On your nightstand now:
We're all sleeping on inflatable beds these days, while spending a sabbatical in San Diego. So what I have is a messy stack of stuff next to my head that spreads across the floor. I suppose that means I have a really big nightstand as I can always add more piles, but they are subject to raiding by family members and there's no knowing what's in them.
What's been stacked by the bed lately:
Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron; Ballad and Lament by Maggie Stiefvater; The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge (judging for School Library Journal's Battle of the Books); Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman (also for SLJ's Battle of the Books); Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset; The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker; Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson; and The Case of the Gypsy Good-bye by Nancy Springer and The Returning by Christine Hinwood (both ARCs).
I haven't started the Stiefvater yet. The Hinwood is an electronic ARC on my iPod Touch, which means it's probably safe as my raiders aren't interested in electronic books (yet). I went to check--both Cryptonomicon and Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet have disappeared.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis. I remember being disappointed by Caspian at first. I wanted more of Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy, but I came around quickly.
Your top five authors:
Joan Aiken, Diana Wynne Jones, Rosemary Sutcliff, Peter Dickinson and Dorothy Dunnett
Book you've faked reading:
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. I was supposed to read it for Betsy Hearne while I was at the University of Chicago. I think that both Roger Sutton and Deborah Stevenson were in the class on YA literature, so it was easy to skate through the discussion by nodding my head in agreement whenever they said anything.
Book you are an evangelist for:
The Sunbird by Elizabeth E. Wein. Wein writes historical fiction with a sense of adventure and I love The Sunbird. It reminds me of Sutcliff in its range--from the historical Arthur in Britain to the Aksumite Empire in Africa during the fifth century AD. It's the story of a young prince named Telemakos risking life and limb to gather information for his emperor.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I can't think that I have ever bought a book solely for the cover, but I guess I came closest with Pompeii: The Day a City Died by Robert Etienne. It is one of the Abrams Discoveries Series and the sort of arty book you find in the shop at the Met (where I bought it). The cover is beautiful, but it was the heft of the book that made up my mind. A neat trim size and heavy paper made it surprisingly dense, and I think that's really why I wanted it.
Book that changed your life:
It's a toss-up between Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones, which a friend gave me when I was 16 (he thought he was loaning it to me, but I never gave it back) and The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, which I read as a freshman in college. Without Diana, I might not have been published. Without Thucydides, I don't know what I'd be writing.
Favorite line from a book:
From Notes for Echo Lake by the poet Michael Palmer: "There is a certain distance." It may not seem like much, but it has an amazing effect as the last line of the poem "Notes for Echo Lake #8." It gets me every time I read it.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I was in college, working part-time as a nanny and I picked the book off the shelf while the baby was asleep, mostly because of the cover art, now that I think of it. I'll always be glad that I read it on my own, and not as an assignment. Reading it for class would have kept me at a distance from the story and I wouldn't have had the same experience at all.
Illustration by Deven Graves