On your nightstand now:
See next answer.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Actually, there were two: Tarzan
of the Apes and Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote both
and they influenced me tremendously between the ages of nine and
twelve. They both sit on my nightstand now.
Your top five authors:
Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
Book you've faked reading:
Why would I ever fake reading a book? Books are meant to be read.
Book you are an evangelist for:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
I've read it many times and seen many film adaptations of it. This book
helped me as a writer, and I wrote The Halloween Tree, in a way, as my
own Christmas Carol.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I don't buy books for their covers. A nice cover is fine, but it's what inside that counts.
Books that changed your life:
All the books of H. G. Wells, which helped
me care about the future. Also because books like The Invisible Man are
paranoid, and all 15-year-old boys are paranoid. That's when they
discover what death means; they take a stand against death and Mr.
Wells helped a 15-year-old boy do that.
Favorite line from a book:
"He was born with a gift of laughter and the
sense that the world was mad." This is the opening line of Scaramouche
by Rafael Sabatini.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I consider it to be the greatest American novel of the last 75 years. My fun comes from buying a new copy of the book and walking across Paris, starting in the morning at the Eiffel Tower, reading and walking all day, stopping for a coffee or an aperitif, and finishing the book out in front of Notre Dame at sunset.