Beth Fedyn, with wonderful generosity, sent me an Advanced Reading Copy of Writers on Literature & Literary Life From The New York Times Book Review. I love books like this! For those of you who are regular readers of The New York Times Book Review, you’ll recognize many of these “By The Book” interviews. However, I noticed that the interviews in this book seem to be the “expanded” versions that are available online. The format of “By the Book” is Q&A: “What is your favorite book?” and “What books are you currently reading?” are some of the standard questions. My favorite interview in this collection is with Neil Gaiman. Gaiman defends his love of the quirky writer Harry Stephen Keeler. Gaiman persuaded me to dig out a HSK novel and read it. If you’re curious about what other writers and celebrities are reading, you’ll find out in this book. Highly recommended! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Foreward by Scott Turow
Introduction by Pamela Paul
1. David Sedaris
2. Lena Dunham
3. Neil Gaiman
4. Mary Higgins Clark
5. Drew Gilpin Faust
6. Carl Hiaasen
7. John Irving
8. Elizabeeth Gilbert
9. Richard Ford
10. Colin Powell
11. David Eggers
12. Sylvia Nasar
13. Ira Glass
14. Junot Diaz
15. Joyce Carol Oates
16. Nicholson Baker
17. Emma Thompson
18. Michael Chabon
19. Jeffrey Eugenides
20. J. K. Rowling
21. David Mitchell
22. John Grisham
23. P. J. O’Rourke
24. Anne Lamott
25. Ian McEwan
26. Lee Child
27. Arnold Schwarzenegger
28. Francine Prose
29. Jared Diamond
30. Alain de Botton
31. Dave Barry
32. Katherine Boo
33. Marilynne Robinson
34. Sheryl Sandberg
35. Caroline Kennedy
36. Isabel Allende
37. Anna Quindlen
38. Jonathan Franzen
39. Hilary Mantel
40. Walter Mosley
41. Khaled Hosseini
42. Jeannette Walls
43. Dan Brown
44. Dan Savage
45. Christopher Buckley
46. Curtis Sittenfeld
47. James McBride
48. James Patterson
49. Jonathan Lethem
50. Jhumpa Lahiri
51. Richard Dawkins
52. Sting
53. Andrew Solomon
54. Malcolm Gladwell
55. Scott Turow
56. Donna Tartt
57. Ann Patchett
58. Amy Tan
59. Bryan Cranston
60. Michael Connelly
61. Neil DeGrassse Tyson
62. E. L. Doctorow
63. Chang-Rae Lee
64. Gary Shteyngart
65. Rachel Kushner
Index
Looks like a great book–but you need to turn off the hypertext link, it’s on for the entire post!
Deb, I have no idea how the hypertext link got activated. I’ll get right on turning it off.
Love this list of writers except Lena Dunham, who had been crowned and anointed to speak for her generation too soon. It was a mistake with Joyce Maynard too.
Patti, I know exactly what you mean about Joyce Maynard. She was supposed to be “the Voice of her Generation” but that didn’t work out.
Amen, Patti. The picture of Dunham on the NYT Magazine cover with hideous blonde hair was a further turnoff.
I’m a regular reader of the “By the Book” column and have probably read a lot of these but I won’t mind revisiting them.
Jeff, Lena Dunham has a book coming out in a few weeks. I won’t be reading it.
I enjoy those interviews in the NYTBR and would like having them all in a book. But I would not be persuaded to read a novel by HSK. I’ll leave that to you and Art Scott and Fender Tucker. I tried it once and wasn’t successful.
Bill, the sample of Harry Stephen Keeler’s writing that Neil Gaiman provides in his interview is almost enough to get me to read a Keeler.
Just a note, Day 1 of no glasses, no reading (books, magazines, blogs, anything) begins in a couple of hours when I hand off my glasses to the eye doctor. They then get sent to the lab where new lenses get installed and then sent back to be checked by the eye doc and then I can get them back, probably Thursday or Friday. Meanwhile, it’s a blurred, blurred world. I’ll catch up on your blog at the end of the week.
Rick, hope the new glasses make a big difference. Come back soon!