On your nightstand now:
By all counts a marathon of sesquipedalian subtitles--Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century by Tony Judt, Beaton in the 60s: The Cecil Beaton Diaries As He Wrote Them 1965–1969 by Cecil Beaton, Mencken: The American Iconoclast by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, The Hudson: A History by Tom Lewis and Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Connor. Teaching grammar hit a rough patch back when I attended public school, along with red M&Ms, and I intend to catch up, one of these days, maybe.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. Reading about kids growing up in the middle of Manhattan was fascinating to a suburban upstate New York girl. And I loved the part where Fudge dumps a bowl of peas over his head and says, "Eat it or wear it."
Your top six authors:
Graham Greene (Travels with My Aunt), Sinclair Lewis (Main Street), Charles Portis (True Grit), Georgina Howell (Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations), Sarah Orne Jewett (novels and stories), Fred Kaplan (biographer of Dickens, Vidal, Twain, et al.).
Book you've faked reading:
Due to poor time-management skills and extensive social commitments, I never got around to reading Willa Cather's My Antonia in high school. I didn't completely fail the test, as it turns out that living in a dugout on the prairie in Nebraska was not all that different from growing up in frigid Buffalo during the energy crisis.
Book you're an evangelist for:
West with the Night by Beryl Markham, her 1942 memoir, which chronicled growing up in Kenya (British East Africa) and then making the first solo flight across the Atlantic from west to east. It's a beautifully crafted book, but the fun is in the provenance. Markham didn't have much education and wasn't a natural wordsmith, as her other writings demonstrate. However, her third husband, Raoul Schumacher, a journalist and ghost writer, was an enormous fan of Shakespeare and alcohol, apparently in equal parts. Both denied that he had anything to do with the book. It's rather obvious that he did, but even more interesting to me is the idea that he was a terrific writer who on his own never connected with a story worthy of his talents and she had an amazing story but without his assistance wouldn't have been able to tell it so captivatingly and with such grace. I love that synergy. Tell me again why Simon & Garfunkel broke up?
Book you've bought for the cover:
Monet's haystacks are lovely but I'm a sucker for funky and will take those dogs playing poker on velvet every time. Come Back, Dr. Caligari by Donald Barthelme for its Magritte-like cover of headless purple shades with fake beard and mustache.
Book that changed your life:
The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale. I was coming off a year-long Hermann Hesse bender (before they gave teens medication for everything), and this early self-help book that offered hope to the underdog transitioned me back into society.
Favorite line from a book:
"If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar."--John Steinbeck, East of Eden.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen. When you get older, you realize the entire high school history curriculum was revisionist and designed to make you into a good little flag-flying patriot.
Favorite fun books:
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King, The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald and essay collections by Barbara Holland.
Anecdote antidote:
In case you've had too much fun: The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, about the Dust Bowl, aka the Dirty Thirties.