>> and. >> and he is thrilled with this book is selling in the united states and people are learning about the camps. that was the goal and the reason he went through the misery to talk.

c-span: the book is called escape from camp 14. thank you very much. >> guest: thank you. [applause] good morning everyone who is watching via technology. this morning the panel will be fascinating and you'll

have a great time. and not used to having this many people show up without a court order. [laughter] so i am certain this will be fabulous. the discussion is teeeleven our moderator is pamela enjoining her our authors walter and francine and pamela. [applause] ms. paul is editor of "the new york times" book review and of the popular interview column by the book. her new book "by the book" writers on literature and the literary life from the new york times book review" brings together 65 of the most intriguing and fascinating exchanges over time.

she is joined by ian who is the author of six novels as well as the co-owner of the bookstore. [applause] her newest book this is the story of a happy marriage and before the publication of her first novel to seventeen magazine. next his latest is where the protagonist paul appears again. he is joined by francine the with the author of 20 works of fiction. her latest book is lovers that the kid million club. -- kinnealey and club. a novel set in 1920's. also on the panel is walter, the author of more than 40 books and i am sure

there are fabians in the audience. his story takes place during the patty hearst era of radical black "maxim" is some and political objections. ladies and gentlemen,, our panel. [applause] >> in 2012 and i for started "by the book" i had a few motivations of a blake to believe the only reason people ever be block dash by book is based on their reviews ito occasionally there are other reasons people pick up the book. one of the ones that is most commonly cited is word of mouth everyone people are talking about in the office or your best friend or controversy. i thought how do i get that

word of mouth in the book review? i came up with the idea of the cheap red carpet question mark i would ask the people that we read what are you reading? and why and what books matter to you? i thought of this wall at the theater in a harlem the. and when peter goes around belays buys a book that that was generous but then what are the funniest books you have ever read? he was the first person i asked. and now "by the book" is booked through 2015 it has become so popular with authors and also non writers.

one of the times i knew it was truly working for people to be in the column three separate occasions bookstore owners told me customers had come into the store with the page torn out with the title highlighted and one said i want everything that a and recommends. >> i feel there was a spectrum of authors and their riders on the one and because they will talk about the book while they're in the bathroom stall or whenever given the opportunity on the other end there are some people like thomas you never talk about their book and in the vast

middle there are authors you will but they also get sick of it. but to talk about other people's books. >> to have the exact answer it here is on the spot and nobody has said chichi to so i just want to issue that excuse. in case they don't remember so what did you read on the way to the miami book fair?

it is nice to have the machine that it is now abandoned but it is the 19th century book reader who has read every single thing he has written in french english or greek or latin and has a wonderful

flowing style so what i want to say things i'll said let me read that and it helps me. >> for reasons that are too dark or personal to go into i had been on a huge thomas byrd part stick. because i realize when i woke up so instead of doing the obvious thing read a few pages and then to do a puzzle in the magazine and then to go back and forth if you loved anything.

>> it is hard for me to remember the title. i was on a for a study trip and i realized i love the language. this is one of them i had not read a science fiction and mystery writer but he asks these questions i have always found really interesting. like a soldier who did not want to be a soldier but somehow under the purview of satan but he has decided he wants to go back to heaven

that i feel like this is what i rode with and in a very pedestrian way. >> these are the bookseller's nightmare in that all of them are books that cave how long ago are not yet. [laughter] >> led to consult the gadget >> readmitted to reading on the amazon kindle do you read? du regal fashion books or do you write in them? >> books paper always. >> i. all a bookstore. [laughter] >> you have a vested interest. [laughter] of kagan that in the morning

and i have a stack of books is a the of books seats -- taxi and i read aloud somehow reading out loud in and of the car to myself with a book on paper helps me. but in the middle of the night it is different so i will usually read between the hours of three and five. on the i felt because it is of lovely little machine that does not hit you in the head like the eye patch. [laughter] >>. >> i only read on a device because i use to travel with 100 pounds of books of god forbid i was stuck somewhere.

>> with a car going really fast. >> and another question inside covet. like killing people in the condo. either you like the self loans or the people in the condo. not both. and if you use the cell phone the new are raping women. in we are all on selfie of. >> what are you talking about? [laughter] >> the main chemical in cell phones is mined in, go and the reason it doesn't work because people make a profit in the the one democratic

nation stopping them from getting the cheapest possible mineral to put in the cell phone. and which rather read books on paper but i am excited for electronic bugs because children who cannot afford books can download were thousands onto there is little devices and read them and not have to pay for them or murdered millions of trees. it goes both ways. >> they can go to the library also. [laughter] >> just saying. >> there are many other issues that don't come up in other places. >> about murdering trees there are so many trees in a and. [laughter] when you stop cutting down the trees and making paper with them their closing big paper manufacturing places

places, when you stop cutting them down then little condominium developments sprout up with those of other real inches of sprawl. you have to keep buying things on paper to save the forest. [laughter] >> all of the political issues involved with e-book you didn't think of. >> this is a bit of a cheeked but who else redid the bathtub? >> anyone else? >>. >> i think the amazon kendall is almost a life-threatening situation. there is of question

cineaste almost two weeks ago that was such a basic research -- questioned yet it stopped all of us in the middle of a heated conversation and she said why do you read? why do people read? it is an interesting question. i want to pose it in any order. >> because the parents did. >> i like to read because i and and a question of something. sometimes when i was in my 20s i thought who is out there? with the post adolescent competitive? now i want to find out the truce ended is much more fun to have a pursuit so you need to find out some tiny

piece of the build up to world war ii so to have a quest has this intimidating enormous use of books. >> i love to read because i love to read. id with the most important thing in our life the thing that i always want to be doing is what i love the most. i don't want to travel lore about to dinner. i just really want to read. >> they said are you kidding? >> but it just seems so unfair when you only have

one life and then you have all these others. >> one of the things that came out in a conversation is the answer changed depending on where you were a year of life after a tragedy all they want to read to escape or to be transported or people going through a similar thing. have you found that your desires have shifted? >> i am not sure i will answer that question that my sisters has been indicted gen period was one of my best friends and with just a horrible loss. i've is reading the saddest books i could find. it was so helpful. to just sink in with other

people's said mrs. . to reach that suicide index that is such a fantastic book it is like going to see your friends. you read about other people's troubles? i will go back to the question. >> i'd like to dip into savings in there is the writer used to write for "the new yorker" who was a long winded lady in to have a long long paragraph.

but to describe who walked into a restaurant. said to have just a beautiful the scriber it is thrilling to see somebody. so my motive to reading is to imagine myself that kidney york city in the '60s to ride the subway to field "the new yorker" when it was the big time thing or when it was a different place so the motives escape but also the desire to be immediately with a person with a beautiful mind standing in the subway is looking at somebody.

>> to be the envelope pushing weirdos? >> with ponds christian andersen and others there is so much pressure on underwriters the way there is pressure to conform or the conventional novel. and to say i didn't know you could do that is extremely helpful. >> i don't know. my reading may have changed because of my situation i am not keeping track of it.

>> how you decide what to read the next? >> i have some books on my shelf. and then it might spread to lectures at nyu i 8e tape books a few lectures from each one he has read like when hundred times did he is talking about the book as if he just read it for the first time. so there is a few books i read it is time for 100 years of solitude again. but that is another panel. >> what other books you like to read? >> was there is of you and i am always kind of amazed.

i just over them again and again. and poetry i still have not understood it but my misunderstanding changes. >> so actually i'm trying to have everything else gets it in the way. >> we have a review coming next weekend with thinks giving counter programming to write an essay about a and surveying the question.

to do you really read? >> agreed aids and ham all the time. [laughter] >> my mother taught me to read i was elated reader so she gave me green eggs and ham and i remember crying over the word dark because it was a hybrid sound and then she read the green eggs and ham. it was good but a look very strange. >> dr. seuss is good but speak memory is the book i always go back to. is a supernatural book

because i have read every page not in order but i did then and it is it as if i did not read at page there is always some pay a - - some peace is a rack of this book that way. >> you have time to re-read? >> i don't i am a big james person i read things that have not been published yet. >> doesn't laugh together? >> is all the same. at the bookstore we have a first edition club so we always think of what we will

pick in three or four months and there is a feeling to try to hold back the rave all the time we have february but what about march or april? >>. >> are you willing to name a or could not finish? >> i don't know that probably five times a day no joke every single day of my life people send books to my house, through the bookstore , it is never ending. it is something does not catch me really fast and less is uh friend or personal recommendation i don't get that much of a chance at all. >> deerfield the need to get to the end of every book gorge you put them down?

>> i love that sound when you opened the book you read the first five lines the end you button that -- you whomp it closed. [laughter] i hate to say bad things about books and the specific whey so i think book reviews are unkind there is a huge world of books and i have gone through phases weren't above certain books that i don't know as much and discovered some that i thought i would never read so it is always a mistake to say bad things because you never know what phase somebody else will be and. so i do reject a lot of books.

>> i do think there are occasions with someone lambasting a book disliking of you were more than the book just because of what the reviewer had to say. you do not like to write negative reviews for many years we have recently returned to that. >> around middle-age that they just trash everything but now it just seems, i will just say it there are so many crack the books that are taken seriously as great i feel i cannot say it and feel like is day tourettes part of me that i want to say is b-b-bad.

>> i want to talk about one book that was a real fear mongering book about ebola you could catch a written by somebody who had to change his name at least once. it got a really bad review. and i applauded that bad review and there are certain times that certain books may be one to say something but it is never about the technique or story but there are things that books do that deserve to be countered >> i'll want to bring up the topic too many worried parents and grandparents what they're the little ones

are reading. you started off with comic books? what appealed to you? >> it seems they understood my life. >> you were a siebert -- superhero? speesix spider-man especially i felt he was a black kid all this power and ability and can make money. when he does it is by making fun of himself. the police are after him the public's fear him. and does wonderful sayings and i thought that was me. like a fantastic for. i thought they were beautiful. >> what did you read growing up? >> i'd love to mad magazine.

finally a sense of humor. i was completely oblivious and and to know the difference between a good book or a bad book i did not care. i did know the difference if they had the same name. [laughter] then later i would like other standards that i did not care. >> i love the way he would fly at of this note -- a the snow that i was hit by a sort of the rings. i tried to read in second grade.

[laughter] i really didn't get it. [laughter] i could use the characters but i had this big book that i read it again is third grade it was the most incredible reading experience i remember lying on the crushed velvet couch trying to find different positions counting the number of pages and the excitement to be in the midst of something so eagerness. then i got into science fiction a friend of my father's just delivered a basses stack -- massive stack of yearly anthologies. i read them away. i thought i want to write science fiction. and that i wrote a couple of

stories that is when the atmosphere went away. >> i don't remember now. i've of it now. >> what are you reading as the child? >> whenever my sister had finished. i read "charlotte's web" that was hugely important and changed my life to this day. little house of the prairie -- little house on the prairie or nancy drew and send what i was 13 i read humboldt's gift. [laughter] i went directly from little house of the prairie and i reread that book for this last year in and it was fascinating because i

remembered every word. it was completely imprinted on my parade. when my grandmother was dying 10 years ago i was finding the heart the to read to her and i read her all of the loss of the prairie books again which are hard. but i can almost close the book to recite them next page the of parade is set to us bench when you are young. >> there is something that is so amazing with us in pratique speech patterns when i said you're literary hero you said wilbur. why? >> i lived on a farm i got a pig for my ninth birthday.

but the way they used to me it was small for a couple of weeks. [laughter] it was my doggy and corrupt to be 350 pounds and i became a vegetarian three days after my ninth birthday because my dog and my thank you and that was it. >>. >> i like those basic uncovered girls with the textbook but other they and spider-man no.

>> and must have a problem talking about writing to readers because they think a lot about readers but i don't and i rarely think it has anything to do with writing i do not equate them they are two different things. i like them both so who live like the most is homer. natalie illiterate but also blind so only said that is out you have those stories did your head it did have to do with other people but books are something different they are wonderful and they connect but that is

where it ends. >> i like to believe only 50 percent of americans have credit least one book for pleasure in the last year and that statistic remains static so people who our readers and those who are not day remember was there a time someone inspired you walter? >> my parents would sit there and and they would read. watch television, tell stories they got the books there were books everywhere and i said this must be important. >> ensure you get the question all the time. >> i was a very early reader i learned a the way others do so my parents would say

so it is of a weird little performance and then i discovered that i liked it. [laughter] >> there is nothing wrong if you don't like reading. honestly i think there are people who have complicated interesting thoughts you might only read a couple books per year. but he was not a book reader and i was amazed by how much he knew by being set things that he read like the catalogs and "the new york times" and the federal savings settle the people of necessarily have to read books. i am not a very good reader honestly. i read a lot but i look at 4khe way

my wife reads books but there is a joy and it sorts out her life away that does not happen for me. i am very jealous of its exact to say it is okay. but george macdonald fraser is terribly objectionable british empire sort of chap and to it is combined with the sharp novels. and actually felt some of that feeling going from book to book to read the flash me as serious.

>> are there other writers you feel you have to read every single thing they write? >> ask somebody else. i have to think. [laughter] >> how did you become a reader? >> by parents or provide have no memory of my parents actually reading it to us but they would say go away we are reading. [laughter] >> that is the way to do is. >> i think it is to show your child that you are in an important relationship with the book. my parents were divorced and i was very young we only saw our father one week per year. but i remember i was very young going to visit my father and he was reading the first godfather if he could not even looked up he

was really happy we were there but he was so stuck with it i will remember he cut the head off the horse and he put the head in the bed. my father was a cop in losses angeles. and somehow i think that was better than him reading green eggs and ham. [laughter] >> that is where you reach in km would you like me to read to you or read side-by-side? >> the ribbon would name someone dead but.

>> as citizens said favorite author it was like the old eightball toy. and then had a desire to match up words i still think oh my god? to look at the telegraph wires that were beaten down and i thought i have ridden in the back of a car and i have seen the telephone poles and that exciting feeling that somebody is able to look at the world to put its into words that it goes into my mind the same thing happens.

he still has to be my favorite writer. >> i just feel them circling the drain every time what should i read the next? >> there are hundreds. >> that means they want to have sex with you? [laughter] >> for me is not just t.s. eliot that i really loved it david copperfield but the

writers have different interests. in that i have nice feelings toward the writers. >> el of cascading questions. i have five other index cards with five questions. but given thestraints of time i would invite everyone to ask your questions. come up to the microphone. >> can answer that last question? >> to my a family read a and readings are high-school and college and graduate school this is so weird but it is updike and roth for me.

the rabbit at rest. >> it is like of literary showdown. >> it is such a cliche. >> i need recommendations. who would be in that world? >> go back to 19th century england but with that character? >> you are nodding because you have already read them? no? also a book by just finished reading a couple of days ago i loved, i cannot explain why that connects but it does. they are new books.

i write all of these things down and they are there. also, ma liz gilbert's novel the signature of all things because she goes back to be imagined those perelman's any meaningful way. >> what about jersey? is he still with us? >> he killed himself. >> oh my. >> he was discouraged someone said he had help with translating his books and he seemed to be depressed and he felt his work was done so he checked out. >>.

>> it should one read books if they're not a child. but the books are short i have a lot of books to read also because the people in it to those that were an existence with gretchen who wrote the happiness project there are three bridges and we have the kid holiday book party. many of whom do not have children but like children's literature one of the things that i love is that these

are the books that made us readers or folk dust and there is an emphasis on story or themes that touched the human heart that will always speak to me and i have three children and i used to meet that before i was demoted so that is my book club. >> as owning a bookstore change you as a writer? to read probably because they don't have as much time. my latest is a book of essays and i wrote that because i had a bookstore and i could not just disappear the same way i do when i write a novel by and trying to get a hold of my

life and i am writing a novel now because of the open end of bookstore it became such a part of my community i would speak as schools and rotary clubs and hosting though homeless shelter fund-raiser that is how it changed my life. this shows how much of bookstore serves the function in the community. >> apologize if you have already answered the question but what makes the good book for each of you? >> the first thing for me is the language itself. then it comes the character's story and i am political so to a rise

politically it might turn me away but not always craft but the language of how it flows for word. >> is all about a sentence is for me. >> i liken somebody is funny if i like the person righty in the book i also have the streak that are shot rebook says that not considered high of literary books to find out what people are doing better less celebrated. >> also romance novels. >> i love reading them. they are dirty now.

[laughter] >> 4v is when i forget i am reading and i stopped looking at a book to say that is amazing the way they do that. but when that part of my brain shuts off and i just fully enter in to its it becomes a truly great books i just finished reading that can we talk about something more pleasant? i'd never read graphic novel so to have that as part of my brain i was just with her every second to. >> for v is now being transported i don't want to read about other erotic people my age. [laughter]

i want to be in the condo. >> yester day we heard a wonderful presentation from walter isaacson on his book the innovators and i was curious if you spend much time reading nonfiction books? >> i read more nonfiction and fiction. >> i have to read those fairweather people have said but it is nice to alternate to be in the imagined world is exulting in a different way the way you read a nonfiction book the person gets all sorts of points for telling the truth. i'd like the truth sori read

more. >> when you have been out of school for a million years so if you learn anything you have to keep up the reading. >> one published in is a the thirties called these educators library the 11 volume college education because you vitiligo to school when you were 80 and selfie were 25 you could not go so was a whole college education and it is before computers and jet engines they explained everything you could do. it is wonderful and i love stuff like that. like the story of civilization it is wonderful >> i