On your nightstand now:
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. I'm away from home right now, but I remember that the author had to try to be "slow to anger." I want always to be sure to remember that one in my own life!
Favorite book when you were a child:
Anna Sewall's Black Beauty. What I remember about that book is feeling so bad for the horses that were abused in the story! Another book I loved was about famous inventors. It included people like Thomas Edison, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the steamship and the inventor of the sewing machine. And many others! I can't remember the name of that book, but it inspired me and was absolutely one of my favorite books when I was a little child.
Your top five authors:
Patricia McConnell. I love all of her dog books. The Other End of the Leash is one of my favorites. I really liked her new one, For the Love of a Dog. It's all about dog emotions and includes pictures showing dog postures, like when are they happy, when are they scared or when they are relaxed. One of the pictures is when a dog is really relaxed he has his mouth open.
When I was in my 20s, I was really inspired by Loren C. Eiseley's book The Immense Journey.
Of course, my next one is Oliver Sacks.
I travel all the time and love to read Michael Crichton on the airplane.
I also like Frans de Waal, who writes about primates in books like Chimpanzee Politics and Our Inner Ape.
Book you've faked reading:
If I haven't read a book, I'll admit that I read the review only!
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I work with people all the time who want to bring about positive change, and The Tipping Point is one of the most important books they can read.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Covers make me pick books up, but the buying decision is based on copy flap, skimming the book and reading the quotes about the book. The one time I picked up a book for the cover was at an airport bookstore. The book was called Holy Cow. I'll pick up any book about animals. But I took one look, realized it was a business book and put it back down.
Book that changed your life:
When I was a teenager and having a lot of problems, Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking changed my life. It was given to me by my aunt out on the ranch.
Favorite line from a book:
This is from Isaac Asimov's short story "The Dead Past": "A degree is the first step down a ruinous highway. You don't want to waste it so you go on to graduate work and doctoral research. You end up a thoroughgoing ignoramous on everything in the world except for one subdivisional sliver of nothing."
Why do I like this? I'm a believer in getting lots of information from many sources and not getting too specialized. I have a Ph.D., but I still try to get knowledge from many sources. One of the big problems we have today, when people are debating an issue, any issue, is they tend to look at just one source of information.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Any of Michael Crichton's books--Timeline, Jurassic Park, Congo. Those are all really fun reads on the airplane . . . exciting and "can't put 'em down" reads. They're wonderful books, but they're not the kind of books I'd read again. I can't read them again--because I already know what happens in them!