On your nightstand now:
Right now there's Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield, Real World by Natsuo Kirino, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory and Would-Be Witch by Kimberly Frost. And of course copies of Godmother for me to admire and wink at. (I can't help it, the British cover has glitter.)
Favorite book when you were a child:
I probably loved the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace most, though the Little House and Nancy Drew books would be close seconds. But Betsy! She was so romantic, always hanging out in trees and scribbling in notebooks. In 13 books, you follow her from childhood until she gets married. I loved her. I wanted to best friends with her.
Your top five authors:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Isabel Allende, Alice Hoffman, Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler. I can't count.
Book you've faked reading:
In high school and college, I faked reading a ton of books for class. Like The Tin Drum, which I put down after the eel scene. Midnight's Children, which I put down after the nose picking. I faked reading William Gibson's Neuromancer for three different college classes. . . . If a book ever comes out about cyberpunk nose-picking eels, I might actually die.
Books you're an evangelist for:
I'm not sure I'm very evangelical by nature, but I've told many, many people to read Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell (just read the first page and tell me I'm wrong) and Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim (so gorgeous and devastating, the book and movie). I'm sure I've changed (saved?) a number of lives as a result. I've also tried to get many people to read Dante and Boccaccio by telling them how un-boring and crazy and fun those old books are.
Book you've bought for the cover:
No Orchids for Miss Blandish. There's a beautiful woman's head in a glass bowl, her eyes closed and flowers falling around her. Underneath it's described as "James Hadley Chase's notorious novel of violence and brutality that has left more than 2 1/2 million people gasping!" I've since seen other covers for this book that are just as awesome. One promises a tale of "vile, ruthless gangsterism" and shows a blonde femme fatale on a zebra print blanket. I mean really.
Book that changed your life:
One summer at my grandparent's house in Florida, when I was maybe 12, I checked out Peter Benchley's The Girl of the Sea of Cortez from the tiny local library. I'm quite sure it changed my life: the girl riding the manta ray through the sea, the hammerhead sharks circling below. . . . It's a gorgeous, magical book about a girl and the sea. I read The Clan of the Cave Bear around the same time and that was just as world-changing.
Favorite line from a book:
In Baudelaire's Paris Spleen, in "The Bad Glazier," the narrator is infuriated when a glazier has no colored panes of glass, no beautiful glass, and he throws a flowerpot down on the glazier from a balcony above. The glazier falls, and all his glass is shattered. Then here's the line: "And drunk with my madness, I shouted down at him furiously: 'Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!' "
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Oh, One Hundred Years of Solitude, definitely. I want to re-discover me some ice.