By the Book (2 page)

We all want to know what other people are reading. We peer at strangers' book covers on an airplane and lean over their e-books on the subway. We squint at the iPhone of the person standing in front of us in the elevator. We scan bestseller lists and customer reviews and online social reading sites. Asking someone what she's read lately is an easy conversational gambit—and the answer is almost bound to be more interesting than the weather. It also serves an actual purpose: we may find out about something
we
want to read ourselves.

When I launched By the Book in
The New York Times Book Review
, it was an effort to satisfy my own genuine, insatiable desire to know what others—smart people, well-read people, people who are good writers themselves—were reading in their spare time. The idea was to stimulate a conversation over books, but one that took place at a more exalted level than the average watercooler chat. That meant starting big, and for me that meant David Sedaris. Who wouldn't want to know which books he thinks are funny? Or touching or sad or just plain good?

In coming up with the questions for David Sedaris, and then for those who followed, I decided to keep some consistent—What book would you recommend to the president to read?—while others would come and go. If you're going to find out what books John Grisham likes, you've got to ask about legal thrillers. When talking to P. J. O'Rourke, you want to know about satire.

Similarly, the range of writers for By the Book had to sweep wide, to include relative unknowns and new voices alongside the James Pattersons and Mary Higgins Clarks. That meant poets and short story writers and authors of mass market fiction. And while the most obvious, and often most desirable, participants would be authors themselves, I didn't want to limit the conversation to book people.

For that reason, I went to Lena Dunham (not an author at the time) next. I asked musicians like Pete Townshend and Sting, scientists and actors, the president of Harvard, and even an astrophysicist. Cross-pollination between the arts—and the sciences—is something many of us haven't experienced since our college days, and I wanted to evoke some of that excitement of unexpected discovery—in the subjects, in the questions, and in the answers.

Once the ball got rolling, an unexpected discovery on my part was the full-throttle admiration our most respected public figures have for one another. Colin Powell marveled over J. K. Rowling's ability to endure the spotlight. Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Donna Tartt were all consumed by the Patrick Melrose novels of Edward St. Aubyn. (He, in turn, was reading Alice Munro.) Writer after writer extolled the reportorial prowess of Katherine Boo. And then Boo, who told me she read the column religiously, praised Junot Díaz and George Saunders and Cheryl Strayed when it was her turn.

When I'd meet writers at book parties or literary lunches, they'd thrill over what other By the Book subjects had said about their work. In her interview, Donna Tartt told me how much she looked forward to reading Stephen King's new novel—before he'd raved about
The Goldfinch
on our cover. In a world that can feel beset by cynicism, envy, and negative reviews, By the Book has become a place for accomplished peers to express appreciation for one another's art.

Then there are the humanizing foibles. The books we never finished or are embarrassed never to have picked up, the books we hated, the books we threw across the room. It's not just us. Many writers confess here to unorthodox indulgences (Hilary Mantel adores self-help books) and “failures” of personal taste (neither Richard Ford nor Ian McEwan has much patience for
Ulysses
).

Reading the interviews gathered together for the first time, I found myself flipping back and forth between pages, following one author to another, from one writer's recommendation to another's explication of plot, like browsing an endlessly varied, annotated home library in the company of thoughtful and erudite friends. I learned about mutual loves, disagreements, surprise recommendations, unexpected new voices, forgotten classics. Let the conversation begin.

David Sedaris

What book is on your night stand now?

I was a judge for this year's Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, so until very recently I was reading essays written by clever high school students. Now I've started Shalom Auslander's
Hope: A Tragedy
. His last book,
Foreskin's Lament
, really made me laugh.

When and where do you like to read?

Throughout my twenties and early thirties—my two-books-per-week years—I did most of my reading at the International House of Pancakes. I haven't been to one in ages, but at the time, if you went at an off-peak hour, they'd give you a gallon-sized pot of coffee and let you sit there as long as you liked. Now, though, with everyone hollering into their cellphones, it's much harder to read in public, so I tend to do it at home, most often while reclining.

What was the last truly great book you read?

I've read a lot of books that I loved recently.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
, by a woman named Barbara Demick, was a real eye-opener. In terms of “great,” as in “This person seems to have reinvented the English language,” I'd say Wells Tower's
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
. What an exciting story collection it is, unlike anything I've ever come across.

Do you consider yourself a fiction or a nonfiction person? What's your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives. The worse off the subjects, the more inclined I am to read about them. When it comes to fictional characters, I'm much less picky. Happy, confused, bitter: if I like the writing I'll take all comers. I guess my guilty pleasure would be listening to the British audio versions of the Harry Potter books. They're read by the great Stephen Fry, and I play them over and over, like an eight-year-old.

What book had the greatest impact on you? What book made you want to write?

I remember being floored by the first Raymond Carver collection I read:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
. His short, simple sentences and familiar-seeming characters made writing look, if not exactly easy, then at least possible. That book got me to work harder, but more important it opened the door to other contemporary short story writers like Tobias Wolff and Alice Munro.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

I would want him to read
Is There No Place on Earth for Me?
, Susan Sheehan's great nonfiction book about a young schizophrenic woman. It really conveys the grinding wheel of mental illness.

What are your reading habits? Paper or electronic? Do you take notes? Do you snack while you read?

I sometimes read books on my iPad. It's great for traveling, but paper versions are easier to mark up, and I like the feeling of accomplishment I get when measuring the number of pages I've just finished—“Three-quarters of an inch!” I like listening to books as well, as that way you can iron at the same time. Notewise, whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.

What is your ideal reading experience? Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?

Yes, all the above.

What were your favorite books as a child? Do you have a favorite character or hero from one of those books? Is there one book you wish all children would read?

There was a series of biographies with orange covers in my elementary school library, and I must have read every one of them. Most of the subjects were presidents or founding fathers, but there were a few heroes thrown in as well: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett. I loved reading about their early years, back when they were chopping firewood and doing their homework by candlelight, never suspecting that one day they would be famous. I wish all children would read
Is There No Place on Earth for Me?
That way they'd have something to talk about when they meet the president.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

Boy, did I have a hard time with
Moby-Dick
. I read it for an assignment ten years ago and realized after the first few pages that without some sort of a reward system I was never going to make any progress. I told myself that I couldn't bathe, shave, brush my teeth, or change my clothes until I had finished it. In the end, I stunk much more than the book did.

What's the funniest book you've ever read?

The staff of
The Onion
put out an atlas that gives me a stomachache every time I read it. I can just open it randomly, and any line I come upon makes me laugh. For funny stories it's Jincy Willett, Sam Lipsyte, Flannery O'Connor, and George Saunders. Oh, and I love Paul Rudnick in
The New Yorker
.

What's the one book you wish someone else would write?

I'd love to read a concise, nonhysterical biography of Michael Jackson. I just want to know everything about him.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? Have you ever written to an author?

I'm horrible at meeting people I admire, but if I could go back in time, I'd love to collect kindling or iron a few shirts for Flannery O'Connor. After I'd finished, she'd offer to pay me, and I'd say, awestruck, my voice high and quivering, that it was on me.

If somebody walked in on you writing one of your books, what would they see? What does your work space look like?

When stuck, I tend to get up from my desk and clean, so if someone walked in they'd most likely find me washing my windows, or dusting the radiator I'd just dusted half an hour earlier.

Do you remember the last book that someone personally recommended you read and that you enjoyed? Who recommended you read it, and what persuaded you to pick it up?

My sister Amy and I have similar tastes in nonfiction, and on her recommendation I recently read and enjoyed
Tiger, Tiger
, by Margaux Fragoso.

What do you plan to read next?

I'm looking forward to the new Michael Chabon book. I loved
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
.

David Sedaris
is the author of
Me Talk Pretty One Day
,
Naked
,
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
, and
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
, among other books.

 

Childhood Inspiration

C. S. Lewis was the first writer to make me aware that somebody was writing the book I was reading—these wonderful parenthetical asides to the reader. I would think: “When I am a writer, I shall do parenthetical asides. And footnotes. There will be footnotes. I wonder how you do them? And italics. How do you make italics happen?”

—
Neil Gaiman

What really made me want to be a writer was the Hardy Boys series, and also daily newspapers. My mom says I learned to read on the sports pages of the
Miami Herald
.

—
Carl Hiaasen

Lewis Carroll's
Alice in Wonderland
and
Through the Looking-Glass
, which my grandmother gave me when I was nine years old and very impressionable. These were surely the books that inspired me to write, and Alice is the protagonist with whom I've most identified over the years. Her motto is, like my own, “Curiouser and curiouser!”

—
Joyce Carol Oates

The truth is that the most beloved and the most formative books of my childhood were comic books, specifically Marvel Comics. Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, The Mighty Thor and The Invincible Iron Man; later came Daredevil and many others. These combinations of art and writing presented to me the complexities of character and the pure joy of imagining adventure. They taught me about writing dialect and how a monster can also be a hero. They lauded science and fostered the understanding that the world was more complex than any one mind, or indeed the history of all human minds, could comprehend.

—
Walter Mosley

Lena Dunham