By the Book

July 28, 2014
In By the Book interviews collected by New York Times Book Review editor Paul (Parenting, Inc.), 65 writers—including Junot Díaz, Lena Dunham, Colin Powell, Anne Lamott, and Khaled Hosseini—discuss books they’ve found inspiring or terrible, as well as their reading habits and recommendations. The variety of responses and respondents make for a captivating hodgepodge of literary musings, with illustrations provided by Jillian Tamaki. Gems include Neil Gaiman’s plug for Harry Stephen Keeler (the “greatest bad writer America has ever produced”), and John Grisham’s recommendation that President Obama read Fifty Shades of Grey, because “Why should he miss all the fun?” Authors speak to and about one another across the pages: Malcolm Gladwell and Dave Barry sing the praises of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, and Colin Powell and Arnold Schwarzenegger both admire J.K. Rowling’s success. (For those truly dedicated to literary socializing, Gary Shteyngart lists over 40 of his favorite authors’ Twitter handles.) Sidebars throughout feature excerpted responses from multiple authors on the same questions, and, while this creates an unfortunate sense of déjà vu upon encountering the same material in the full interviews, it’s illuminating to see what these writers consider “guilty pleasure” reading, or discover that very few actually get Ulysses. 65 line drawings. Agent: Lydia Wills, Lydia Wills LLC.

August 1, 2014
A hit-or-miss collection of Q-and-As, posed mostly to writers in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" page. Current Book Review editor Paul's introduction is somewhat pretentious: "The idea was to simulate a conversation over books, but one that took place at a more exalted level than the average water cooler chat." Well, Q-and-A sessions are hardly "conversations," and some of the questions-e.g., "What are your reading habits? Paper or electronic? Do you take notes? Do you snack?"-aren't even worthy of the snack machine, let alone the water cooler. Inevitably, there is a good amount of solipsism: When asked, "What was the last book that made you cry?" Richard Ford replies, "My own book Canada." Some answers are wacky. "What book is on your night stand now?" John Irving: "I don't read in bed, ever. As for the main character in my novel In One Person, Billy Abbott is a bisexual man; Billy would prefer having sex with a man or a woman to reading in bed." Some are stuck in a rut. "What book is on your night stand?" Sylvia Nasar: "Two biographies of Frances Trollope." "Last truly great book you read?" "The Widow Barnaby, by Frances Trollope." "Book you wish you could write?" "I'd love to write biographies of Frances Trollope." However, there are some choice tidbits, too. "Being a native German-speaker, Hayek strings together railroad sentences ending in train wreck verbs," deadpans P.J. O'Rourke. Donna Tartt wants to have a dinner date with Albert Camus: "That trench coat! That cigarette! I think my French is good enough. We'd have a great time." Still, for the most part, clinkers outweigh the gems. Lee Child and Arnold Schwarzenegger want Barack Obama to read Churchill; Colin Powell wrote for money; and Rachel Kushner avoids "books that seem to conservatively follow stale formulas." There's a tip to remember. Other contributors include Jhumpa Lahiri, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jonathan Lethem and E.L. Doctorow, among many other luminaries. Better scanned on the website.

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Starred review from October 15, 2014

Paul, editor of the New York Times Book Review, conducted these interviews with authors, performers, and thinkers for the Review's recurring By the Book feature. Collected are 65 of them, with personalities ranging from David Sedaris, Neil Gaiman, and Lee Child to Christopher Buckley, Sting, Ira Glass, and Bryan Cranston. Some of the questions are the same from interview to interview (e.g., favorite book as a child, currently reading, etc.), which allows one to compare apples to apples, while other inquiries are tailored more specifically to the work of the interview subject. The effect is like being at a very well-attended cocktail party, or peeking onto the nightstand of a favorite author. While there are many compendiums of writers' thoughts, such as My Bookstore edited by Ronald Rice, and several of them follow this idea of asking writers to contribute a piece on a specific topic, few cover as much ground as this volume. VERDICT At times delightful and always entertaining, this book can be taken in large gulps, or small sips. Reading it will surely result in a monstrous and fascinating reading list. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," p. 24, LJ 9/1/14.]--Linda White, Maplewood, MN

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2014
The popular By the Book column in the New York Times Book Review was Paul's idea before she took the NYTBR editorial helm, and now that she's gathered 65 of these irresistible interviews together in a book, they've gained magnetism and synergy. Here are exchanges with significant writers and such passionate readers as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and musician Sting. Though each interview is specific to the interviewee, Paul discovered that recurring questions yield intriguing results. If you could meet any author, dead or alive, who would it be?, for example, inspired David Sedaris to name Flannery O'Connor, Donna Tartt to pick Oscar Wilde, Amy Tan to choose Emily Dickinson, both Isabel Allende and John Grisham to designate Mark Twain, and Malcolm Gladwell to respond, Shakespeare's wife, of course. Paul also asked writers to identify books that inspired them to write and to share titles they were currently reading, queries that generate remarkable recommendations. This is a book lover's guilty pleasure, in which bookish fun is matched by substantial discussion, including those with E. L. Doctorow and Chang-rae Lee.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)