Jesse Kornbluth published his first book review at eight and, noticing how some of the third-grade girls were impressed, kept at it. Decades later, he has published seven books and has written reams of journalism for Vanity Fair, New York and other magazines. In 1996, with Carol Fitzgerald, he launched Bookreporter.com; in 1997, he became editorial director of America Online, where he created such book events as the "Monicathon," designed to promote Andrew Morton's book on Monica Lewinsky. He now edits HeadButler.com, a four-day-a-week cultural concierge service that, unsurprisingly, mostly focuses on books. (Editor's note: His reviews will increase your reading list considerably.)
On your nightstand now:
The Second Book of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell, Shining City by Seth Greenland (for the second time), By Way of Sainte-Beuve by Marcel Proust.
Favorite book when you were a child:
We Die Alone by David Howarth. In the winter of 1943, a Resistance raid in Norway goes wrong, and Jan Baalsrud has to get across the country without supplies or warm clothes. An early lesson in self-reliance--and community.
Your top five authors:
Somerset Maugham, Guy de Maupassant, Jean Rhys, J.M. Coetzee, Thich Nhat Hanh.
Book you've faked reading:
Middlemarch. I could barely endure one of the storylines.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D. Nothing literary about this book--it's a brutal fitness regime, bluntly written. But there's no point dreaming of books if you're too decrepit to read and write them. Or dead.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis. The Will Barnet painting of a young girl playing chess with an unseen male while a cat looks on from a perch on the window suggested the game's aggression and the girl's loneliness. I raced through the novel and immediately optioned the film rights. How I wish I still had them.
Book that changed your life:
Maugham's Cakes and Ale. A novelist's wife is flagrantly unfaithful, he's not distressed, and she's not punished. When I was a kid trying to color between the lines, this book showed me I really didn't need to bother.
Favorite line from a book:
"The secret of being a bore is to tell everything."--Voltaire.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, though the smell of wood smoke and the crunch of leaves underfoot in the South of France in the fall is, thanks to this novel, always with me.