but it's not like everything somebody wrote is going to be mine. >> i love that questions, which is one of the reasons i started the q&a. i have five other index cards here, each with five questions on them. given the constraints of time, i want to invite everyone to ask your questions. if you want to go to the microphone, if you have any questions. >> while they are doing that, can answer the last question? because with the writers that i read when i was growing up, who are the people that by mother and stepfather read, who i read through high school and college and graduate school, this is so weird, but is bellow, updike and roth for me. even though there are good books

and guidebooks, my very favorite books are really those three. the human steam and rabbit at rest and humboldt's gift. >> that is like a literary showdown kind of question. where you go fallow, rock or updike. >> into such a a cliché. these are my guys. >> we will turn to your questions. >> i need recommendations. having exhausted anthony trollope and jane austen, who would be in that world that i could read? >> we are going back to 19th century england. >> with some wit had >> it doesn't have to be england. >> read nancy mitford could love in a cold climate and pursued a love. you are not in because you party that done. you haven't? also, a book i finished a couple days ago, barbara trippi dio, brother to the more famous jacks. i can't explain to you why that

connects. but it does. these are new books. barbara trippi dio. if you go to pronounce this books.net, i write all of these things down and they are all bare. also, if you let these books come you should read liz gilbert, signature of all things because she goes back and reimagines the heroines in a really meaningful way. >> would have been to jerzy kozinski? i can probably find out on the internet. is he still with us? >> no, he killed himself. >> he was -- somebody said he had help with one of his books, translational health that, translational hope that maybe verged into other kinds of. he seemed to be depressed than i think he felt his work was done. so he just checked out. >> please tell us about your book.

i have a red one in almost 40 years good >> this is something i was going to bring up later, which are the literary controversies and should one read books for children if one is not a child. i belong actually to a children's book club for several reasons. one, because the books are short and therefore i am never asked you read nascar volume three night next month. i have a lot of books to read for work. the second reason is because the people in it, this is a book club that had been in existence. it was formed under the author gretchen rubin who wrote the happiness project and several other books. the book club has become so popular there are now three branches. next week we have a holiday book party and the people in that our authors of literary critics, people who work within publishing. many of whom don't have

children, but for me, one of the things that i love about children's literature is that these are the books that made us readers. these are the books that hooked us. there is an unprecedented on story and on the themes that touch the human heart in children's literature and also enabled me to say in my world i have three children and i used to be the children's book editor at the time before as my children say, denoted. so that is my book to. >> question for transport. has owning a bookstore changed u.s.a. writer and if so, how? >> it probably has because i don't have as much time to write. my new book is a book of essays. i wrote the book because i had a bookstore and i couldn't just disappear in the same way that i do when i write a novel.

i am trying to get a hold of my life and i am writing a novel now. when i opened this bookstore, it became such a big heart of my community in nashville and i started again at schools than rotary clubs and whose lodges and hosting the homeless shelter fundraiser and the library love. so that is how it changed my life. this shows how much a bookstore really serves that function in the community. >> it is true. >> so i apologize if you party answered this question, do you have thrown around the term good luck, bad book, what makes a good book for each of you i shall we start with walter. >> the first thing that makes a book of good for me is the language itself. if i am enjoying the language, the subscriptions come in the dialogue. after that comes character and

story. i am really political, so at some point during other something can go awry politically it might turn me away. but if that doesn't happen, it is basically -- it is not just craft, not always, it is how the language and how well it flows forward for me. >> yeah, i agree with walter. it is all about sentences for me. >> i like when somebody is funny and what i like a person. if i like the guy or gal writing the book i think okay, i am willing to spend some time with this person. and i often have a sort of subversive streak where you want to read a better chandra burks or things that are not considered high literary books because i've heard those things so often i want to find out what people are doing who are less celebrated.

>> nicholson baker reads romance novels. >> yeah, i love reading romance novels. they are dirty now. >> for me, it is when i forget i am reading. it's when i stop looking at a book and again that it's amazing the way they did that. that was so clever. i was a really smart idea. i'm not part of my brain shuts off and i start analyzing the books and figuring out how they did it and i just fully enter into it, then it becomes a truly great book. i just finished reading bras chat spoke. can we talk about something more pleasant? and i never read graphic models. to be reading a graphic novel and how that part of my brain clicked off, i was just with her every second. >> for me, it is about being transported. i don't want to read about other people my age in new york

dealing with family and work. i want to be off in the congo. >> and i recommended ishiguro novel named as her. the mac yesterday we heard a wonderful presentation from walter isakson on his new book, the innovators. and i was curious if any of you spend much time reading nonfiction looks. >> i probably read more nonfiction than fiction. >> well, i write nonfiction, so i have to read a lot of nonfiction books in order to sit through what other people have said. and it is also -- it is kind of nice to alternate i think. being in an imagined world is kind of enveloping in a different way. when you are reading a nonfiction book, the person gets

all sorts of points for telling the truth and i like the truth. i read probably as much or more nonfiction. >> i read about. when you have been out of school for a million years, if you're going to learn anything, you have to keep up your reading. >> reselling i bought this thing that was published in the 30s called the educator library. it is 11 volume college education for soldiers who went to war and couldn't -- because you could only go to school when you were 18 at some point, so if you're 25 euros old guy and couldn't go. the whole college education. as this before computers and the four jet engines come and explain the lost everything you can do. how to build a plane. it's kind of wonderful. i love stuff like that. i love history, too. but in the story of civilization

kind of wonderful. >> i read a lot of nonfiction. i also listened to a lot of nonfiction. i am not so good at listening to fiction, but i'm good at nonfiction. this series deep down dark, the story of the land minors. really and, brilliant book. >> thank you. we have to bring the session to a close. i didn't know if he wanted to wrap it up. >> no. >> no wrapping. >> the audience looks bad. >> they do. you can still hang out here and ask questions except for nicholson baker who has to go to his next session. >> thank you so much. >> a round of applause for our panelists. [applause] and our panel will be signing books on this floor on the other

side of the elevator. so please proceed to bear if you would like your book signed. if you have a ticket for the next session, you can stay in the room. just get your tickets now. if you don't, please exit to the left. thank you. .. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

.. [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. live live coverage of the miami

book festival, 17th year in a row that booktv has come to miami and brought this lives. we are in chapman hall were a lot of the non-fiction authors are here at miami-dade college and we will be live all day long. go to booktv.org and get the full schedule. you can see the street fair is going on here at miami-dade. about 250,000 people expected over the week that the miami book fair is held. joining us now on our outdoor set is harvard professor randall kennedy, a frequent guest on booktv and on c-span. his most recent book which came out last year which is talking about, "for discrimination: race, affirmative action, and the law" professor kennedy, has a affirmative action been successful in this country? >> i think it's been very successful over the past several

decades. it has helped with the desegregation of american life, particularly in higher education and in employment. and i think that it has done a very good job in a variety of ways. it is help to rectify past injustice. it is help to bring into important discussions, people have been excluded and, therefore, enriched or public debate and our learning in various schools. so i think it has been a success. that's certain what our gym about. >> host: where did you come up with the title? >> guest: it was the last thing that was part of this project. i did not have a working title. the book at to be published. i needed a title. and actually the person who came up with the title was my editor.

i had come up with a couple of titles. they were pretty flat. he came up with and he said what about for discrimination? usually people use the word discrimination it is a bad thing, but it grew on me and i've come to like it. >> host: is their stigma attached to affirmative action? >> guest: yes. affirmative action with many social policies house costs, and certain one cost of affirmative action is the idea that its beneficiaries or people who come even if they're not beneficiaries, if you thought to be beneficiaries, i think many people think that, well, so-and-so is a beneficiary of affirmative action. they probably are a little less good than people who did not have affirmative action. because affirmative action means giving people a helping hand, a boost. if you need a helping hand, if

you need a boost, that suggest maybe are not as good as others. so yes, there is a stigma cost. >> host: randall kennedy, harvard law is our guest for the next half hour or so. it would like to call into talk to him about some issues we started talking about, (202)585-3890. (282)585-3891. dial in and we'll get your calls as quickly as possible. professor, are you a recipient of affirmative action? >> guest: yes. i am an affirmative action baby. i was told by affirmative action in terms of my education. one doesn't know for sure but i feel virtually certain that affirmative action helped enable me to go to yale law school. i think that affirmative action

will likely help me secure a job at harvard law school. i was a very fine student. i've been very hard-working. i think that, i think that my record speaks for itself and that i've been able to be a real contributor to legal academia. but have i been helped, like so many other african-americans over the past 30 years in elite institutions? have i've been helped by affirmative action? yes. >> host: wended affirmative action begin? >> guest: , it all depends on how you define a affirmative action. for instance, i mean, there is a way of saying affirmative action has been part of american life since the civil war. the nation's first federal civil

rights statute, civil rights act of 1866 was vetoed by the president of the united states, andrew johnson, the successor to abraham lincoln. and andrew johnson vetoed the civil rights act of 1866 because he said it would give quote discriminating texture, and textured african-americans. he thought he was giving an illicit, i'm just helping hand to african-americans because it allowed african-americans to be, citizens of the united states immediately. he thought that was a sort of illicit reverse discrimination. he thought it was reverse discrimination for federal law to say that african-americans, in fact all people, had to have the same rights to enter into contracts and own property on the same basis as white people. he viewed that as a type of quote of affirmative action.

people nowadays don't view that as affirmative action. they view that as anti-discrimination law. the affirmative action we're used to, the affirmative action i mainly talk about in my book mainly came about in the late 1960s and early 1970s. the reason why it came about is because of a widespread feeling that anti-discrimination laws alone would not be enough to quickly desegregate american life. >> host: what about court cases? >> guest: there have been many court cases and wil there will e many more. just this past week and anti-affirmative action organization filed a court case against my university, harvard university, asserting that harvard university was discriminating against asian americans in particular. there was a court case filed by the university of north carolina claiming that their asian americans and whites were being discriminated against. so affirmative action, it's been

controversial since the late 1960s and remains controversial to they. >> host: what was the pocky taste? >> guest: it was the first time that the supreme court of the united states fully grappled with affirmative action. it was the early 70s. in fact, it was 1975 or 1976 as i recall. what happens in that case was it was a class of compromise. it was a case that involved are from an action at the university of california-davis medical school. this medical school set aside a certain number of places, i think it was 16 places, for disadvantaged minority, racial minorities. what the supreme court said was that it was unconstitutional for a public institution of higher education to set aside a certain

number of places. they said that is to quota like, so they struck that down. the supreme court also said that universities could take race into account along with other things in determining who they were going to admit to these educational institutions. by the way that was a very interesting case because it really came down to just one justice. it was a split case and one justice, lewis powell, was this one justice who said that you cannot have quotas but you can take race into account as one of many factors. and by the way, that's the law of bakke is still the reigning law of the supreme court. it might change a bakke still holds. >> host: do we have an active what happened to alan bakke

country yes, we do. he went to medical school and he's become a doctor. from what i can tell he has led a painful, productive life. >> host: al franken to be in discussions about race and the law with your students at harvard? >> guest: i am very frank. -- how frank lex in all of my books i have attempted to be frank. i take my position. i take my position. i argue my position strongly. i am pro-affirmative action, for instance. but in my book i also talk about the costs. in fact, so my friends give a little -- get a little bit miffed with me because they think a give away too much. they think maybe i talk about the cost too much, but i think people are smart. i don't think it's useful to try to hide the ball.

i take a position. i believe information is my friend. i want people who have information. i want people to have all the argument. i think when people of all the arguments, they will, when armed with all the arguments, embrace my position. i am like that in class. i am like that when i write. >> host: uk met with a book a couple years ago, the n-word. what was the reaction to that? >> guest: the name of the book was strange career, troublesome career. it is a book that sold more copies to all of my other books combined. i got a lot of criticism from that book turn one from african-americans, whites,

liberals, conservatives tried to liberals, concerns, white, blacks, asian-americans. there were people, i don't want to make it seem like everybody who disliked the book. there were people who liked the book but it did get a lot of criticism. i figure a number of people who did not like the title, for instance. didn't like the fact i spell out the word. and they didn't like some of the positions i took but there again i thought, you know, i said what i believed and i put all the arguments out there. a person -- is one thing i do when i write my book. i want to arm a person who disagrees with me. i wan wanted person who disagres with me to read my book and see all of his or her arguments. so nobody can read a book of mine and say, well, kennedy didn't bring up this argument against this position. i bring up all the arguments. >> host: the "washington post"

did a series on the n-word. >> guest: i saw that. >> host: hasn't been destigmatize in a sense? >> guest: that's a good argument because there are some people who say that one way of dealing with this word is to make a big deal of it. don't make a big deal of it people just use it, let it roll off your back. it will lose its status and difference lose its status able to some of its attraction and it would lose its ability to hurt. america is so large that i think it's taboo in certain circles, for instance, you will never hear any politician using this word under any circumstances. if you had a serious politician on our show right now, they would not repeat the name of my book. they would not even repeated. they would not even say quote this guy randall kennedy wrote a

book called -- for you to say that word is to discredit yourself. if we go to other realms, if we're talking about comedy, popular culture, people do use the word. so it's a word that is complicated you can use it in some forms, but even in those the forms you take a risk. i think that's as it should be, frankly. i think the n-word is a word that has been used and it is still used to hurt people. i think whenever you use that word, you should be using it advisedly. you should be in a sense, you should be using this word in full recognition that a lot of people find it hurtful. >> host: randall kennedy, harvard law is our guest your

body and rock island illinois, you are the first caller. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i do want to make the comment, discrimination does not only include race and religion but also life experiences. there is a great need for educators who are we tired to dedicate themselves to volunteer to educate those incarcerated with the basics of reading and math. those who have been incarcerated are, even after release, discriminated for the rest of their lives. and i wanted to ask mr. kennedy what his thoughts were on that? i will take my answer off the call. >> guest: i think you make an excellent point, the fact of the matter is that the united states of america incarcerates a large percentage of its population than any