On my nightstand now:
My old collection of Dashiell Hammett novels under one cover; No Excuses by Sheila Van Damm; "We Help Daddy" (a Golden Book); Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; Cycling San Diego by Nelson Copp and Jerry Schad; The History of the Snowman by Bob Eckstein; the Economist.
Favorite book when I was a child:
Before I could "read," my favorites included the beautiful illustrated D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I so enjoyed showing my daughter those books all over again, when she was a tot. Interestingly when she became a teen and fell in love with a boy who wouldn't read anything but "comic books with superheroes," that was the book she lured him with to try reading aloud from.
On my Kindle now:
A Thousand Years of Good Prayer by Yiyun Li; The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta; How to Use the Amazon Kindle by Stephen Windwalker; The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey; No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July; The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin; Naked by Akiba Solomon.
When people ask me what great erotic literature is, I say:
"It's a matter of taste--and memory." But if you are looking for expert craft, you couldn't go wrong with Henry Miller and his Land of F***; Pauline Réage's Story of O; Steven Saylor writing as Aaron Travis; most of the writers you'll meet in my anthologies. They take my breath away.
Best book on pornography:
Blue Movie by Terry Southern.
Reading I hid from my mother:
I didn't want her to find the lyrics to "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" from the Beatles. I was so scared she'd take a critical look at their post-1967 albums that I hid them in a tree knot outside and would play them only when she was at work. In retrospect, I think I unjustly put my own fears and incomprehension onto her!
My top five authors:
How brutal! I'd be ashamed to list only 500, let alone five. The only way I'll make it through a handful is to be nepotistic and impetuous: My dad, William Bright; Roland Barthes, for A Lover's Discourse; Michael Herr for Dispatches; Emma Goldman for her autobiography; Edmund White for taking me through Paris last year in The Flaneur. When I was a kid, I got Louise Fitzhugh conflated with Harper Lee and was crushed to find out they weren't the same person. May I have their duality be one of my favorites?
Have I faked reading a book?
When you're a book reviewer, you become a mad scanner, searching for an original angle in record time. I love my Kindle because I can look for key words in seconds. But complete faking? Probably not. If you ask me if I've read Proust, I'd say, "Not more than a passage or two, but I'd love to hear your whole take on it." I like other people's retelling.
Book I am an evangelist for:
I'm a relentless promoter of every author I've ever published, but that's numbering in the hundreds now, so it's getting tricky!
This Christmas, I bought two cartons of Alison Bechdel's Essential Dykes to Watch Out For and gave them to every essential dyke who's been a part of my life.
Andy Griffin of The Ladybug Letter doesn't yet have his book out, but he will--and I will be running around with a brass band to celebrate it!
Book I've bought for the cover:
I'm out of control in a museum, fine print or OOP bookshop. A beautiful or intriguing cover, a genius for design, will seduce me every time. I'll just mention the LAST book I picked up and bought because of its cover: Is Clothing Modern? by Bernard Rudofsky
Book that changed my life:
A pamphlet, actually: "Wage, Labor, and Capital" by Karl Marx.
Favorite line from a book:
"Fight like hell for the living . . "--Mother Jones's autobiography.
Book I'd most want to read again for the first time:
A Born Again Virgin for a title? Wow.
I recently found a paperback from my childhood that had a great effect on me, called Mad, Sad, & Glad, a collection of poetry from high school students in the 1960s. I thought their poetry was amazing when I was 12; it was filled with a social awareness that will have you clutching your heart. And all these years later, the anthology of young writers is still remarkable. I look at their names, wondering, "Are any of you famous poets?" Because they should be!