On your nightstand now:
My nightstand is pretty cluttered with manuscripts, but there is a small pile of books underneath: Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos, A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, The Second Book of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and an ARC of The Girls from Ames by Jeffery Zaslow, which was sent to me by Bill Shinker, my first boss (who taught me the value of returning phone calls).
Favorite book when you were a child:
Madeline, hands-down.
Your top five authors:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I didn't know about magical realism before reading One Hundred Years of Solitude.
William Steig, because he always wrote the truth. Rainier Marie Rilke.
Lorrie Moore, because she was my T.A. in English 101. It's hard to pick the fifth, but in trying to, I realize I am usually not drawn to the book that made the writer famous--I am always drawn to the less popular sibling: Joseph Heller's Something Happened, Randall Jarrell's The Bat Poet, Thomas Pynchon's Slow Learner.
Book you've faked reading:
I used to do it a lot. Now I just try to change the subject to food.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Last Will and Testament of an Extremely Distinguished Dog by Eugene O'Neill.
Book you've bought for the cover:
A paperback of Valley of the Dolls, in sixth or seventh grade, at Waldenbooks, the only bookstore near us. It was all about those colorful pill capsules! I wasn't disappointed. There was a lot of stuff in there my parents wouldn't tell me.
Book that changed your life:
Holly in the Snow, a chapter/middle grade novel by Eleanor Frances Lattimore. In third grade, when I was still carting around Madeline, the librarian took my hand and presented me with Holly in the Snow. It had my name on it!! And I devoured it and that was the end of Madeline . . . for a while. My mom was so relieved (it turns out she had called the librarian and asked for assistance with the "Madeline problem"). But I'm right back in the picture books now.
Favorite line from a book:
"That piece of garbage changed his whole life." From Zeke Pippin by William Steig
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Pierre or the Ambiguities by Herman Melville. It's not his best book by most standards, but when I read the version Maurice Sendak illustrated in 1995, it meant a great deal to me personally. I doubt I would feel the same way now. But it reminds me that so much of one's appreciation of art or music or literature is dependent on what one is bringing to the story from inside.
A book I don't think I can stand to read one more time but I know I will because I can't stop reading it again and again:
Black Beauty. It is so painful and so honest and so beautiful. And I'm not even a horse person. But how Black Beauty can endure and go on and even feel mildly content is a testament to the power of spirit. We can bear it. Yes, we can bear it.