Reading with... Alex George

photo: Shane Epping

Alex George is an Englishman who lives, works and writes in Missouri. He is the author of A Good American and the founder and director of the Unbound Book Festival. His new novel, Setting Free the Kites, is published by Putnam (February 21, 2017).

On your nightstand now:

Too many books to mention. As director of the Unbound Book Festival, which takes place in Columbia, Mo., every April, my reading at this time of year consists almost exclusively of books by authors who are coming. So, a lot of Salman Rushdie, Marie Howe, Ishmael Beah, Julie Barton, Peter Geye....

I also have a stack of first chapters to read, or rather re-read. My wife and I teach a literature and creative writing course at the University of Missouri called "Chapter One." Each year we choose 10 of our favorite opening chapters to teach and workshop the students' own first chapters to their (as yet unwritten) novels. One of the best bits of the job is picking which chapters to teach. This year they include Nabokov, George V. Higgins and Toni Morrison.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Big Weekend Book. This was a tattered green hardcover that I think must have belonged to my father when he was young. It was a glorious miscellany of instructional childhood stuff--rope tricks, flower collecting, building a tree house, Morse code and most things in between. I knew the whole thing back to front. By the time I was done with it, it was falling apart. And it was all terribly English.

Your top five authors:

Grace Paley, James Salter, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith.

Book you've faked reading:

Dickinson Unbound by Alexandra Socarides. This is a brilliant, groundbreaking study that changed the way we think about how Emily Dickinson wrote and kept her poems. I bought a copy a week before I had a date with the author. It took about two pages for me to realize that I was hopelessly out of my depth, and that I would look ridiculous if I tried to discuss it. Instead, I told her that I'd bought the book, nodded wisely and left it at that. In retrospect it looks like a sound tactic, since we're now married.

Book you're an evangelist for:

American Copper, the first novel by American Book Award winner Shann Ray. It's stunning. Set in the wilds of Montana and spanning 60 years in the early 20th century, it tells a story both breathtakingly intimate and vast in scope. Addressing the infinite complexities of race, class, gender and cultural imperialism, it brings the American West vividly to life. It's beautiful, lyrical, tough and heartbreaking.

Book you've bought for the cover:

More cookbooks than I care to admit. I should never go into a bookshop when I'm hungry.

Book you hid from your parents:

Can't think of a single one. I suppose that means that either my parents were very permissive or very myopic.

Book that changed your life:

The Magus by John Fowles. This was my companion on a cold, rainy day in England in the fall of 1992, when my coach broke down on the road between London to Oxford. We were stranded there for two hours, but I didn't care, because I was on an island in the middle of the Aegean. It made me understand, profoundly and directly, the extraordinary power a good story has to transport the reader. That was when it occurred to me that I ought to try and write one myself.

Favorite line from a book:

"Reserving judgment is a matter of infinite hope." --The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Five books you'll never part with:

Collected Stories, Richard Yates
Dog Years, Mark Doty
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems 1979-2006, Wendy Cope

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Because, I mean, really.

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