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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> today on c-span2's booktv, we're live at the miami book fair, now waiting for a writers' panel on literature. we expect it to get under way

shortly. we'll continue to watch, and this event should get started soon. our coverage continues at the miami book fair. we're live on booktv. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good morning. welcome to the 32nd anniversary of the miami book fair.

i'm a volunteer room host, and we're delighted to have you here with us this morning. be you've looked through the schedule of events for today, you'll see there are many venues of author sessions running through today and sunday, plus activities in children's alley and programs in the slump, the porch and more. please consider becoming a member of the friends of the book fair. that's just downstairs. your charitable contribution will support this wonderful book fair. friends receive multiple benefits such as preferential seating and admission to book fair events. we greatly appreciate our friends, and i know we have some in the audience today. thank you. and this year you supporting the book fair is easier than ever. just text b-o-o-k to 501501 to donate $10. we're also grateful to our

sponsors including the knight foundation and the bachelor foundation, so many more that are listed on signage all throughout the book fair. miami book fair does not end today. miami book fair programs events and activities take place throughout the year, here and all over miami. we are grateful to the college and the hundreds of volunteers that make it all possible. there'll be a brief question and answer period after the reading discussion, and the author will have autographing -- author or authors? one? more than one, authors will be autographing books immediately after the session just down the hall and to the right. now kindly silence your cell phones and other devices so there'll be no interruptions, and here to introduce our special guests is judge marsha cook. judge cook. [applause] >> good morning, everyone.

sorry about the delay but, you know, without a little problem, life is no fun, right? as some of you know, i'm a federal judge about two blocks away, and i'm reminded this morning this is déjà vu all over again. now, one could draw a couple of conclusions from this, and that is i did such a great job they asked me back, the other one is they had to find someone who was willing to get up on a saturday morning and do this. but i think the second explanation is really the best one, because we're all readers, and we all love authors, and we just want to be here. so welcome. so starting at my right is the narrator of this morning's panel, pamela paul. she's the editor of "the new york times" book review and is also an author in her own right. she writes the popular feature buy the book and interview feature in the magazine. every morning i and many other

readers of "the new york times" book review turn with anticipation to see which novelist, historian, short story writer or artist will be the subject as we grab our morning cup of joe. joining her this morning are the following authors: margo jefferson is a pulitzer prize-winning critic of "the new york times" and she is a professor of writing at columbia university. her book on michael jackson was published in 2006. her most recent book is a memoir, negroland, and it offers a reflection of race, class and gender in the united states. brad metsler is the author of a series of thrilling novels, and he is a recovering attorney. [laughter] his penchant for research has made history cool, and i think he's the only south floridian on the panel this morning. if you want to see more of him, turn on the history channel. his newest thriller, "the

president's shadow," opens with one simple idea. one morning in the white house rose garden, the first lady uncovers a severed arm buried in the dirt. [laughter] sloan crossly is a noted essayist, and she writes frequently of life and the world for "the new york times." many of us were under a misguided assumption until last month that class was her debut novel, but she blew the whistle on herself, and we now know it was her second novel, and maybe this morning she will fill us in on the details. rick moody is the author of four novels. his latest novel is "hotels of north america." i haven't read the normal, however -- the novel, however, i have learned there are discussions of various scams and cons including the melon drop. as a former prosecutor, i think i need to do some research. t.j. stiles is the author of

several nonfictions and biographies. his newest work is custer's trial: a life on the frontier of a new america. this book does an amazing job of telling the story of custer's life, a fact often forgotten in the story of his death. as new york times book review stated, he is a skilled writer with the rare ability to take years of far-ranging research, boil it down until he has a story that is illuminating and at its best captivating. ladies and gentlemen, buy the book live at the fair. [applause] >> good morning. i'm going to start off by talking about another book event this week at the national book awards on wednesday night, johnty lille low accepted a lifetime achievement award. and in his acceptance speech which was not webcast or televised, so i will share it

with you here, he did not talk about his life's work, he did not talk about his own novels, about his process. instead he talked about books he reads. and he describes the book, the mass market paperbacks on his own book shelves. and he said: here i'm not the writer at all, i'm a grateful reader. when i look at my book shelves, i find myself gazing like a museum goer. that's where i want everyone on this panel to be for the next hour, thinking about the books that surround them, the books that make a writer a reader and a realizer a writer, the books that tell us who we are in this world and in the world inside us and our imaginations. so on this panel, probably unlike many of the other panels at this year's book fair be, the writers here will be talking not about themselves as writers, but about themselves as readers.

as judge cook described, this book panel came out of a book that i wrote or edited called buy the book, writers on literature and the literary life, which itself came out of a weekly feature in the book review called buy the book. and in that feature is an interview with a writer or an artist, musician, public figure about their life story as told through what they read. unlike other profiles, which we'll go into, you know, childhood trauma and all that other fun memoir stuff. this is the way i think of my life which is through the book sites i've read when i think back to moments in my life, i often think about what i was reading at the time. and buy the book, the idea is -- by the book, the idea is you learn about a person and who they are not only what they read, but through what they read. so there's no preparation for

this panel. everyone here is a little bit off the cuff. none of the people on this panel have done a by the book, so this is a kind of by the book live. and i will warn you that it's -- i'm going to ask terribly unfair questions. with by the book in the book review, everyone has time to prepare and to mull and to contemplate and to pour over their book shelves. and here you have them unaided, reminding them of what they realize last week, so i hope that everyone will have patient. and everyone here should be free to go back and say, you know, no, no, no, no, no, i just remembered which were the books that made me who i am today. so this is really going to be a conversation, and we're not going to go in any be particular order, and -- in any be particular order, and i'm going to starlet with an easy question for the panelists which is what did you read on your way to the miami book fair? i guess, brad, this is unfair, because you were here. >> i was going to say, did you

mean in the car? [laughter] in miami, you can do that, right? [laughter] [applause] right? that's not even a joke. what did i read on the way to -- you know what? comic books. that's what i've been reading. i've been reading, just finished the sandman overture which i just loved, and that was the one that i -- i was on 95 and in stoppage. [laughter] i just held it on the steering wheel as i crashed into the car in front of me. >> and what brought you to that particular book? >> i just, i grew up on comic books, and my family didn't read when i was growing up. my mom read only two things, the star and the inquirer. and my father realize just the sports page, that was it. there were no books in my house. my mom used to say the inquirer had all the news. comic books were what fed me. and that was -- and i think, you know, it's easy to say, oh, i'm

supposed to give you a big answer and say, oh, moby dick was what inspired me. but the reality is the first morality tales you realize, maybe it's the bible, but it's not the bible. when you're a kid, it's batman and spider-man and wonder woman. the most important participant of the story is clark kent because we're all clark kent, and we all know what it's like to be boring and ordinary and wish we could do something beyond ourself. and what i love about the work is it lets us step into the fantastic. truly in -- i never read anything that i feel like i can do, which means i read a lot. [laughter] but it takes me into that world of things i know i can't do. >> having opened up with comic books, you're going to make everyone else here feel much more comfortable about their airport reading. [laughter] >> that's right. comics don't deserve any snobbery. to me every genre is 90% garbage

and 10% gold. that's literary fiction be, history and comics. and we used to see this as hierarchy. that's garbage. that's snobbery. to me, you find the 10% of gold in anything, and neil gayman and ryan moore, that's the gold in that world, and i love that i get to support it and be out there and talk about it. >> all right then. sloan? >> that's definitely on. hello. i read, actually -- this is a little bit belated, but i read h is for hawk, i don't know if you guys have realize this book, by helen mcdonald. i got halfway through it, and one of the joys of the book, and i meant to pick it up forever, but it's a memoir about a british woman who's also a poet and is also --

[inaudible] and her dad dies, and as sort of crazy reaction, it reminded me a lot of the year of magical thinking in a lot of ways, just sort of like a kind of insanity that she felt she had to experience by herself. she decides to train a hawk. and it's, i was about halfway through it, and one of the joys of coming to this fair really is that i was sitting with the publisher on the plane. i happened to be sitting next to morgan -- [inaudible] and i just sort of lifted it out of my bag as we were about to take off. almost like wearing the t-shirt of a band at a concert. [laughter] i was so excited. >> i usually sit next to an author whose book the times book review -- >> trashed. >> but go on. [laughter] >> yeah, no be, i was very fortunate. but i was so excited, and, you know, he sort of gave me a thumbs up. people have their plane activities, and i got about

halfway through it. i just couldn't stop reading it. it was absolutely stunning and beautiful, and i just love reading nonfiction that has a weird wish fulfillment quality. to be an expert like that in something that you don't have to be an expert in, maybe it's the same sort of thing you were saying where you want to read things that i don't know about, so that leaves a lot of books. but it's a beautiful book, and i got about halfway through, and then i realized she called the hawk, she names it. i got to that part, and she called it mabel which happens to be the name of my cat. so i was just sort of grinning at this very sad book, and morgan sort of looked at me. [laughter] >> it's not supposed to do that. >> yes. but it's a really stunning book, so i would suggest it. i can't see it going downhill from here. i'm only halfway through, but i would suggest anyone pick it up. >> and how did you come to realize that book? >> you know, i sort of was aware of it probably -- and this is, i know i'm sort of, like, playing

to the panel here -- but probably through garner's review. and the things that he had said about it. and i think i also have just it should writing fiction, and i'm sort of looking forward to getting back to nonfiction. but it's a muscle that's sort of slightly atrophied in a way, and i wanted to realize a really good example of it -- to read a really good example of it, and i kind of knew this would be one of those examples. >> margo? >> hello. can you hear me? okay. well, i'm hoping -- [laughter] thank you. now you can hear me. i'm assuming that some of you in the audience are teachers, because i'm, i was reading some student papers on the plane. i teach graduate and undergraduate nonfiction, and so i was reading, actually, a very

good personal essay. but i always have many things in my bag with me, and i was also just starting to dip into a book for the second time called h, h, h, h by a french writer. and it's walking this terrific line between historical fiction and history. the subject is a great one. it could be, you know, a historical thriller. it's about the only successful plot to assassinate one of hitler's top, top, top generals. but he starts off wanting to write historical novel, then he starts questioning all the conventions and conceits of historical fiction. then he starts to question what

history, in fact, history arranges, you know? history shapes things so that you could call certain decisions close to lie or heavy interpretation as truth. but then he creates these wonderful scenes, you know, but says, okay, you know, it's a scene based on fact but, you know, it's a scene. it's in my head. so you keep moving in and out of the story which is overwhelming. and the making of the story and the limits and the prejudices and the, you know, the tonalities of this writer in the grip, you know, in the grip of the research, the narrative. so it's exciting. i'm really interested right now in books that are moving between, drawing on history or various nonfictional forms and techniques and fictional ones. so, you know, i had just

finished eduardo galeano's three-volume genesis which is a history, a challenge history of latin america. based on millions of sources but also with interior monologues. so this is kind of my obsession right now. >> that's going to bring me naturally to our historian on this panel, t.j. stiles. >> is this working? okay. so same question, what was i reading on the way here? >> yes. and why. >> actually. yeah, i'm going to lie, i read all of tolstoy's work on the plane. [laughter] i had some notes for him also. no, i was reading, i just started reading billy lynn's long halftime walk. somebody remind me of the name of the author, he's a well known author who's beloved -- >> ben? >> that's right, ben fountain.

that's right. and, you know, this has often been praised as one of the best novels about the experience of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. and, you know, i'm interested in, as somebody who writes nonfiction, i see myself as both playing a role specifically as a biographer both being be a historian and also being a writer. and that, you know, biography is about the world and the outer world and, in my case, the making of the modern world, but it's also following someone's life, you know, through, as they move through the world can and trying to understand, you know, the person and trying to evoke something that you ultimately can't get to in nonfiction is something that i try to do. and so i'm always reading fiction. i actually read for pleasure much more fiction than nonfiction. so having just written this book about someone who went through war, terrible, the nation's

costliest war in our history, george armstrong custer in the civil war, and he came out of it with his romantic mindset, i've really been interested in recent writing about, you know, our experience overseas. and so, you know, i love phil clyde's work, redeployment, which is absolutely amazing. and so i just picked this up. and it just is a wonderful experience of getting inside the mindset of soldiers who, you know, are not the kind of guys who themselves are going to be writing literary fiction. and it really, you know, it's just really spectacular. and, you know, also i like reading the stuff right now because, you know, we talk about the literary life. it's very much like that of a soldier in war which is long, long periods of tedium punctuated by brief moments of utter terror. so it's kind of -- [laughter] maybe it's not the same thing, but anyway -- >> all right. rick?

>> am i allowed to be reading four books at the same time? >> yes. >> 'cuz i brought a big pile of books. i'm on book tour, and i brought a pile of books to sort of satisfy every mood. and so i -- >> they don't call him moody for nothing. [laughter] >> believe it or not, i've herald that one before. [laughter] i've heard that one before. so i brought two novels, dirty girls which is about africa, great book. steve erickson, the great, speculative fiction, literary fiction crossover guy's book art decks which starts with a really amazing jefferson and sally hemings passage, and then i brought because -- all right, so here's the problem. i'm on book tour, and i can never sleep. so i brought the dullest book

imaginable to try to help me sleep. [laughter] >> thank you. >> and who are you going to insult? [laughter] >> i'm here to tell you that the dullest book imaginable is hideacre's being in time. so i brought german philosophy with me to read in the middle of the night if i got really, really insomniac. and then i totally bogged down on that. so on the road i bought elvis costello's memoir which is called "unfaithful sons in disappearing ink," and it's the best music book i've read in some time. i have a guilty pleasure sideline in music books. so all of the books got set aside while i read that in a famished state. >> the inspiration for by the book came out of a book that i've been keeping, a kind of journal of sorts that i call bob for book of books, and i've been

keeping this journal since i was 17 where i write down all the books i've read. so unlike normal adolescents, i didn't write about love affairs or angry disputes or just general despair, i just wrote down what i read. but looking back on it, it sort of tells the story of not just where i was at that time sort of in my real inner life, but also how i came to read what i've read. i could see a trajectory. if i was in a george elliot phase or if i'd been confined to books that i was buying while backpacking through china and just had to pick up whatever i could find left in hotel rooms. so i'm curious always in finding out what leads people to read what they read? i do have a dog in this race. i'd like to believe that it's book reviews that motivate people always. [laughter] but i know that there are book clubs, and people go into

bookstores still, and there's word of mouth, and you might realize something online or in print or just have a favorite author. so i just want to go down the panel here and find out how you decide what you're going to read next. >> you know, if it's pure choice, i do it pretty much the way i choose what music i'm going to listen to. it's some little thing in me says this is what you need, you know? you need this rhythm, you need this harmony. sometimes it's someone i want to imitate, sometimes it's someone that's, oh, god, i'm feeling noncourageous here today. give me a dose of george bernard shaw because i have to write something forceful and sound convinced, you know? and some days you just need to imagine something that hasn't imagined you, so you read some totally alien book. other times you need to in some

way fee see some, what you think is some notion of yourself reflected, you know? so then you might go for, you know, some memoir, some novel about a world you know. but, you know, it's really answering, you know, different parts of the psyche and intellect almost on instinct. >> brad? >> i think for me every book is, chooses almost the supreme court definition of pornography which is you know it when you see it. i feel like books almost choose you. you don't choose them all the time. sometimes it may be a review, but when i trust the reviewer. i tend to be much more skeptical now. i really, really care about who that reviewer is now. used to be you could put up look at the blurbs on a movie or a book, and you're like, wow, "the new york post" said so and so, so it really has to be a person i trust. i will say sometimes it's just

that, i know i leave it a lot to chance, but my son was assigned, and i was telling you as we were walking in, he was assigned lord of the flies. i've never read it. it's always been on my list, and we just never read it in junior high school. i was, like, this is my calling, i want to read something with my child and experience it the same way at totally different levels. so i just let faith kind of pick that one. >> you know, that supreme court decision is so useful as an answer to so many questions. [laughter] is there -- >> pretty much lead my life by that really. >> [inaudible] sloan? >> hello? >> yeah? >> but only if i touch this? be oh, yeah, we're good. hi. you know, it's funny because for a long time i worked in book publishing, so i worked for can knop be of, and it was my job to read so many books, about two or three a week.

which is a lot only because you have to be paying attention. you can't just fly through it, because you're going to be publicizing them. so i happened to work for a very good, very literary house, so i was feeding my brain things that, to margo's point be, it wanted to be fed anyway. which is also, i like that. it's almost like, you know, when you -- these health cookbooks that come out that say what you should be eating to be healthy, but not to say you shouldn't buy them, but don't you already know and you're just not doing it? don't you know that blueberries and salmon and kale are good for you and you shouldn't be eating pizza before you go to bed? you know this -- >> you're going to make many authors here, cookbook authors here unhappy by revealing that secret. >> i know, i shouldn't go off on it, but i really mean it as sort of an analogy for what you want to realize and what you know you should be reading. and, you know, if you give yourself a good amount of junk, you can give yourself a good

amount. and the way i decide now and the way i used to decide was honestly what i had to work on, because i didn't have much time. and now that i quit my job about five years ago, it's just an exhilarating feeling of being able to read whatever i want. i think, oh, my gosh, this is what people do? this is amazing. and, you know, i'll go into my local independent bookstore, and they're wonderful, and that's -- [inaudible] in manhattan. and for the first time in my life i find myself east asking what -- either asking what i should read or a lot of times i'll choose what to read is by refreshing -- i've read so much of the same kind of thing. i'm short -- i'm sort of a short story fanatic, and i'll move on to something else that's very different. >> i'll tell you what not to

use. don't use amazon reviews. [laughter] i like to collect really -- this is mindful of a book that's already been cited in the conversation. i like to read really bad reviews of moby dick on amazon so you can see the two-star reviews. this is the most tedious book ever. >> where is the whale? >> when is the whale coming back? [laughter] the whale's been gone for 300 pages. [laughter] i think everyone's saying let desire be your guide, that's what we're all saying, and i feel that's really important. but because you're here, i'm going to plug the better reviewing organs and say that not only the tbr, but also new york be review of books, book forum. and i really like rain taxi. do you read rain taxi? it's a little indie book reviewer out of indianapolis,

totally excellent. >> okay. >> well, sometimes it's a mix of questions. i mean, part of that, you know, what do i need to feed my brain. i really like that answer. there's some sort of intuitive side to just what you feel like you need. there's a few answers to that question for me. i mean, one is sometimes you talk about needing to read for work, but specifically time for reading for pleasure, because i do a lot of research. but it crosses over a little bit. like, if i have an event with someone, if i'm, you know, doing a conversation with someone even if it's not a part of my tour, of course i want to go and read their work. so i read -- i did an event before my book came out with adam johnson. we had a conversation about fiction and nonfiction. so i hadn't read the orphan master's son yet, and i hadn't read fortune smiles, and i was totally blown away. my wife and i were fighting over the books, and we went out to dinner with him and his wife

after, and it was a wonderful experience. and the flip side is then people i know, you know, i know them, i have some sort of professional connection, i'm interested in their work. and i've become huge fans. i had a fellowship at the new york public library, and i really felt out of place because jennifer eagan and nathan englander, fantastic literary biographers, a lot of other people were there. and, you know, i started to read their stuff because i knew i them. and, of course, like, they write wonderful, wonderful bookings. so, and then sometimes i think i want to read fiction that relates to themes or things that i'm trying to do like my current interest in reading about the iraq war, i want to know more about that experience, and i'm trying to understand more about kind of almost retrospectively what it is that i'm trying to write about. and sometimes, you know, i did the same thing when i was working on this book about

custer where i wanted to think about, you know, fiction, about, you know, people -- so i went back and i read a lot of tolstoy's shorter stuff based on his experiences as a soldier. some of which is amazingly applicable. and isaac bauble's work, cavalry stories, etc. just fantastic stuff that is universal. and gave me, i think i understood cus kerr far -- custer far better are from reading tolstoy's writing, the ray. and he talks about a character who is just like custer. i felt like thousand i understand him -- now i understand him. sometimes it's what i need, sometimes it's just for pleasure. when i read nonfiction for fun, it's often a field i never do any work in at all. so i love classical history. i'm never going to write about ancient greece or rome, so it's fun to read about it because i have no idea wheney