George Carroll is the principal of Redsides Publishing Services in
Seattle, Wash., providing sales representation to a select group of
book publishers. He also teaches yoga. He publishes an infrequent
e-mail newsletter; feel free to contact George to be put on his
distribution list.Carroll is the second person to respond to a series of queries we will occasionally ask people in the business. Herewith questions and his answers:
On nightstand now:
Blindness by Jose Saramago, The Last Nine Innings by Charles Euchner and the Oxford Book of American Poetry.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Those tiny Golden books that came in a box. The one I remember best had a duck smoking a cigar.
Top five authors:
William Shakespeare (no, really), Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Don DeLillo, John McPhee, Michael Connelly.
Book you've "faked" reading:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. It's easy to fake because I don't know anyone who actually read the whole thing.
Book you are an "evangelist" for:
Handling Sin by Michael Malone. I used to think that it was the funniest book that I had ever read. I re-read it a couple of years ago and it's that, and more.
Book you've bought for the cover:
It was a Mickey Spillane book. I think it might have been his wife on the cover.
Book that changed your life:
Face to Face with Your Draft Board by Allen Blackman, published by World Without War Council. It helped me with my conscientious objector deferment. Otherwise I might be answering these questions from Toronto.
Favorite line from a book:
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."--One Hundred Years of Solitude
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.