On your nightstand now:
Ha Jin's new story collection, A Good Fall; the forthcoming memoir by Malcolm Jones, Little Boy Blues; Hwang Sok-yong's The Old Garden; Darien Leader's The New Black; Roberto Bolano's 2666; Soseki Natsume's I Am a Cat; Nicole Brossard's Fences in Breathing; and numerous other titles which will soon unceremoniously have to make way for new flapped and jacketed desires.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Corduroy and Goodnight, Moon tie for that honor. As an older child, I have to admit: The Baby-Sitter's Club, which my mother hated and my uncle from NYC smuggled into the house for me in his suitcase.
Your top five authors:
Andre Dubus and Madeleine L’Engle, for everything they wrote; Ursula K. LeGuin for Dancing at the Edge of the World; Carol Shields for Unless; Jane Kenyon's poetry and Donald Hall's memoir, The Best Day the Worst Day.
Book you've faked reading:
Voltaire's Candide. Haven't a clue what happens in it, but think I wrote a paper about it once. I do love Chris Ware's cover for the new Penguin edition.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I think it's hard to be an evangelist for a book in general; the book must be the right fit to create a love affair. As friends--and new acquaintances--can attest, there's little I adore more than playing book matchmaker. Here are some recent favorites: Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders; Mo Willems's Elephant and Piggie books; and Atul Gawande's Better and Complications.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I love a good cover. The most recent: Little People in the City: The Street Art of Slinkachu, found at St. Mark's Bookshop. The inside was just as fabulous.
Book that changed your life:
Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face. I read it as a very lonely freshman in high school , and it taught me empathy. I still have my original copy with its lightly penciled-under sentences. Ann Patchett's memoir of Grealy, Truth and Beauty, is heartbreaking as well.
Favorite line from a book:
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?" From "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver. "One wild and precious" is going to be my second tattoo; my first, a lotus on my left wrist, is for Madeleine L'Engle's A House Like a Lotus.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Jane Eyre. I've read it uncountable times now and it's lost its magic for me, like a necklace worn so often you forget its beauty and what it felt like the first time you put it on.