On your nightstand now:
Well, right now it's a particularly teetery pile. Let's see, there's Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, Marissa Silver's The God of War, Rose Tremain's Music and Silence. Also, there's some nonfiction: Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends, Anthony Lane's Nobody's Perfect and Michael Dennis Brown's What the Poem Wants.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I loved so many different books that it's impossible to pick just one. There were, though, books that I kept coming back to. One was William Pene du Bois's The Twenty-One Balloons. Another was a biography of George Washington Carver (I can't remember who wrote it) that I checked out every week from the library and didn't always return on time. There were a lot of overdue fines for that book. My mother got so exasperated paying the late fees that she offered to just buy the book. I remember the librarian saying, "You know it doesn't work that way, Betty."
Your top five authors:
That's impossible, too. I can't do it. Okay. Um. Isak Dinesen, Rose Tremain, Alice Munro, Marilynne Robinson, Eudora Welty.
Book you've faked reading:
I have never read Ulysses; and while I haven't explicitly faked reading it, I have kind of hummed and smiled and nodded knowingly when people have discussed it.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Judith Thurman's biography, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller. I read it every year, and every year I learn something more about storytelling, its limitations and its powers.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I am shameless when it comes to covers. I've bought more books for their covers than I could possibly say. Most recent cover that has entranced me: Jutta Richter's The Cat: Or, How I Lost Eternity.
Book that changed your life:
This is tough, but ultimately I would have to say Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist. I read a paragraph that ended with these words: "About your son, she seemed to be saying: Just put your hand here. I'm scarred, too. We're all scarred. You are not the only one." I was so moved, so undone, that I let myself form this outrageous thought: "I want to try and do this. I want to put words on paper that will make somebody else feel the way I feel right now." That book, those words, moved me to try; and the trying has changed my life, continues to change my life.
Favorite line from a book:
"Thus is the world peopled."--From Jane Gardam's novel Old Filth. Just typing the words makes me laugh out loud in wonder and delight.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool. I read it in one hungry gulp. I wish I had gone slower (more slowly?). I wish I had savored it. I loved every ding-danging minute of it.
If we asked you the same questions tomorrow, would you have different answers? Different favorites?
Yes.
Do you think that the stories can and do change lives?
Yes.