By the Book (45 page)

What's the best book you've read so far this year?

Anthony Marra's
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
. And all the books I mention below. It's been a great year for reading.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

In the best-case scenario, I know nothing about the book, and reading it is my sole obligation. For example, I read J. K. Rowling's
The Casual Vacancy
as a pile of paper because I was going to interview her. I thought that book was brilliant. When it came out and got such middling reviews I was mystified. I felt so lucky to have had my own experience with it. I recently read Donna Tartt's novel
The Goldfinch
the same way, eight hundred pieces of paper and no explanation of what was coming. I stayed on the couch for three days and did nothing but read. People have such high expectations for Donna's novels because they come around so rarely, and she knocked this one out of the park.

Is there anything that especially inclines you to pick up a particular book—are you swayed by covers, titles, blurbs, reviews, what your best friend has to say?

I'm swayed by everything, which is why it's nice to read a book as a pile of paper every now and then. A well-written rave review always catches my attention. Baz Dreisinger's review of Jim McBride's
The Good Lord Bird
was so convincing that I went straight to the bookstore and bought myself a copy. I'm pleased to report that McBride deserved every bit of the praise. I also read two great reviews by Barbara Kingsolver this year—one of Karen Joy Fowler's
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
and the other of Elizabeth Gilbert's
The Signature of All Things
. I thought that Kingsolver, who loved both books, was right on the money.

How has owning a bookstore changed your approach to deciding what to read?

If I'd done this interview two years ago, I'd be telling you how much I was enjoying rereading
The Ambassadors
. Parnassus has made me a very current reader. I read a lot of galleys. I read the books of the people who are coming to the store. I miss having time for James, but I'm also enjoying myself immensely.

Please take a moment to herald your favorite overlooked or underappreciated writer.

Geoffrey Wolff! I asked Vintage to put
A Day at the Beach
back in print so I could take it with me on book tour in November. I'm a big fan of all of Wolff's work, but this is the best book of essays I know. I've become a very convincing bookseller, and I plan to sell the hell out of this one.

What's the best book you've ever received as a gift?

Living Room
, an out-of-print book of photographs by Nick Waplington. The photographer Melissa Ann Pinney gave it to me years ago. It's still the book I want to show everyone who comes to my house. And the illustrator Barry Moser is a great friend, and the books of his that he's given me over the years would be the first things I would grab if the house were on fire (assuming my husband and dog were already outside).

Tell us about your favorite memoirs.

Edwidge Danticat's
Brother, I'm Dying
is probably my favorite. I also love her new novel,
Claire of the Sea Light
. She's so smart and such a beautiful writer. She knows exactly how to break my heart and put it back together again. Patti Smith's
Just Kids
reminded me of what it felt like to be young and want so much to be an artist and live a meaningful life. And then there's Moss Hart's
Act One
.
Act One
is one of the best things about owning a bookstore. I can sell
Act One
to people all day long.

What book has had the greatest impact on you?

After I read
Charlotte's Web
, I became so obsessed with pigs that my stepfather got me one for my ninth birthday. It was because of that pig that I became a vegetarian. That's impact.

Did you grow up with a lot of books? What are your memories of being read to as a child?

I grew up in a house full of books. My memories are of my parents reading, but not of them reading to me. I don't mean that critically. They loved books. I wanted to read what they were reading. I read
Humboldt's Gift
when I was fifteen because my mother had just finished it. After that, it was all Saul Bellow all the time. I read
Humboldt
again a few months ago, and I was amazed by how clearly I remembered it. Nobody writes like that anymore—maybe Michael Chabon.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

Do you mean today? I get so many galleys—at my house, at the bookstore—there are books stacked up everywhere that people want me to read. I probably quit reading a couple books a week. I have to love a book, or at least have an enormous sense of obligation toward a book, in order to keep going.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know?

I'd want to see my friend Lucy Grealy again. I'd want to know how the afterlife was treating her, if there was anything or everything about this world she missed. She'd say to me, “My God, how did you get here?” And I would say, “
The New York Times Book Review
told me I could meet any writer, living or dead, and I picked you!” Then I imagine there would be a great deal of hugging and dancing around.

If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be?

Mowgli and his crowd. We could invite Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig over, make it a talking-animal party.

What's next on your reading list?

J. Courtney Sullivan came to read at Parnassus, and I gave her a copy of Jeannette Haien's
The All of It
. She sent me Edna O'Brien's
The Country Girls Trilogy
in return. I very much want to read that. Also, Rachel Kushner's
The Flamethrowers
. And the new Doris Kearns Goodwin; that's a must. I'm a Doris Kearns Goodwin completist.

Ann Patchett
is the author of
Bel Canto
,
State of Wonder
,
The Patron Saint of Liars
, and
Truth and Beauty
, among other books.

 

What to Read on that Desert Island

Moby-Dick
,
Ulysses
, and
How to Build a Working Airplane Out of Coconuts
.

—
Michael Chabon

The King James Bible.
Anna Karenina
. And a how-to book on raft-building.

—
Jeffrey Eugenides

Collected works of Shakespeare (not cheating—I've got a single volume of them); collected works of P. G. Wodehouse (two volumes, but I'm sure I could find one); collected works of Colette.

—
J. K. Rowling

This is a question that always kills me. For a book lover this type of triage is never a record of what was brought along but a record of what was left behind. But if forced to choose by, say, a shipwreck or an evil
Times
editor, I'd probably grab novels that I'm still wrestling with. Like Samuel R. Delany's
Dhalgren
(which in my opinion is one of the greatest and most perplexing novels of the twentieth century) or Toni Morrison's
Beloved
(to be an American writer or to be interested in American literature and not to have read
Beloved
, in my insufferable calculus, is like calling yourself a sailor and never having bothered to touch the sea) or Cormac McCarthy's
Blood Meridian
(so horrifyingly profound and compellingly ingenious it's almost sorcery). Maybe Octavia Butler's
Dawn
(set in a future where the remnants of the human race are forced to “trade” genes—read: breed involuntarily—with our new alien overlords). Or Gilbert Hernandez's
Beyond Palomar
(if it wasn't for
Poison River
I don't think I would have become a writer). To be honest I'd probably hold a bunch of these books in hand and only decide at the last instant, as the water was flooding up around my knees, which three I'd bring. And then I'd spend the rest of that time on the desert island dreaming about the books that I left behind and also of all the books, new and old, that I wasn't getting a chance to read.

—
Junot Díaz

Amy Tan

What's the best book you've read so far this year?

Richard Ford's
Canada
. I've loved all his books, from the characters to the parenthetical sentences. His voice always sounds so casual, as if the narrator is working it out in his head for the first time. There's quiet intensity, an easy familiarity with the character. You know the habits in how the character thinks, what he might take into account. The narrator is more observational than judgmental, and forgiving in that way. It has much to do with a need to be rewarded for doing more, or compensated for following the rules or recognized as better for working harder. It's not simple greed. It's about a sense of self before and after you've taken the wrong road to a land of diminishing opportunity.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

I've often fantasized I would get a lot of writing done if I were put in prison for a minor crime. Three to six months. Incarceration would be good for reading as well. No e-mail, no useless warranties to get steamed about, no invitations to fund-raisers. But until I commit the necessary minor crime, I would choose a twelve-hour flight. Time flies by fast with a good book. Two benefits. I do have to pick the right-length book matched to destination. It's terrible to have twenty pages left and then be told to put your seat in an upright position. That happened when I read
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
.

Who are your favorite novelists?

My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place, and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite. In the past, they have included: Louise Erdrich, Vladimir Nabokov, Javier Marías, Richard Ford, Ha Jin, Annie Proulx, Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, D. H. Lawrence, Jamaica Kincaid—many, many others.

Do you have a favorite classic work of Chinese literature?

Jing Ping Mei
(
The Plum in the Golden Vase
). The author is anonymous. I would describe it as a book of manners for the debauched. Its readers in the late Ming period likely hid it under their bedcovers, because it was banned as pornographic. It has a fairly modern, naturalistic style—“Show, don't tell”—and there are a lot of sex scenes shown. For years, I didn't know I had the expurgated edition that provided only elliptical hints of what went on between falling into bed and waking up refreshed. The unexpurgated edition is instructional.

Who are the best Chinese and Chinese-American writers working today?

I've read Chinese novels only in translation, which limits how well I can judge who is “best.” I've read work by the early feminist writers Wang Anyi, Zhang Jie, and Cheng Naishan (who died recently). You have to understand how radical their novels and short stories were at the time they were published. They included notions of suffering, thwarted love, the Cultural Revolution, a forlorn look at the past, and a nostalgic Shanghai. A love story could have been seen as criticism of the Cultural Revolution. I also admire Yan Geling's stories. Beneath beauty and idealism is cruelty and ill intent. I've read a couple of Mo Yan's novels, which also could be judged as a less patriotic view of the Great Leap Forward. When he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, there was a flurry of criticism accusing him of being an apple polisher to the party for not speaking up for another Nobel laureate who was in prison, the dissident Liu Xiaobo. Then came the bashing of Mo Yan's work for its crude literary style and subjects. With prizes, I've observed, literary merit is often a sliding scale based on the author's political actions—or inaction.

Among Chinese-American writers, two immediately come to mind: Yiyun Li and Ha Jin, with their particular mix of displaced characters, circumstances, and past. Their stories often have tragedy, but rise above that. They elicit discomfort and compassion—good and necessary conditions that change me, as any writing is capable of doing by putting me in unfamiliar situations and magnifying the details I would have overlooked.

Please take a moment to herald your favorite overlooked or underappreciated writer.