country that wasn't going to make it. it was going to collapse under its own irrationality and so i find them very pragmatic. i went there in 2005 and this was after i wrote my book. ex-cia officer landed at the airport. they let me in. it was within irish film crew with a british television. they let me go anywhere. call me any's tomb. they let me interview the chief of staff. because they understood their paranoia, while they are paranoid but not to the point that i -- they thought that i was a threat. it's a country of 70 million people that survived long time. it will survive a lot longer in air countries. >> by the way when you see these rogue operations like the "new york times" article on sunday

where bobby levinson the fbi, former fbi agent is incarcerated in my ram what are you thinking? what's going on but nobody seems to know what's going on. in the intelligence community. >> what happened with tom mikhail was he was a port authority detective in new york, lived in new jersey and he befriended the family which are bolded just that live in iran and they are by our definition terrorist groups. he was reporting on them it was not his responsibility to say, hey, there's going to be an attack in a week and decide whether we would tell the iranians or not. that's a political decision. it's unfortunate because the iranians are going to react very badly to this --

>> he may be doing this but there was no control over him. and he was detailed by intelligent -- >> when his contract expiredded they said go, and we'll pay you later. this is an fbi agent, kidnapped -- arrested -- i think they found these e-mails from the cia on his e-mail -- his phone or computer. what my -- probably roughed up and died of a heart attack. this is all speculation. it's imcompetence. not the way you run intelligence. you don't run intelligence with a port authority detective. who is operating on his own, and you don't let analysts send messages on e-mail from the cia. it's just sheer incompetence. it's a sprawling intelligence community and is out of -- which is out of control.

>> i think we're out of time for questions but bob will be signing in the atrium, and you can ask more questions there. thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> pamela paul is the author or "by the book" writers on literary life on the "new york times" book review. her conversation is next on booktv. [applause] >> good morning, everyone, and good morning to everybody watching via technology.

this morning's panel will be falls nateing and you're going to have a great time. i i'm not used to having this many people show up to see me without a court order so i'm certain this is going to be fabulous. our panel discussion this more than is "by the book." our moderator is pamela paul. joining miss paul are authors ann patch cheat, nickelson baker, francine prose, and walter moseley. applause. >> miss paul is thed it to for of "the new york times" book review and the pop done popular interview column "by the book." she brings together 65 of the most intriguing and fascinating

exchanges over time. she is joined the anne patchette, the author of six novels and the co-owner of a book store. yay for book stores. her newest book is "this is the story of a happy marriage: a moment moyer." before the publication of her first novel she labored in the trenches at "17 magazine. "now now. >> fickle copy baker is the author of -- his latest is where a poet appears again. he is joined by francine prose, who is the author of 20 works of fiction. her latest book is "recovers at the cam millan club -- camillean club." also on the panel this morning is walter moseley, the author of more than 40 books, most notably, and i'm certain there's

fans in the audience -- the easy rawlins mystery series. his latestes rolled gold, a story taking place during the patty hearst era. ladies and gentlemen, our panel. >> so, in 2012, when i started "by the book" i had 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 book reviews, especially those in "the new york times," i know that occasionally there are other ropes people pick up a book, and one of the ones that is most commonly cited is word of mouth. the book that everyone is talking about in the office, that your best friend recommends, the book that is the current controversy. so, i thought, well, 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? 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 sadaris was giving a talk, and he always recommends a book when he goes on his speaking tours, and i thought that was incredibly kind and generous it's not always a funny book but i thought, what are the funniest books you have read? 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 sometime like to show they, too, like to read.

and i feel like one of the times i knew it was truly working, was on three separate occasion book store owners told me that they had come into custom -- customers had dom into the store with ann patchets page torn out, and the titles highlighted, saying, i want these. and one person who just said, i want everything that ann patchetteends. so i have four great authors here, all of whom have down "by the book." i feel like there's a spectrum of authors that writers that can talk endlessly about their book. they will talk about the book, their book, while they're in the bathroom stall, talk about their book whenever given an opportunity. on the other end there are people like thomas pinchon who will never talk about their

books, and in the middle are authors who will talk about their book but get sick of talking about their books so. this is an occasion for these writers to talk not about their book but other people's books. i should say that we should -- "by the book" is something people have a lot of time to think over and come up with the exact answer of what book was the most important to them as a child. here it's on the spot and nobody has cheat sheets in front of them. so as one 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 is an easy one i'll start with. what tide you read on your way to the miami book fair? we can just go down the line. ann? >> the very giant, which is -- because i own a book store, i only read books that won't be out until march, but i'm reading the new book called "the buried

giant" out in march. so unlikely. it's medieval, got ogres and dragoons 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. >> this is how you know epa it's book seller, because within two minutes of my seeing her yet she was waving the galley at me. >> i wanted to make sure it gets a good place. >> nick? >> i was reading -- well, i still use this app on the plane, you have to -- it's a 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 -- it said -- a 19th 19th century only enough rouse book reader, read everything that has been written in french or english or greek or lattin and has a -- lat yip and has a

wonderful, flowing style that helps me think so. when i want to say things fluently, which i was worried about saying today -- i thought, let me reads' sansbury. that helps me. >> well, for reasons that are probably too dark and personal and weird to go into, i've been on a huge thomas burnhard kick, so i was reading "the wood cutters." i realized when woke up in the morning, i was reading on a kindle -- i had a little tiny bar, so i was afraid it would run out. so for some reason instead of doing the obvious thing, just to read it until i ran out, i'd read a few payments and then do the -- pages and then do the puzzle in the delta magazine and then read a few more pages, so going back and forth. i thought thomas burnhard would have loved it, if he loved anything.

>> i have -- it's hard for me to remember the title "the war hound and the world's pain" by michael morcock which he wrote in 1981. i started reading him when i was 16 on a foreign stewedy trip to england. i realized when i started reading him i loved his language and this is one of his books and he has written a hundred and this is one i hadn't read. i love it because of his -- he is a science fiction mystery writer, science fiction fantasy writer, but he asks questions which i found interesting. in this one there's a soldier who didn't want to be a soldier but became a very evil soldier who somehow became under the purview of satan, but satan had decided he doesn't like being satan anymore and 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. just kind of love that. these are the kind of problems i feel like i live with all the time. [laughter] >> in vary pedestrian way, but i like to think of it in a larger way. >> these answers are kind of the book seller's nightmare in that all of them are either books that came out long ago or one that's not out yet. but i am curious because everybody -- walter consulted a gadget, and -- was that an actual book. >> actually the book. >> you admitted to reading on a kindle. i'm just curious how people read. do you you a device, still read old fashioned books? do you write in your books? what are your book habits. >> paper always. >> i own a book store. right? you get it. >> a vested interest. >> right. >> well, have this thing, i look doing dish get up in the morning and go and drive somewhere, and

i have a stack of books in the back seat, and i pull them in the front and read aloud from them, and somehow reading aloud in an empty car to myself, from the book on paper, helps me. now in the middle of the night it's a different thing. don't want to wake your wife or spouse up, so i usually read in the hours between 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00. >> committed. >> i read 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 bitty book light that used to be the big thing. >> i'm sorry for the itty-bitty book light. that was a lovely thing. >> i only -- i mean, only read on the device on an airplane because i used to travel with 100 pounds of book because god forbid i got stuck in an airport. so now i don't have to do that. i actually invested -- my

favorite place to the read is in the passenger seat of a car going really fast up the new york state throughway. >> ladies and gentlemen, someone who does not get car sick. >> thank you. >> amazing. >> you know, it's interesting. the question, there's another question inside of it. it's like, if i love cell phones but against killing people in the congo, you like cell phones or you don't like killing people in congress co. you can't like both. if you are on your cell phone, you're raping women and we're all on cell phones. what are you going to say? >> what how talking about? >> the main chemical that -- >> i see. >> in cell phones is mind, and the reason their quality doesn't work is because people are making profit off them and they don't want a democratic nation

stopping them from getting the cheapest possible -- to put in their cell phones, and the same thing about books. i much prefer reading books on paper and i do mostly. i'm so excited about electronic books because children who can't afford books can download thousands of dickens, twain, hugo, all those things, on to their little twices and read them and not have to pay for them and not have to murder millions. it goes both ways. >> they can go to the library, too. 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, though, i live in maine, and there's so many trees there. [laughter] >> trees to spare up there. >> 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 condominiums sprout up. those are the real kind of enemies of -- those are the real engines of straw. so you have to keep buying things on paper in order to save the forest. [laughter] >> all the political issues involved in ebooks versus print books you didn't think of. walter, this is a bit of a cheat because i already know your answer, but who else reads in the bathtub. >> who else? >> i know you do. >> oh, god, who else reads in the bathtub? >> anyone else here, bathtub reader? i. >> oh, okay, one of them. >> too many books through drowning. >> drowns kindle, is almost a life-threatening situation. there was a question that someone stopped and asked in my

own book club, just two weeks ago, such a basic question and yet it stopped all of us in the middle of a heat conversation. she said, why do you read? why do people read? i think it's an interesting question. 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, who, who is out there? who are my competitors? is this -- post adolescence competitive thing. now it's that i want to find out something. i want to find out the truth about something, and that it's much more fun to have a pursuit. so, you're led to books you never would have looked at otherwise, except that you need to find out some tiny piece of

in my case, buildup to world wod war ii or whatever it was so having a quest helps order the impossible blue intimidate leg 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 deep, 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 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, and i -- >> i didn't go because i read. >> said, are you kidding? we have some buried giants in my mirror. >> even when i was a little kid,

seemed so unfair because you only got one life, but in reading you get all these others you get to inhabit briefly. >> one thing that came out in conversation to my book club is the answer can change-depending on where you are in your own life. that at a certain point maybe after a tragedy, you find 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. and i wonder if you 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 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 saddest books i could find, waves. >> yes. >> so helpful. so helpful. to just sink in with other people's sadnesses and --

brother, i'm dying. the suicide index. which is such a fantastic book. i can't recommend it enough. it was the -- it just was like going to see your friends and saying, we're just going to sit together. raise your hand if you misery read? anyone else out there? misery read. you read about other people's sadder and more troubles than you are? i'm going to go back to the question. >> sorry. >> no, no, the reason you have read changed depending on where you were in your life? >> i really like reading -- i like to dip into things, and there's this writer who used to write for the "the new yorker." i love this woman. she would write a long, long paragraph, usually one single

paragraph in "the talk of the town" section and just go into a separate describe who walked into the restaurant. she would not actually talk to them, just have speculations about them. or she would be riding the subway and would see someone reading a magazine. she is such a beautiful, beautiful describer, just -- it's really thrilling to see somebody -- so i think my motive in reading the long-winded lady is just to imagine myself back in new york city in the '6s so and riding the subway and looking at life, looking at new york and feeling the new yorker when it was a big-time thing but feeling new york when it was a different place. so the moat have i is escape but also this desire to be immediately with a person with a beautiful mind, standing in a subway and looking at somebody.

this might. >> i find myself drawn to writers who seem to me to be kind of outrageous envelope push weirdows. hans christian anderson, jane boles. there's so much pressure on writers now the way there is pressure on everybody to do something that is conforming or write the tidy, well-made conventional novel, and to read writers writers who make you say, oh, i didn't know you could do that. is extremely helpful. >> walter? >> trying to think -- in answer to your question, don't know. 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 have some books on my shelf, and of course you know, as you know, the big thing about reading is re-reading. i have wonderful friend who lectures at nyu, and one day i was looking at his books he lectures from, and he has read those books like each one 100 times, and when he is re-reading it, teaching a clarks if happen to be around him, he starts talking about the book as if he just read it for the first time. so there's 100 or 200 book is do a lot of re-reading of. 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 thing about movie but that another panel. >> whoa other book does you like to re-read? >> well, i'm -- there's a few of marques that is wonderful, death souls. i kind of amazed with his short

stories. kamu, only a few. only the stringent i go over them again and again, always finding new stuff, and poetry. i still have dish really like reading it, and my misunderstanding changes as i re-read it. >> francine, do you re-read? yes; i just wrote a piece for you. i read chekov as often as i can and trying to write something about trying to re-read check cough and something else getting in the way. >> we have russian edition of the book review next weekend, the thanksgiving counterprogramming, and the question is: what is so great about russian literature. why do we keep returning to the

19th century russian novelists. do you rae reed? >> i re-read "green eggs and ham" a lot. first grade was looming and i couldn't read so my mother gave me that to read and i had theirs horrible time with it. words like look -- i, crying over the word dark, and i got the end and she made me green eggs and ham. with food coloring, tasted good but looked very strange. i like to read. truly like to read -- go back to read dr. seuss is good but -- speak memory is the book i always go back to, and it's a -- it is actually a super natural

book. 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. but i dip in and it's as if i haven't read that pain. 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 re-read, ann? >> i don't anymore. i used to re-read james all the time. and it's gone now. i read not only things that were written -- i don't reading thises written a long time ago. i reading thises that haven't been published yet. >> do you find you do certain reading for work and certain reading for pleasure or does it totally overlap and meld together? >> 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 book store a first editions club so we're always thinking about what book we're going to be picking in

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. we have february picked but what about march? what about april? >> all right. you brought up -- can't be all lovey dovey, brought up putting things down you didn't love. are you willing to name the last book you picked up and couldn't finish or didn't want to? >> i don't know i looked at the cover. it probably happens five times a day. i mean, no joke, every single day a of my life. people send books to my house to me through the book store. 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. >> what about you, nick? do you feel the need get to the end of every book or put things

down. >> i love that sound when glory a book store and you open a book and read the first five lines ls and then you whop it closed. no. no. we have read that. it's done. it's dumb. forget it. go back. so, i have -- i do that a lot. then sometimes -- i hate staying bad things about other books in any specific way. so i -- that's why i've stopped writing book reviews itch 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 i don't love as much now, and i've discovered books in my 50s i thought i would never 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 else is going to be in. so, i just say that, yes, i do reject a lot of books. >> one of the thing about negative book reviews is that i

think there are occasion -- certainly happened with me -- where i read someone lambasting a book and disliked the reviewer more than i disliked the book and then wanting to read the book because i disliked what the reviewer had to say. francine, you did not write negative reviews for many years and only recently returned to that dark part. >> there's a part another is round middle age where i was saying, that's something young people do. they just trash everything and they have no conscious about it. but now its just seems to me there's -- well, i'll 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 part of me keeps wanting to say, bad, bad, bad. >> i want to go back to -- >> i want to say something about that. i hear at the end, but there's a

book recently written, 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, real fear mongering book and a lot of the things 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." and i applauded the bad review. i think there's certain times that certain books that say certain things that maybe you want to say something against, but that's never about technique or story or that kind of stuff. 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 about what their little ones are reading. walter, you started off reading

comic books as a child. >> yes. >> what was it that appealed to you about comics. >> seemed like they understood my life. >> you were a super hero? >> yes. well, wanted to be a super hero. and i wanted to be -- like spider-man especially if figured he was like a black kid. all this power, all this possibility-can't make any money, make -- when he does make money, it's by making fun of himself. the police are after him, the public fear him. he does kind of wonderful things in life. i thought, that's me. i thought the same thing about " the fantastic four." they were live midnight physical desires desires and fantasies, and i still love them. >> francine, what did you read growing up? >> well, i read comics also. i loved "mad magazine" when i was a kitchened finally, someone has the same sense of humor has

me. unlike my family. and then i just read everything. i was completely omniferous, and not until i was in high school dish don't income i knew the difference between a so-called good book and bad book. i gist didn't care aimed read big popular novels itch didn't know the difference between james mitch center henry james. -- mitcher in and henry james and thin realized other standards apply but i didn't care imjust read everything. >> next, you were a good- >> a really loved harry gay. then i was hit by lord of the rings and that was the thing i tried to read it in second grade, and i really, really

didn't get it, and i confused -- i had this big book i carried around with me, and then i read again in the third grade and it was the most incredible reading experience. remember lying on the couch, this crushed velvet couch we had and trying to find different positions and counting the number of pains 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 was a science fiction guy just delivered this massive stack of very well-thumbed yearly anthologies, that kind of thing, and stocked them up. i remember they were on the ironing board, and i just kind of 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 that was -- i said, i actually wrote a couple of stories based on the science

fiction -- one was called "gasp." when the world's atmosphere went away. >> your favorite science fiction author? >> sheckley. >> what were you reading as child? >> raid whatever my sister finish reading. i read "charlotte's web" which happened my life. still to this day i live in the world of charlotte's reb. i read "little house on the prairie" just exactly what everybody was supposed to rode. when i was 13 i read holiday -- "humboldt's gift," and i re-read that book this last year, and 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 read her all of "the little house on the prairie" books which are -- pa had lot of problems. >> really difficult but i could almost close the book and recite the next page. your brain is such sponge when you're young, and all of these things really stick. >> one of the great things i'll recommend is actually listening to pay shore lot's web." that's an audio recording that e.b. white does himself and it's amazing to hear how he imagines the goose and her speech patterns. whenned asked you who your literary hero was, ann you said wilbur. why. >> 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 a pot belly pigs but the way pigs used to be. it was small for a couple of weeks, 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, and -- because i wouldn't eat my dog or wouldn't eat my pig. that was it. that book had a huge impact on me. >> did you have a literary hero as a child oar now? >> i suppose as a child it was aragorn in the lord of the rings and captain haddock. >> francine? >> well, i liked all those very basic empowered girls, pippy longstocking, and joe. they maintain lot to me. >> walter other, than spider-man? >> has to be other than -- no.

my -- i always have a problem with talking about writing to readers because readers think a lot 0 about reading and i don't know what writers think but i don't think a lot about reading, and i rarely texas that reading has anything too do with writing. i don't equate them. they're two different things. i like them both. but -- so, the guy who i like the most is homer. not only was he illiterate-he was also blind. all he could do was tell stories about things he had picked up, and that is kind of the way i think of writing. telling this large, big story, and they're 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 in that you tell the story and it gets published but that's where it ends.

>> i'd like to believe that everyone is readers but as we know from polls 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 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. they would sit there and they would read. that would be like -- that would be the -- they would watch television, tell stories, but they would be reading books and they would -- got me books, had their own books, books everywhere, and i just said, this must be important. >> francine, was it preordained with your name? was there a moment -- >> well, i was a very early readers. i guess i was just four and i learned the way i think a lot of kid does, by memorizing and pretending i could read and then suddenly i could read. but it was kind of a party trick

for me. because my parents would say, look at her, she can read, and then i would read for their guests, so it's just this weird little performance i would do, and then discovered i liked it also in private. so, that's how it happened. >> well, there's nothing wrong with if you don't like reading. honestly, i think there are lots of people who have very complicated, interesting thoughts who do -- might only read a couple of books a year mitchell father wasn't a reader. he was a reader, read words but wasn't a book reader, and i was amazed by how much he knew by reading the kinds of things he read. art catalogues and "the new york times," and just more ephemeral things. people don't 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 -- the way my wife reads book, she reads and it there's 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, and i'm very jealous of it in fact. i'm not that kind of reader, and yet i've managed to survive. into, i think it's okay. it's okay if you -- what i've been hit with recently is the flashmen series. george mcdonald frazier, terribly objectionable british empire sort of chap, and he goes around doing terrible things all over the world, and he is sort of the peachy woodous combined with the sharp novels. he is funny and objectionable and i actually felt some of that feeling of wanting to go from book-to-book because a lot of booked that real readers feel in reading this series.

>> ann, you're a doris goodwin completist. other writers you feel like you have to read everything they write. >> ask somebody else and let me think on that. >> did you grow up surrounded by book inside did come from a reading family? >> my parents were great readers. i i have no memory of either of my parents ever reading to us but they always were saying, go away, we're reading. and i can remember -- >> that's the way to do it. >> think that is the tie do it. so show your child that you're in an important relationship with a book mitchell parents were divorced when i was very young. we only saw our father a week a year, long, sad story, but has nothing to do with the price of plane tickets. i remember when i was very, very young, going to visit my father, and he was reading the first

"godfather" and he couldn't look up. he was really happy we were there but he was so stuck with it, and i remember so well -- i mean, i was eight or something, and him saying, "he cut the head off the horse and put the head in the guy's bed." my father was a cop in los angeles. and we we are like, no, they cut the head off the horse? and somehow i think that was better than him reading green eggs and ham to us. [laughter] >> i have to say, i feel like that's one of the beautiful points you reach in parenthood where your child is independently reading and so at night you can say, would you like me to read to you or should we just read our open books side-by-side. >> a sad moment. >> it's bittersweet. >> do you have a favorite author? such an unfair question. everyone is going to probably name someone dead. but -- nick? you can answer with five names.

>> to be honest -- as soon as you said favorite author, it was like the old eight ball toys, something comes up and it has to be the book. he is not a writer of english and yet he has this desire to match up words with things in a way that just still, when i read them, i think, my god. when i was 15 i read this description that he made of riding in a train, looking at telegraph wires and the wires were breathen down. and i thought, my god, i know. i've written in a back of a car and have seen telephone poles and do the exact same thing, and the exciting feeling that somebody is able to look at the world,'ll it down and put it into words and then it goes into my mind and the same thing happens. so, he has to be my -- till my

favorite writer. >> francine? >> i couldn't possibly. first of all, that question -- i can't -- every time i'm asked, every bike ever read, feel thick circling the drain and going down. >> like when someone says to you, shoot i read next? your mind just empties out. >> read in the good books lately? there are hundreds of them. >> walter. >> that read any good books lately? that means want to have sex with you. right? for me it's never authors. it's always books. i love "four quartets" but not t.s. eliot. incredible books but everything that was written i don't love. i really like david copperfield but that doesn't mean i'm reading everything that dickens.

there are books that i like, and then i have nice feelings toward the writer because they wrote them but it's not like it's everything that somebody wrote that's going to be mine. >> life asking questions which is one of the reason is started a q & a and i have five other index card heave, each with five questions. but given the constraints of time i want to invite everyone to did -- to ask your questions. so go up to the microphone. >> while they're doing that can i answer the last question? >> yes. >> good. >> because with the writers i read when i was going up-the-people that my mother and stepfather read, who i read through high school and college and graduate school, this is so weird but it's updike and ross for me, and even throw there are good backs backs and bad books y

favorite are those three. >> that's like a literary showdown kind of question. >> it's such cliche. these are my guys? i don't know. >> we'll turn to your questions. >> okay. i need recommendations from as many as will give them. having exhausted anthony trollon and jane austin, who would be in that world i could read? >> we're going back to 19th 19th century england. >> with some wit. doesn't have to be england but some story, plot, character, with some wit. like them. >> read nancy midford, love in a cold climate, and in pursuit of love. you've already led them? you haven't. okay. a book i just finished reading a couple of days ago, "brother to the more famous jack." i can't explain why that connects but it does. these are new books.

if grew to parnisis books.net i write all of these down and they're all there also, if you love those books read "the signature of all things" because she goes back and re-imagines those heroines in a really meaningful way. >> what happened to jerries oziny ski? is he still with us? painted bird and -- >> oh, no. he killed himself. >> oh, my. >> he was discouraged. somebody said he had help with one of his books, translational help, that maybe verged into other kind of help. seemed to be depressed and i think he felt his work was done. so, he just checked out. >> hmm. thank you. >> please tell us about your book club. i've been in one almost 40 years. >> oh, gosh, something weibring

-- something i whereas going to brian up -- going to bring up later. i ballooning to a children's book club for several ropes. one, because the beaks are short and i therefore can -- never asked to read volume 3 by next month. i have a lot of work to read -- books to read for work. the second reason is because the anymore it -- this is a book club that had been in existence, it formed under gretchen rubin who rote the happiness project and the book club has become so popular there are three branches. next week we have the holiday book party, and the 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 i love

about children literature is that these are the books that made us readers, 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 enabled me to stay in that world. i have three children, and i used to be the children's book editor at the time before i was -- as my children say, demoted. so that's my book club. >> question for anne patchette. has owning a book store 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 i wrote that book because i had book store and 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 book store, 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. that is how it changed my life. >> this shows how much a book store serves a function in the community. >> it's true. it's true. >> especially now. >> so i came a smidgen late but you have thrown around the term, good book, bad book. what makes a good book for each of you, i suppose? >> shall we start with walter? >> the first thing that makes a book good for me is the language itself. if i am enjoying the language, the descriptions, the dialogue, and then after that, comes character and story and -- 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 a lot -- not just craft but -- not always craft. it's how -- 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 is funny and when i like the person. if i like the guy or gal writing the book, i'm willing to spend some time with this person and i often -- i have a subversive streak where i want to reading thises that are genre books or things not cord -- not considered high literary books because i heard those names so often and i want to find out what people who are doing who are less celebrated. >> romance novels.

>> i love reading romance novels. they're dirty now. >> for me it's when i forget 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 figuring out how they did and it i just fully enter into it? then it becomes a truly great book. i just finished reading -- can we talk -- i never agreed photographic novels so to have that part of my brain click off, i was just with her every second. >> great great. >> for me it's about being transported. i don't want to read about other neurotic people my age in new york dealing with