On your nightstand now:
Cultural Amnesia by Clive James.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois.
Your top five authors:
Tolstoy, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Katherine Anne Porter, William Maxwell.
Book you've faked reading:
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson, the unabridged version.
Book you are an evangelist for:
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I'm an author. I never pay attention to covers now except when they're mine. When I was 15 or 16, I bought a drugstore paperback called A Cold Wind in August about a stripper, whose representation on the cover was quite enticing to me at the time. I hid the book from my parents.
Book that changed your life:
The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb (when I was in 10th grade).
Favorite line from a book:
There are too many such lines. They all rattle around in my head. Here's a line from my reading, from last night: "Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim."--Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter.
Book you have re-read:
I re-read many books (I'm a teacher). Most recently: Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Marquise of O by Heinrich von Kleist.