Amy Krouse Rosenthal prompts her readers to look at things from a different perspective. Her book with Tom Lichtenheld, Duck! Rabbit! pointed out that two people can be looking at the same thing and see entirely different things. Now this same team's Wumbers, just released by Chronicle, reveals that numbers secretly hide inside many of our daily phrases. Here Rosenthal responds to our Book Brahmin questions in an, um, unusual way.
On your nightstand now:
Okay, wow, that's kind of a weird command--"ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND NOW!"--but I'll do it.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Your top five authors:
Jonathan Eig
Tom Lichtenheld
Esme Raji Codell
Ellis Weiner
Mark Twain
Oh, I'm sorry--I thought you said, "Your top, ON five authors."
Book you've faked reading:
Reading (and other things one might do in bed) is, um, not something I fake.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I tend to rave and preach about whatever book I'm reading/loving/obsessed with at the moment. And happily, there have been countless such books/moments. So it's more like an "evange-reallylonglist."
Book you've bought for the cover:
This is a book I would for sure buy for the covers!
Book that changed your life:
Favorite line from a book:
From Our Town:
Emily (In a loud voice to the stage manager)
I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another.
I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back--up the hill--to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.
Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?-- every, every minute?
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Our Town.