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>> pamela paul is the author of "buy the book," her conversation next on booktv. [applause] >> good morning, everyone, and good morning, everyone who's watching via technology. 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 see me without a court order -- [laughter] so i'm certain this is going to be fabulous. our panel discussion this morning is "by the book," our moderator is pamela paul. joining ms. paul are authors anne patchett, nicholson baker, francine prose and walter mosley. [applause]

ms. paul is the, is the editor of "the new york times" book review of and of the popular interview column, "by the book." her new book by "the new york times" book review brings together 65 of the most intriguing and fascinating exchanges over time. she's joined this morning by anne patchett who's the author of six novels as well as the co-owner of a bookstore. yea for bookstores. [applause] her newest book is "this is the story of a happy marriage: a memoir," and before the publication of her first novel, she labored in the trenches at "seventeen" magazine. nicholson baker is the author of ten novels including "human smoke." his latest is where the poet

protagonist paul chowder appears again. he is joined by francine prose, excuse me, who's 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's the author of more than 40 books, most notably -- and i'm certain there are some fans in the audience -- of the easy rollins mystery series. the story takes place during the patty hearst era of radical black nationalism and political abductions. ladies and gentlemen, our panel. [applause] >> so in 2012 when i started "by the book," i had a few motivations. while i would like to believe as

the editor of the book review that the only reason people ever buy books is based on the book review, i know that occasionally there are other reasons that people pick up a book. and one of the most commonly cited is word of mouth. it's the book everyone's talking about in the office, it's the book your best friend recommends, it's the book that, you know, is the current controversy. so i thought, well, how do i, how do i get at that word of the mouth in the book review? and i came up with this idea that i kind of think of as a dorkier and cheaper red carpet question, what are you wearing, where i would ask the people that we read what are you reading and why, and what are the books that matter to you. and i thought of this while at the apollo theater in harlem. david she dairies was giving a talk, and he always when he goes around on his speaking tours recommends a book. and i thought that's so incredibly kind and generous.

and it's not always a funny book. and then i thought what are the funniest books you've ever realize, david sedaris. so he was the first person i asked to do a by the book which is now booked through 2015, it's become so popular with authors and also with other nonwriters who i think sometimes like to show that they, too, like to read. [laughter] and i feel like one of the times where i knew that it was truly working other than the fact that people wanted to be in the column was on three separate occasions bookstore owners told me that they had come into -- customers had come into the store with anne patchett's page torn out, and, you know, titles highlighted saying i want these. and one person who just said i want everything that anne patchett recommends. [laughter] so i have four great authors here, all of whom have done "by

the book." i feel like there's a spectrum of authors where there are those writers on the one end who can talk endlessly about their book. they will come and talk about their book, they will talk about their book while they're or in the bathroom stall, whenever given an opportunity. [laughter] and then on the other end there are people like, you know, thomas penchant who will never talk about their book, and in the vast middle are authors who will talk about their books but also get sick of talking about their books. [laughter] so this is an occasion for these writers to talk not about their books, but about other people's books. and i thought i would open it up -- i should say that "by the book" is something people have a lot of time to think over and to come up with the exact answer of what book was the most important to them as a child and here it's kind of on the spot, and nobody had 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. but here's an easy one that i'll start with which is what did you read on your way to the miami book fair? [laughter] and we can just go down the line. anne? >> because i own a bookstore, i only read books that won't be out until march. but i'm reading the new book called "the buried giant." it will be out in march. so unlikely. it's medieval, it's got ogres and dragons in it. i would never have wanted to read this book, and i can't put it down. i got up at 5:00 this morning so i could read for a couple of hours. >> and this is how you know that anne is a bookseller, because within two minutes of my seeing her, she was waving the galley at me. >> i want to make sure it gets a good review. >> nick? >> i was reading, well, i still use this app on the plane. you have got, you know, it's

nice to have a machine, so i have this app that is now, i think, abandoned by the app maker called eucalyptus, and i was reading george saintsbury's criticism. what can i tell you? he's a 19th century omnivorous book reader. he's written every single thing everyone has written in french or english or greek or latin, and he has this wonderful, flowing style that helps me think so when i want to say things fluently, it helps me. not so much as it should, but -- [laughter] >> well, for reasons that are probably too dark and personal and weird to go into -- [laughter] i've been on a huge thomas burn hart kick, so i was reading "the woodcutters" on the way down. i realized when i woke up early in the morning to catch an early

flight, i was reading on a kindle, that i had a little tiny bar, so i was afraid it was going to run out. instead of doing the obvious thing, i'd read a few pages and then do the soduku puzzle -- [laughter] so going back and fort. in a way, i thought he would have loved it. if he loved anything. [laughter] >> yeah. it's hard for me to remember the title, "the war hound and the world's pain" written in 1981. i started reading this author when i was 16 on an american institute for foreign study trip to england, and i just love -- and i realized when i started reading him that i loved his language, you know? and this is one of his books, and he's written like a hundred, but this is one of them that i hadn't read, and i just kind of -- i love it because of his,

he's, you know, science fiction/mystery writer, fantasy writer, but what he does, he asks these questions which i've always found really interesting. in this one there's a soldier who didn't want to be a soldier who somehow become under the purview of satan. but satan has decided that he doesn't like being satan anymore, he wants to go back to heaven, and he needs this guy to go out and find a way for him to get back into heaven. these are the kind of problems that i feel like i live with all the time in a very pedestrian way. [laughter] you know, i like to think of it in a larger way. >> these answers are kind of the booksellers' nightmare in that all of them are books that came out long ago or one that's not out yet. [laughter] but i'm curious because everybody, walter consulted a gadget, or was that an actual book? >> oh, this was -- >> that's an actual book.

you admitted to reading on a kindle. i'm just curious how people read. do you use a device? do you still read old-fashioned books? do you write in books? >> books paper. always. i own a bookstore, right? >> you've got a vested interest in this. >> well, i have this thing that i like doing, i get up in the morning and i go and drivesome, and i have a -- drive somewhere, and i have a stack of books in the backseat. somehow reading aloud in an empty car to myself from a book on paper, it helps me. in the middle of the night you don't want to wake your wife or your spouse up, so i usually read in the hours between three, four and five -- >> hard to get committed. >> i read, you know, on an iphone because it's a lovely little machine, and when it flops over, it doesn't hit you in the head like an ipad.

>> i guess the sales of that itsy, bitsy book light probably have plummeted -- >> yes. i'm sorry for the itty pity book light. -- itty bitty book flight. >> i only read with a device on an airplane. god forbid i got stuck in an airport somewhere, so now i don't have to do that. as i said in the chum, my favorite place to realize is in the passenger seat of a car going really fast up the new york state thruway. >> someone who does not get car sick. [laughter] >> that's amazing. you know, it's interesting because the question, like, there's another question inside of it, you know? it's like, you know, it's like loving cell phones but being against killing people in congo. either you like cell phones or, you know, you don't like killing people in congo. you can't like both. you know, if you're on your cell

phone, you're raping women, you know? and we are all on cell phones, so what are you going to say? >> >> what are you talking about? [laughter] >> the main chemical in cell phones -- >> oh, i see. >> -- is mined in congo. and the reason that or their polity doesn't work is because people are making profit off them, and they don't want a democratic nation getting the cheapest possible -- [inaudible] to put in their cell phones. and the same thing about books. i much prefer realizing books on paper, and i do mostly. but i'm so excited about electronic books because, you know, children who can't afford books can download thousands of, you know, dickens, twain, hugo onto their little twices and read them and not have to -- devices and read them and not have to murder millions of trees. >> they can go to the library too.

[laughter] just saying. >> you know, when you live in the hood -- many other issues that don't come up in other places. >> the thing about murdering trees though, i live in maine, and there's so many trees. [laughter] and really, you know, when you stop cutting down the trees and making paper with them, they're closing big paper manufacturing places. when you cut down the trees, when you stop cutting down the trees and making paper, then what happens is little condominium developments sprout up. those are the real kind of enemies of -- those are the real engines of sprawl. so you've got to keep buying things on paper in order to save the forest. [laughter] >> all the political issues involved in e-books versus print books that you didn't even think of. i -- walter, this is a bit of a cheat because i already know your answer to this, but who else reads in the bathtub?

>> who else? >> who else, because i know you do. >> oh, god, i don't know. >> anyone else read in the bathtub? >> oh, okay. one of them. >> i've lost many books to drowning. >> the drowns kindle, i think, is almost a life threatening situation. [laughter] there was a question that someone stopped and asked in my own book club just two weeks ago, and it was such a basic question, and yet it stopped all of us. it was in the middle of a heated conversation. and she said why do you read? why do people read? and i think it's 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'm usually in quest of something. i like to find out something. sometimes when i was in my 20s

i was reading because i thought, oh, who's out there, who are my competitors, you know? kind after a postadolescent competitive thing, now it's i want to find out something, i want to find out the truth about something. and it's much more fun to have a pursuit. so you're led to books that you never would have looked at otherwise except that you need to find out some tiny piece of, in my case, it was a buildup to world war ii or whatever it was. so having a quest helps order this impossibly, imtim datingly enormous universe of books and helps sort things for me. >> i read because i love to read. and as i get older, it's really the most important thing in my life. it's the thing i plan my day around, the thing i always want to be doing. it's 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. [laughter] i don't want to see friends, i just, i really just want to read. [laughter] >> there was an authors' party here last night -- >> i didn't go because i read. >> she said, are you kidding? and, again, waved "the buried giant" in the air. francine? >> even when i was a little kid, it seemed so unfair to me that you only get one life. so reading takes that away for me. >> one of the conversations came out in my book club is that answer can change depending on where you are in your own life that after 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 sort of people going through a similar thing. and i wonder if you have found that your needs, your reading needs or desires have shifted over the course of your life. >> i'm not sure i'm going to

answer that question, but something that you just said. 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 sad books i could find -- >> yes. >> so helpful. so helpful. to just sink in with other people's sadnesses and loss. "brother, i'm dying." "the suicide index," which is such a fantastic book. i can't recommend it enough. it was the, it just, it was like going to see your friends and saying we're just going to sit together. raise your hand if you misery read. does anyone else out there? misery read. >> misery read. >> you read about other people sadder and more troubled than you are. [laughter] i'm going to go back to the

question. >> sorry. >> no, no. rl has the reason you read changed during your life? >> i i really like reading. i like to dip into things. and there's this writer who used to write for the new yorker named may have brennan -- mave brennan, she was a long-winded lady. i loved this woman. she would write a long, long paragraph. it was usually one single paragraph in the talk of the town section, and she would just go into a restaurant and describe who walked into the restaurant. she wouldn't actually talk to them, she would just have speculations about them. or she would be riding the subway or see someone realizing a magazine, and she is such a beautiful, beautiful describer. it's really thrilling to see somebody -- so i think that my motive in reading the long-winded lady is just to imagine myself back in new york city in the '60s and, you

know, riding a subway and looking at life, looking at new york and feeling the new yorker when it was a bigtime thing, but feeling new york when it was a different place. so the motive is, i guess, escape, but it's also this desire to be immediately with a person with a beautiful mind standing in a subway and looking at somebody. >> lately, and this may have something to do with the thomas burn hardt thing, i find myself drawn to writer who seem to me to be sort of outrageous, envelope-pushing weirdoes -- >> we going to name names? [laughter] >> roberto -- [inaudible] hans christian anderson, jane bowles, on and on. because i think there's so much pressure on writers now still the way there is pressure on everybody to do something that's conforming or to write the tidy,

well-made, conventional novel. and to read writers who make you say, oh, i didn't know you could do that. i guess you can do that. it's extremely helpful. >> walter? >> yeah. i'm trying to think of an answer to your question. i don't know. i don't, i don't feel like -- i mean, my reading may indeed change because of my situation, but i'm not keeping track of it. >> do you, how do you decide what to read next? >> i mean, i have some books on my shelf, and, you know, of course, you know, as you know, as i said, you know, the big thing about reading is rereading. i have a wonderful friend who lectures at nyu, and one day i was looking at his books, the books that he lectures from, and he's read those books, like each one, a hundred times. and when he's rereading it when he's teaching a class, if i happen to be around him, he starts talking about the book as if he just read it for the first

time. so there's a hundred, two hundred books that i reread all the time. let me see where i can go with that. >> what other books do you like to reread? >> hmm? >> what other books do you like to reread? >> well, a few of marquez that i think are wonderful, the dead souls of gogul i'm always kind of amazing and some of his short stories. "the stranger and the plague." i just kind of go over them again and again, always finding new stuff. and poetry. the four quartets by elliot. i still haven't understood it, but i really like reading it. [laughter] and my misunderstanding changes as i reread it. [laughter] >> francine, do you reread? >> uh, yeah. well, yeah. i just wrote a piece for you, but i reread the russians a lot.

i reread chekhov as often as i can, and actually i'm trying to write something about trying to reread chekhov and everything else get anything the way. >> we have a russian review of the book review coming next weekend, sort of thanksgiving counter-programming. and francine wrote an essay about answering the question what's so great about russian literature, why do we keep returning to to the 19th century russian novelists. do you reread? >> i reread "dwroon eggs and ham -- green eggs and ham," all the time. [laughter] my mother was worried about me because first grade was looming, and i couldn't read, so she gave me "green eggs and ham" to read, and i had this horrible time with it. especially, i remember crying over the word dark because i'd learned that a and a was the two sounds a made, and here was this hybrid sound. and i got to the end, and she

made me green eggs and ham with good coloring. and it tasted good, but out looked very strange. [laughter] no, i like to read. truly like to read, go back to read dr. seuss is good, but there's a lot of -- [inaudible] speak memory is the book that i always go back to. and it's, the it is a, it is, actually, a supernatural book, i have to say. it is an accordion book because i have read the book sort of through, i guess i've read every page but not in order. i dip in, and it's as if i haven't read that page. there's always some piece of it that i'm reading for the first time. it's actually a miraculous book that way. speak memory. >> do you have time to reread, anne? >> i don't anymore. i used to. i used to reread james all the time. i'm a big james person. >> wow. >> and it's gone now. i read not only things that were

written -- i don't read things that were written a long time ago, i read things that haven't been published yet. >> do you do certain reading for work and surgeon reading for pleasure -- certain reading for pleasure? >> it's all the same because all books are pleasure for me, and if they're not, i stop reading them. we have at the bookstore a first editions club, so we're always thinking about what book we're going to be pick anything three or four months, and everyone at the store is fiercely reading. and there's this feeling of trying to hold back the wave all the time. okay, we've got february picked, but what about march? what about april? so -- >> all right. you brought up it can't be all lovey dovey, you brought up putting things down that you didn't love, are you willing to name the last book that you picked up and couldn't finish or didn't want to? >> i don't want 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 books to me through the bookstore. [laughter] it's never ending, people want me to read their books. and if something doesn't catch me really fast -- unless it's a friend or it's come with a personal recommendation, i don't give it much of a chance at all. >> nick, what about you? do you, are you -- do you feel the need to get to the end of every book, or do you feel the need to put things down? >> i love that sound. when you're in a bookstore and you open a book and you read the first five lines and then you whop it closed. [laughter] no, we've read that, done, it's dumb. forget it, go back. so i do that a lot. but then sometimes -- i hate saying bad things about other books in any specific way. so i, that's why i stopped writing book reviews. i just think it's unkind. there's a huge world of books, and everybody has a different universe of interests.

and i've gone through phases where i've loved certain books that i now don't love as much, and i've also discovered books in my '50s that i thought i would never, ever read. so it's always a mistake, i think, to say bad things about other people's books because you never know what phase someone is going to be in. so i just say that, yes, i do reject a lot of books. >> one of the things about negative book reviews is that i think there are occasions, certainly it's happened with me, where i've read someone lambasting a book and ended up disliking the reviewer more than i disliked the book and actually kind of wanting to read the book because i disliked what that reviewer had to say. fran francine, you have only recently return today that dark part -- [laughter] >> yeah. there's around middle age i was saying, well, that's something young people do, they have -- they just trash everything, and

they have no conscience about it. well, i'll just say it, so many crappy books out there that are taken seriously as great books that i just feel i can't not say it. some tour relates, like -- turrets, like, part of me wants to say bad, bad, bad -- >> i want to go back to -- >> i want to say something about that. >> yes. >> i know i'm here at the end. there's 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 book, and a lot of the things that it said were not true written by somebody who had to change his name at least once. and it got a really bad review, i think it was in salon. i'm not sure, i think it was in salon. and i kind of applauded that bad review. i think that there's certain times, there's certain books that say certain things that

maybe you want to say something against. but that's never about, like, you know, technique or, you know, story or that kind of stuff. but there are things that books do that deserve to be countered, i think. >> i want to say something that -- bring up a topic that will give solace to many worried parents and grandparents out there about what their little ones are reading. walter, you started off reading comic books as a child. >> yeah. >> what was it that appealed to you about comics? >> well, it seemed like they understood my life. >> you were a superhero. >> well, i wanted to be a superhero. [laughter] and i wanted, you know, like spider-man especially, i just figured he was, like, a black kid, you know? all this power, all this ability, can't make any money -- [laughter] when he does make money, it's by making fun of himself. the police are after him, the public fear him. but he does kind of wonderful things in life. i said, wow, that's me.

i thought the same thing about the thing in fantastic four. the stories were really, you know, they were living out my physical, you know, desires and fantasies. so i thought they were beautiful and very artistic, and i still do, you know? i love them. >> francine, what did you read grow glueing up? -- growing up? >> well, 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] and then i just read everything. i was completely omnivorous and not until i was in high school i don't think that anyone told me or i knew the difference between a so-called good book and a so-called bad book. i just didn't care. i'd read all these big, popular novels. i didn't know the difference between james mitscher and henry james. they both had the same name. [laughter] and later i realized certain other standards applied, but i just read everything.

>> nick, you were a -- [inaudible] fan. >> yes, that's true. i really loved harry gay, and i loved the way he drew tibetan rocks and the way when captain haddock got drunk, the way he would fly out of the snow and go -- so i read a lot of tiptin. then i was hit by lord of the rings, and that was sort of the thing that -- i tried to read it in second grade -- [laughter] and i really, really didn't get it. [laughter] and i confused things, but i had this big book that i carried around with me, and then i read it again in third grade, and it was really the most incredible reading experience. i remember lying on the couch, this crushed velvet couch that we had and just trying to find different positions, and counting the number of pages and the excitement of being in the midst of something so enormous. i loved that. and then i got into science fiction. a friend of my father's had, was a science fiction guy, and he just delivered this matsive

stack of -- massive stack of very well-thumbed yearly anthologies, that kind of thing, and just stacked them up -- i remember they were on the ironing board. and i just kind of, i took them away and read them all and loved them. and i thought, well, i want to be a writer and write science fiction. so i started -- that was in fourth grade. i said, i actually wrote a couple of stories based on the science fiction. one was called "gasp." gasp. that was when the world's atmosphere went away. >> who are your favorite science fiction authors? >> well, i don't remember now. the guy's name, i loved it,-robert she cannily. saturdays of space. i love -- shards of space. i loved that one. >> anne, what were you reading? >> alice webb, hugely important to me. still to this day, charlotte's

webb. i read the little house on the prairie books, my sister's nancy drew books. just exactly what everybody was supposed to read. and then when i was 13, i read humble's gift, and i just went directly from little house on the prairie to humboldt's gift, and i reread that book this last year, and it was, it was fascinating because i remembered every word of it. it was completely imprinted on my brain. and also when my grandmother was dying ten years ago, i was having a really hard time finding the right thing to read to her, and i ended up reading her all of the little house on the prairie books again which really have a lot of problems. >> yes. [laughter] >> he was really difficult. but, again, i could almost close the book and recite the next page. your brain is such a sponge when you're young, and all of those things really stick.

>> one of the great things i'll recommend is actually listening to charlotte's web, there is an audio recording that e.b. white does himself, and it's so amazing to hear, you know, how he imagines the goose and her little idiosyncratic speech patterns. when i asked you who your literary hero was, anne, you said wilbur. why? >> well, i lived on a farm in tennessee when i was a kid, and i wanted a pig. i got a pig for my ninth birthday. not one of those little pot-bellied pigs, but the way pigs used to be. it was small for a couple of week, and it was my dog, and it grew up to be 350 pounds. and i became a vegetarian, like, three days after my ninth birthday because i wouldn't eat my dog, and i wouldn't eat my pig, and that was it. that book had a huge impact on me. >> did you have a literary hero either as a child or now? >> well, i suppose as a child it was strider in the lord of the

rings, captain haddock, some mixture of the two. >> francine? >> well, i liked all those very basic empowered girls, you know, pip by -- pippi long stocking and -- >> jo? >> jo. it was big textbook, but they really meant a lot to me. >> with walter? other than spider-man? >> it has to be other -- no. [laughter] you know, i always have, like, a problem with talking about writing to readers because readers think a lot about reading, and i don't know what writers think, but i don't think a lot about reading, and i rarely think that reading has anything to do with writing. i don't equate them. they're two different things. i like them both. but, and so the guy who i like the most is homer, you know? because not only was he

illiterate, he was also blind so all he could do was tell stories about things that he had picked up. and that's kind of the way i think of writing, that your tongue is kind of large, big stories in your head, and it doesn't have to do with other people telling stories or writing books or anything like that. the books are something different. they're wonderful, and they do connect, and you tell the story and it gets published, but that's where it ends. >> um, i'd like to believe that everyone is readers, but as we know from polls, only about 50% of americans have read at least one book for pleasure in the last year. and that statistic kind of remains static. so i do think that the world divides into people who are readers and those who aren't. do you remember, was there a time when you became a reader or someone who inspired you? walter? >> the same thing as my parents. my parents would sit there and read. they would watch television, tell stories, do all kinds of

other things, but they would be reading bookings. they got me books, they had their own books, there were books everywhere, and i just said, well, this must be important. >> francine, was it preordained with your name? i'm sure you get that question all the time -- >> well, i was a very early reader. i was just 4, and i learned the way i think a lot of kids do, just by memorizing and pretending that i could read and then suddenly i could read. but it was kind of a party trick for me because my parents would say, you know, look at her, she can read. and then i would read for their guests, you know? [laughter] so it was just this weird little performance i would do. and then i discovered i liked it, also, in private. so that's how it happened. >> well, there's nothing wrong with you if you don't like reading, i think. honestly, i think there are lots of people who have very complicated, interesting thoughts who do -- who might only read a couple of books a year. my father wasn't a reader.

he liked to -- i mean, he was a reader, he read words, but he wasn't a book reader. and i was amazed by how much he knew by reading the kinds of things he read; art catalogs and "the new york times" and just ephemeral things. i don't think people necessarily have to read books. i'm not a very good reader, honestly. i'm not a terribly good reader. i read a lot, but i look at the way my wife reads books, she's read all of trollop, and she just reads it, and there's a kind of joy, and it sorts out her life as she's reading the book in a way that doesn't happen for me. and i'm very jealous of it, in fact. >> uh-huh. >> i'm not that kind of reader, and yet i've managed to survive. [laughter] so i think it's okay, it's okay if you -- you know, but what i've, what i've been hit with recently is the flashman series. george mcdonald frazier. he's a terribly objectionable british empire sort of chap, and

he goes around doing terrible things all over the world, and he's sort of it's a p.g. woodhouse combined with the sharp novels by bernard cornwall. he's funny and objectionable, and i actually felt some of that feeling of wanting to go from book to book, because there are a lot of books that i think real readers feel in reading these flashman series. >> and you're a doris kerns goodwin competist. >> i am. >> are there other writers you feel like you just have to read every single think they write? >> oh, ask somebody else, and i'll think -- >> ill ask somebody else. did you come from a reading family? how did you become a reader? >> you know, my parents were great readers. i have no memory of either of my parents ever reading to us, but they always were saying go away, we're reading. [laughter] and i can remember --

>> that's the way to do it. >> can i think that actually is the way to do it, to show your child that you're in an important relationship with a book. my parents were divorced when i was very young and, actually, we only saw our father a week a year. long, sad story. i remember when i was very, very young going to visit my father, and he was reading the godfather, the first godfather, and he couldn't even look up. i mean, he really loved us, he was really happy we were there, but he was so stuck with it. and i remember so well, i mean, i was 8 or something him saying he cut the head off the horse. [laughter] and he put the head in the bay's bed. -- in the guy's bed. my father was a cop in los angeles, and we were like, no! they cut the head off the horse? and somehow i think that was better than him reading green eggs and ham. [laughter] [applause] >> i have to say do you feel like that's one of the beautiful

points you reach in parenthood, where your child is independently read so you can say would you like me to read to you, or should we just read our own books side by side? is. >> oh, yeah. that's a sad moment though. >> it's bittersweet. do you have a favorite author? this is such an unfair question. even's going the probably name someone dead, but, nick? [laughter] and you can name, you can answer with, like, five names. >> no, i think, i mean, to be honest -- as soon as you said favorite authority, it was like the old -- author, it was like the old 8 ball toy. it has to be nab cover. he is not an idiomatic writer of english, and yet he had this desire to match up words with things in a way that just still when i read him i think, oh, my god. when i was 15, i read this description that he made of riding the train looking at

telegraph wires, and the telegraph wires were beaten down every so often by the poles. and i thought, oh, my god, now i know. i've looked out a car, i've seen telephone poles,s, and they do e exact same thing. that 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, and the same thing happens. so he has to be my, still my favorite writer. >> francine? >> oh, i couldn't possibly. i mean, first of all, that question -- i can't -- every time i'm asked every book i ever read, i just feel them, like, circling the drain -- >> i know. it's like when someone comes up to you and says, you know, whooshed i read next? your -- what should i read next? your mind empties out. >> there are hundreds of them. >> that means they want to have sex with you, right? >> that's what that means? >> yeah. [laughter]

for me it's never authors, it's always books. it's -- i love four quartets, but not t.s. eliot. i think they're incredible books, but i really like, you know, david copperfield, but that momentum mean i'm reading everything -- that doesn't mean i'm reading everything dickens wrote. writers have different interests, so there are books that i like, and then i have nice feelings toward the writers because they wrote them, but it's not like everything somebody wrote is going to be my -- >> i love asking questions, which is one of the reasons why i started a q&a, and i have about five other index cards, but given the constraints of time, i want to invite everyone to ask your questions. so if you want to go up to the microphone if you have any questions -- >> and while they're doing that, can i answer that last question?

>> yeah. >> ah, good. >> because with the writers that i read when i was growing up who were the people that my mother and stepfather realize, who i read through high school and college and graduate school, this is so weird, but it's bellow updike and ross for me. and even though there are good books and bad books, my very favorite books are really those three. the human stain and rabbit at rest and humboldt's gift. >> that's ooh like a literary showdown kind of question where you go, okay, bellow, ross or updike, which one? >> it's such a create shay though. these are my guys? i don't know. >> all right. we will turn to your questions. >> i need recommendations from as many as will give them having exhausted anthony trollop and jane austen, who would be many that world that i could read? >> we're going back to 9th century edge blabbed -- 19th century england.

>> with some wit. it doesn't have to be england, but with some story, plot, character like them. >> read nancy mittford. you're nodding because you've already read them, yes? oh, you haven't, okay. also a book i just finished reading, "brother to the more famous jack." i loved. i can't explain to you why that connects, but it does. these are, these are i new books. >> [inaudible] >> barbara tripedeo. if you go to ma nasties books.net, i write all of these things down. you should read liz gilbert's novel, "the signature of all things," because she goes back and reimagines those heroines, i think, in a meaningful way. >> what happened to jerry kaczynski, is he still with us? painted bird? >> oh, no. he killed himself. >> oh, my. >> he was -- somebody said that

he had had help with one of his books, translational help that maybe verged into other kinds of help. he seemed to be depressed, and i think he felt his work was done, so he just checked out. >> thank you. >> ms. paul, please tell us about your book club. i've been in one almost 40 years. >> oh, gosh. okay, this is something wiz going to bring up -- i was going to bring up later, 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 -- [laughter] i'm never asked to read, you know, huge volumes by 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 formed under the author

gretchen reuben who wrote "the happiness project "is and several other books. the book club has become so popular, there are now three branches. next week we have the tri-kidlet holiday book party, and people in it are authors and literary critics, people who work within publishing, many of whom don't have children but like children's literature. and for me, one of the things that i love about children's literature is that these are books that made us readers. these are the books that hooked us. there is an emphasis on story and on the sort of themes that touch the human heart in children's literature that will always speak to me. and also enable me to stay in that world. i have three children, and i used to be the children's book editor at the times before i was, as my children say, demoted. so that's my book club.

>> question for anne patchett. has owning a bookstore changed you as 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, and i know that i wrote that book because i had a bookstore. and i couldn't just disappear in the same way that i do when i write a novel. but i'm trying to get hold of my life, and i am writing a novel now because not only -- when i opened this bookstore, it became such a big part of my community in nashville, and i started speaking at schools and at rotary clubs and moose lodges and hosting the homeless shelter fundraiser and the library gala, you know? that's how it changed my life. >> this shows how much a bookstore really serves a function in the community. >> you know, it's true. >> yeah. especially now. >> so i came a smidgen late, and i apologize if you've already

answered this question, but you've thrown around the term good book/bad book. what makes a good book for each of you, i suppose. >> shall we start with walter? >> thetist thing that -- the first thing that makes a book good for me is the language itself, if i'm enjoying the language, the descriptions, the dialogue. and then, you know, after that comes character and story. you know, i'm really political, so at some point or another if something can go awry politically for me, it might turn me away. but if that doesn't happen, it's basically, it's a not just craft, but it's how, it's the language and how well it flows forward for me. >> i agree with walter. it's all about sentences for me. >> i have to, i like when somebody's funny and when i like the person. if i like the guy or gal who's writing the book, i think, okay,

i'm willing to spend some time with person. and i often have a sort of subversive streak where i want to read things that are genre books that are things that are not considered high literary books because i've heard those names so often, and i want to find out what people are doing who are less celebrated, you know? >> nicholson basic reads row maps novels too -- romance novels too. >> yeah, i love reading romance novels. i mean, they're dirty now. [laughter] >> for me, it's when effecter that i'm reading. it's when i stop looking at a book and thinking, oh, that's amazing the way they did that, that was so clever. it was a really smart idea, look at the way they're presenting that character. when that part of my brain shuts off and i stop analyzing the book and i just fully enter into it, then it becomes a truly great book. i just finished reading chaste's

book, "can't we talk about something more pleasant," and i never read graphic novels. so to have that part of my brain click off, i was just with her every second. >> that's great. >> for me it's about being transported. i don't want to read about, you know, other neuroare thetic -- neurotic people my age in new york, you know, dealing with family and work. [laughter] i want to be, you know, off in the congo. >> i recommend a novel called "the buried giant"? [laughter] >> yes we herald a wonderful -- we heard a wonderful presentation from walter isaacson on his new book, "the innovators," and i was curious if any of you spend much time reading nonfiction books? >> i probably read more nonfiction than fiction. [inaudible conversations] >> well, i mean, i write nonfiction, so i have to read, i have to read a lot of nonfiction

books in order to sift through what other people have said is. and it's also, it's kind of nice to alternate, i think. to be in an imagined world is, it's kind of enveloping in a different way, but when you're reading a nonfiction book, the person gets all sorts of points for telling the truth. and i like the truth, so i'm all -- i read probably as much or more nonfiction than fiction. >> yeah. i read a lot of -- i mean, when you've been out of school for a million years, you're by necessity an autodidact, so the if you're going to learn anything, you have to keep up your reading. >> that's true. >> recently i bought this thing that was published in the '30s called the educator library. it's a 11-volume college education for soldiers who went to war because you could only go to school when you're 18, and

you're like 25, you're an old guy, so you can't go. but it was a whole college education. and because it was before computers and before jet engines, they explain almost everything that you can do, how to build a plane, it's kind of wonderful. and i love stuff like that. i like history too. i like reading the story of civilization. it's kind of wonderful. >> i read a lot of nonfiction. i also listen to a lot of nonfiction. i'm not so good at listening to fiction, but i listen to nonfiction. and my favorite book this year is hector tobar's deep, down dark. brilliant, brilliant book. >> here in miami. >> thank you. we have to bring the session to a close. i don't know if you wanted to wrap it up. >> no. >> and with any closing remarks. >> no wrapping. >> the audience looks sad. look at them. >> you can still hang out here and corners