but i do not try to. her perspective is woven in to some degree because the diary that helps hold the book together s as a people do get hr perspective on things that way. but ultimately, it is my story even thoughfrankly she's more interested person in the buck. >> please join me in thanking peter for sharing his book. [applause] thank you all for coming.

>> we are so excited to be hosting pamela for her book. she will be speaking before i turn it over to them i have a couple of housekeeping things. please take this moment to turn off or silence your cell phones and also note we are grateful to have c-span here for booktv. please be aware you may be on camera and passing around a microphone during the q-and-a. we have flyers available at the register as well.

other people be merry and most recently a novel of modern others which has been named best book of the year by entertainment weekly herriot fiction and nonfiction have been published in most recently she along with her husband opened a bookstore that as of this weekend is open for business. pamela is the editor of "the new york times" book review and overseas "the new york times" and is also the host of the weekly podcast inside "the new york times" book review and is the author of the book the starter marriage and the future of matrimony was named one of the best books of the year.

her work has been widely published here and on npr and has her work before congress and the research department. currently she lives with her family in new york. her new book is a singular account the book of books a journal that reports every book ever read. this status, dreams and ideas. her life in turn influences the books come information or sheer entertainment and in this account of the life she writes with courage and exuberance about the maturity. her book with nostalgic and generous will captivate all.

full of hope, love and reflection on a well lived life. pamela will be reading from the book and then we will join the conversations and he will have your chance to ask questions after that. so please join me in welcoming to the stage pamela. [applause] >> i'm not going to read for very long because i would rather have a conversation in here from all of you. it is largely about working in a bookstore. i grew up feeling very that deprived. i didn't grow up in a house full of books. they were precious commodities from my older brothers and there were books about trucks and

whenever i asked my mother for a buck the standard response was get it from the library. so i will read from the chapter catch-22 was about my desire for more books. the standard response was get it from the library. there wasn't much you could save back to that. it was strictly from school after the dismissal for an hour or two. while the library was of course a public institution itself private to me. the children's library shows i knew when they hung out at the end of the front row in kids with down from the high shelf.

these characters provided my social life and i never had to be told to be quiet in their presence. i wanted to ignore and i rifled my fingers through the drawer like they were flipbooks. i could be the first to master the dewey decimal system and they might know where every book stood. all i needed was some authority or some kind of an officially sanctioned status. a few years after we moved, i had the courage. there are no jobs for children, they told me. you wouldn't have to pay me, i insisted and they came acros its unhealthy fervor. that's okay but thank you. did you question my intention, did you se see i'm a book person different from other visitors that i cared, that i would never

leave a book face down like the other kids my age i couldn't help but think they were taking me down a notch. this library isn't yours is how i heard it. maybe they wouldn't remember me from the last time. sometimes asking and other things going to the person at the checkout scanning each book with the primitive computer system. these were robust and each time i felt sorry for asking. so, i am going to skip a little bit. but i go on to talk about, again, various depredations of the -- book wise and finally getting the job of my dreams when i was a senior in high school. finally armed with a drivers license i was able to kind of you to find the work i sought at the upscale americana shopping center there was a branch that

hired me. this was a job. i was the only high schooler that worked, a monumental pride even if you consider to there wasn't much competition. the others were actual grown-ups some who saw it as a calling and others could have been working in the produce section. the manager was one of the four, a short man in his 30s with black hair and his mind brimming with knowledge. he greeted my enthusiasm and ignorance with a dismissiveness and he had informed opinions but i was determined to learn and i knew what i would read the next. it would reflect this path forward here i just have to pay attention. i quickly noted for example whenever a book broke out in a big way someone from management

spiral but majestically from the floor and only the senior employees that have these sales clerks like me were not allowed to touch them. the displays loomed over the idols for the cultural events of the day. i've addressed this slender volume and imagining if i owned it the universe would make itself known. i emptied the people that purchase a few hardcovers off. somewhere along the main aisle, these must be important. what do you think you're doing, what is this? you don't want to know, he said with his hand. with unclenched curiosity too

nervous to get caught again there were so many mysteries with the world of letters. what is this, i inquired holding up one of those of mythology who is joseph campbell and why is he so important, what is this i asked, how did this get to be a movie and what did that mean, so many books indicated something significant. they seem to have reputations i couldn't quite deconstruct. he was dominated a monolith of contemporary letters and master of criminal justice. in 1989 when they issued for the novel my colleagues and i were swept up in the mission of global input. someone graffiti of the building near the main street school.

every time i looked at it i thought the world is full of mysterious danger. but this was exciting. i became delirious and my desire with photographs. the cash register buttons from the forces of darkness. each day my coworkers and i reported to get direct from corporate headquarters copies of the books were to be kept behind the cash registers, in the back of the store, the stock room where only management could be. employees that didn't feel safe or allowed to be taken off the schedule. people were bombing bookstores. suburban customers who couldn't tell the difference between iran and iraq, i counted myself among them, they wandered out of curiosity for political purposes or to feel part of something they went to the cash register

saying they wanted to buy the book. think carefully before you reply we were told answered on a case-by-case basis. what is the book about. nobody knows he replied. [laughter] i am learning so many things. i want to start first with the chapter in your book about the childhood come into your life as a reader.

i was thinking about how you describe what i think of as the privacy of the reading and how it is totally separate from anybody else. your school, your friend. it's still something you are actively keeping track of him your life. it was sort of closed in somewhere behind a curtain. >> >> i didn't have like a wretched childhood or dreary or challenging economically.

i was relatively privileged that i felt like a loner and i didn't fit in. i had seven brothers growing up and i felt like being a girl with a distinct disadvantage, not for the traditional but i was just left out. so books for me were a way to seek out company. and i also felt like as a child it was just associated with those around me including my own family members. so you could kind of adopt your own world. in my life i sought out two different stories. one where the traditional school stories and just to sort of get

us into the social order i was also incredibly shy. so this was a way to talk to people through characters. then in the others i felt like for me it was like a roadmap. i felt like if i looked at what abigail adams or dolly madison did, it wasn't like i wanted it to be a first lady by any stretch of the imagination but these people did certain things and it cost them to a place of achievement, so i kind of explored their lives and i feel like that continued throughout. reading as a way to try on a different life for a while.

you never feel like you are good enough to do what it is you are trying to do and everyone will feel like you are a fake. i've had that experience where you read and/or like i am completely here. i am inside these characters and insights this book and it is a seamless acceptance. like the book has no choice but to the un. >> for me again it was like trying on different kinds of lies to figure out what was the kind of life i wanted to live. >> you said the ultimate goal was to be in a book. were there other slightly more concrete goals? >> fully aware there was

delusional thinking one was nonbook related and stemmed from on the surface it makes me productive but basically i'm always keeping a list of things to do and every day i wake up and it's like groundhog's day i'm not aware and i just acting out the same thing over and over again. if i can check everything off my list, then i will be done and i can do whatever i want for the rest of my life. not realizing of course there will be a new list of things to do the next day so everyday i wake up and operate under the same delusional thinking that i will one day be finished if i could just finish early enough i could fly around reading and watching movies or whatever else for the rest of the day and be free. so it stems from the profound laziness. in the books i feel like at some point i will finally be on top of it.

for a long time i didn't read the fiction. i wasn't done with the 19th century yet so nevermind. if i can just get up to that sort of and be through with that than i could read the midcentury session. so i felt like my reading was motivated by this desire to have this body of knowledge. there was information you needed to know in order to sort of be a person in this world, to sort of be suspiciously ignorant. >> do you have still a list of books, a list of unread books

that you feel you must ingest in order to -- >> it's like a palette of bookshelves and several of this size in my house that are not read. they are not organized at all. people are like you have an assistant, how do you do that and have those rules, but i am not nearly as organized. >> talking with someone today about. it seemed it was important to be surrounded by books in addition to those that you have read and

loved. in my house i've probably read maybe 75% of the books i broug brought. and then in my bedroom i have to bookshelves that are completely unread. that is how they come into the house. the rate at which i buy the books hasn't slowed. >> i like being surrounded by the possibility. and you think in my own kind of decisions of what to read its a

sort of long process so i don't keep a list, but what i do when i have this much left of the book and it's my greatest feeling in life so i will start to accumulate a list of things i might want to read next but i don't make the final decision until a totally closed the book and i take my temperature and it's like what do i need right now and then i narrowed down off of that. >> this is reading for your own pleasure because obviously it's not the hundreds of books each day. i can't imagine how many. >> i feel terrible about this but i am lucky to have an amazing staff at "the new york times" book review and the

reading because i'm selfish and i like to do my own reading. there is a certain amount i have to do for work especially when we get to the decisions around the best books for the year and i have this podcast so i need to know something about the book and read around at this point. i've garnered my reading time very selfishly because it is the time to. i could never be a book editor. i felt terrible for people that had chunks of manuscripts. for me, even though it is my job, it is a pleasure and i don't want to lose that aspect.

>> one of the things you mentioned in your book that i was so jealous of, you talked about breast-feeding and reading and i never figured out how to do that. i just couldn't figure it out. it's because i refused to read anything electronically -- i had a book between the pillow and i would have it there and every once in a while would flip the pages. i made it work. very determined. >> can you talk about the

notation system in your book of books? >> that has evolved over time. when i started writing the book i was 17-years-old living in like the armpit of france that is in no way interesting. it's like a terrible bit of nowhere. it was like decades-old. i just wrote down the offer and the title and i underline that. i looked at them and i didn't even write numbers and keep track. it wasn't until i was criticized i was writing these things down in order to check things off my

list and show off about how much i have read but then i started putting a numbers game and i never thought of it that way but i perversely took the criticism in a destructive way because there is a thing about when you do put numbers you can make all kinds of mathematical calculations and back to your point about the amount of reading you get it done with kids and jobs had that kind of thing you can see the annual average decline. so, i remember when i was unemployed or very marginally employed living in northern thailand after college, i basically had no friends and there was no internet and i didn't have a telephone. i read 76 books that year which for me was a lot but it included

things that were not short easy books and after my third child was born and i was working pretty full-time it was 34. so, the numbering is kind of a mixed blessing. and then i have other annotations i started writing. the first book i didn't finish was interview with a vampire which i wanted to like the book but i didn't. i found it in the bathroom of one of my step brothers and he had a bunch of paper books and i picked it up but i didn't finish that. it evolved. if you started reading something and read like 75 pages or something.

talking about books being very moved based i asked what i should read next. they were humorous and light and i felt like i needed something where the stakes were higher and i wanted to have some kind of a real emotional engagement and the two books, while i picked out three books. ultimately that didn't make the cut and the others were a phenomena.

i asked them to vote and being contrary i've read them and i thought i've got to be fair to the other child so but then i wasn't going on my own need at the moment so i realized like it was not what i needed at the moment. i will go back to it and i read like 15 pages and felt like this is good but it is not selling the need. i realized there was a reason. i wanted to engage with something relevant like there was a bit of an escape. i ended up creating ben bradlee's 1995 memoir a good wife.

what do your kids think about the book, they care enough to want to vote and help to make an entry or are they like what are you even talking about? >> i was involving them in this process because they know how selfish i am with my reading and at a certain point, i thought once they were able to read their own i still believe in reading out loud and. we don't allow tv and other exciting option so in general i

am pretty selfish about it so they were excited to be brought into the process and given that authority. >> in the book there is a chapter where you talk about reading children's literature as an adult in a group setting. it's been so thrilling and so much fun because there are so many books i remember. at this point at least. you not only read with your kids on your own time.

i never wanted to be part because it goes back to the selfishness and i didn't want to have to conform to the constraints of a book club. i did belong to a book club that we read and then the third one i was like forget this. it was a great opportunity because what i did enjoy his having the community and conversation and being able to discuss what you read afterwards because i think we all know that feeling has anyone read this to

find out what they think and so the book club is obviously are very good at that. so the good thing about the club is a children's book editor. they were short and easy. i thought we were going to be raining the -- rating that particular book club is interesting because they were all a few offers in the book club. everyone there really likes children's books and one of the reasons i like so much about this particular book is they take children's books seriously.

i believe very strongly ignorant how disparaging people are of kids books because that's when we learned to love books. there is a lot of crappy children's books but they have to be good because the hook in a child especially today they are more exciting than video games back in my day were forced to run around outside and some kids seem to enjoy that, but not me. [laughter] one of the things a member of my

book club said and i agree with it every emotion is felt when they are isolated in the world is ending and the emotions are so powerful. i think as an adult reading about you can go back and remember. there was the thing about jellyfish and there is a scene in that book that was controversial for some people that was harsh and it was one of the few books that depicted bullying and they didn't think

it was that big a deal but it was. kids can't say that to each other but of course they do. i wasn't seriously believe thata child but nonetheless, i could immediately find the emotion that you feel when you are in junior high and it's like nobody has that feeling in the world is against me so i felt so strongly in reading that. >> are you still in charge of what your children read? >> no, i lost my powers early on. [laughter] one thing i am able to provide my kids and this is a mixed blessing that they are spoiled when it comes to books i get a lot of them for free and spend a

ridiculous amount of money which is a terrible stupid thing even though we have a great library. now i don't get to choose what they read. there are so many territories to explore. how can you go back and i kind of admire your. she is a different reader that

we can be enormously. my son is a very voracious reader who will read everything from nonfiction to fantasy. i did get him to read the princess bride. i want to ask -- stanek is that what you want to ask me? [inaudible]

>> i dance to the nile rogers video. this is the coolest moment of my high school career and it's funny there were parts of my adolescence i didn't include in the book and some people know about. i was having a conversation the other day with another editor and author in the 80s that's not in the book. why not ask my mom is still alive. that's so sweet you are protecting your mother. i'm not protecting her. i'm protecting me. i will leave it at that. she might be watching. one thing that didn't make it in the book as i wrote a column as a part of my application to

college. so, anyway it is one of the very few. what are the books that you take? >> the longest one. i was just talking with the author yesterday there was a

whole chapter that was still referenced. i read this when i was on vacation in the south of thailand and on the beach and i was like the only person there in the tropical resort reading it by myself but it felt like an appropriate venue. she had just reread it and i felt like wow you have time to reread moby dick. others that i struggled to finish so that i would actually have the time to think it all out. i hadn't thought about that as a defining characteristic of the book that he would bring. very strategic in that way.

>> i don't know if you edited the article of three years ago there was a article about a couple i forget their exact identity. one had discussed beyond that whole issue. as someone who has become a writer about the literary even events, i am in awe. how have you managed.

when i go to bookstores this is my reason. i read about three or four books and freezing all day and my home is full of books and i work from my home and that is all i do. >> the key for me is i don't watch a lot of tv. i kind of opt out of the other forms of culture in order to dedicate myself to the books. one of the things i don't use in the reader, maybe a little bit but for practical reasons i run a screen all day long and for me, it is a break and i loved the physical object of the but i do think it is hard because

there are so many distractions. i would leave my phone up on the fifth floor and go all the way down to read them if you want to check your e-mail you have like five floors so the incentive was to stay put in the book and so i try to keep all distractions far away. >> is it's like half an hour or an hour a day or something like that? >> i enjoyed what you had. i've never heard somebody describe the book titles, that was pretty good.

also, i was wondering how do you find your audience? there's other parts that are kind of mundane and they don't quite get it. for the expected feedback -- >> honestly, my goal with this book was to write a book that was fun to read that sounds like a pretty low bar. we had an argument to make and marshal the evidence and it is a

reading experience i may have persuaded to people or eliminated an issue but i didn't know that they were necessarily fun to read, so when anybody told me they read one of my previous books i'm like i'm so sorry it's not like a fun book. ..

.. >> i thought that would make it easy bet that wasn't because first of all, you have to remember not only what happened read the book of books of what i was thinking at a given moment but but a friend of mine once said about a memoir that you have to be picked yourself a certain points in

your life now matter how pitiful or 94 ridiculous that to recreate that experience in that is hard to do. and it can be the smallest thing at one point i really did feel self-conscious like everyone knew there is something i had done wrong and they hadn't told me the everybody elseis alert. alert. alert. out one moment in elementary school in the schoolyard somebody ran up because it was years before i knew that

pants were too short solo the flood is over and i do not know what that means but everybody else knows what that means so there is a reference i with thought i was normal but that there would be a smear on my pants or somehow i was sitting at the wrong table. with those childish but true emotions. >> what is the one that just stands out? to make that is impossible. you cannot ask that question. [laughter] not fair.

maybe three or five that i go back to the russian classics lemon 19th century russian literature persons will sound pretentious. >> i have a question for both authors today what are you reading rain now? [laughter] >> i just started the galley were a new book called mrs. fletcher that comes out in august. >> this is a hard question because we have a segment

every week called what we are reading so we talk about that we always feel intense pressure what are you reading? so now you make us all look bad i was reading lave is a rock club that took a long time so so i'm still reading the ben bradlee more that it touches upon the departure if we just finished talking about a the "pentagon papers" left

to make about the of washington post and the new york times is not happy about it soler is blow by blow know i can see we're not happy because he did have that first. but then i have plans i am going to australia in a couple of weeks for this sydney writers festival and i'm interviewing an australian officer so i will also read her a box level lot of reading to do. >> now we all have book recommendations. [applause]

. >> hello stuart taylor thinks for being here to discuss your book of the campus rape frenzy i the navistar by asking you to