By the Book (29 page)

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

Whatever it is, I am sure he has read it. Maybe something like
Middlemarch
, just to take his mind off things and remind him that “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

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

Both my parents loved to read. My father read lots of history, and his books are among my most treasured possessions. There are a lot on the American Civil War—both sides. I especially like the ones where he wrote in the margins, like the Federalist Papers, because it's fascinating to see which parts he thought important. My mother read all the time, and there were piles of literature, poetry, and art books around her room and down the hall. When my brother and I had dinner alone as children, we used to play a guessing game based on the titles in the bookshelves in the dining room. That's how we learned the names of Winston Churchill's forty books without actually reading them.

My father used to make up elaborate bedtime stories in which I was the central character, and my mother used to read to me at bedtime. She also taught me to recite Edna St. Vincent Millay's “First Fig” and “Second Fig” for my father when I was very little. I felt a tremendous sense of pride and accomplishment, so I had a positive experience with words and ideas when I was very young.

What were your favorite childhood books? Do you have a favorite character or hero?

My favorite childhood books were about horses and adventurous tomboys, like
Caddie Woodlawn
, by Carol Ryrie Brink. She was badder than the characters in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, and I liked her much better. My all-time favorite character is probably the Country Bunny, from
The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes
, by DuBose Heyward. I see her now as a woman who reenters the workforce after raising a family—“leans in,” and does it all—much better than the big Jack Rabbits.

What does your personal book collection look like? Do you organize your books in any particular way?

We had it organized by topic for nonfiction and alphabetically by author for fiction and poetry—but then the ceiling leaked and we had to paint the rooms and now it's every book for itself.

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

The last book I put down without finishing was
Independent People
, by Halldor Laxness—the Icelandic winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. It was recommended by Ann Patchett when I visited her store on a recent book tour, but she said if I wasn't gripped by page fifty, I should put it down. It didn't go with anything else I was doing/reading/wearing at the time, but I have a feeling I will give it another try sometime.

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

I think I would like to meet Charles Dickens—I would just really want to ask him, “Really, how do you do that?”

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

I was in love with the Scarlet Pimpernel for a pretty long time, but I don't know if I would want to meet him now. The moment may have passed for us.

What do you plan to read next?

I just finished a book, so I am looking for suggestions.

Caroline Kennedy
is the U.S. ambassador to Japan and the editor of books on American history, politics, constitutional law, and poetry, including
She Walks in Beauty
and
A Family of Poems
.

 

Stories I'm Drawn To

I love histories, biographies, and memoirs. I'm also drawn to realistic fiction. I'm not a huge fan of experimental fiction, fantasy, or so-called escapist literature. Reality is just so interesting, why would you want to escape it?

—
Jeannette Walls

I read nonfiction almost exclusively—both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters. I don't read horror, ever. When I was fifteen, I made the mistake of reading part of
The Exorcist
. It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.

—
Dan Brown

Ironically enough, given the topic of my first novel, I'm wary of books about boarding school. If the author gets the details wrong and caricaturizes the milieu (“My daddy says any family without a Rolls-Royce is living in poverty!”) it's tedious. But if the author gets the details right, it's uncomfortably evocative and makes me squirm. All that said, I loved Tobias Wolff's
Old School
; I loved
Oh the Glory of It All
, by Sean Wilsey (in which Wilsey gets kicked out of one boarding school after another); and I can't wait to read
& Sons
, a forthcoming novel by David Gilbert about an author like J. D. Salinger who writes a book like
The Catcher in the Rye
.

—
Curtis Sittenfeld

I like personal dramas set within the sweep of historical events: Colum McCann's
TransAtlantic
and
Let the Great World Spin
, or Ian McEwan's
Sweet Tooth
.

—
Sting

Like most people, I'm fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect. Wait a minute—basically that's everybody, isn't it, in life and on the page? As a writer, I'm drawn to characters who, for one reason or another, seem to find themselves desperately out of joint, alienated but not wanting to be, and ever yearning to understand the rules of the game.

—
Chang-rae Lee

I read little nonfiction, but I have no boundaries about the fiction I relish. The only unfailing criterion is that I can hitch my heart to the imagined world and read on. Yes, I enjoy the novels written by lawyer friends, but regard that as a busman's holiday.

—
Scott Turow

I'm not very interested in contemporary American realism, or books about marriage, parenting, suburbia, divorce. Even as a child browsing at the library I distinctly remember avoiding books that had the big silver Caldecott award sticker on the front, because I loved fairy tales, ghost stories, adventures, whereas the Caldecott prize stories often had a dutiful tone that tended more toward social issues. To paraphrase Nabokov: all I want from a book is the tingle down the spine, for my hairs to stand on end.

—
Donna Tartt

I'm open to reading almost anything—fiction, nonfiction—as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created.

—
Amy Tan

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

—
Jhumpa Lahiri

Isabel Allende

What's the last good book you read?

The Death of Bees
, by Lisa O'Donnell, the kind of edgy, crazy and horrible story that may well happen anywhere.

When and where do you like to read?

I read on my iPad when I travel. I listen to audiobooks in the car. I read books in my bedroom, where I have a comfortable couch, a lamp, and two dogs to keep me warm. I have written several historical novels that required a lot of research, and in that case I did most of the reading in my “casita,” where I write. I confess that I am a messy, disorganized, and impatient reader: if the book doesn't grab me in the first forty pages, I abandon it. I have piles of half-read books waiting for me to get acute hepatitis or some other serious condition that would force me to rest so that I could read more.

Are you a rereader? What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?

There is so much to read, and time is so short! I am seventy, but I have not yet reached the age when rereading gives more pleasure than the surprise of a new story or a new writer.

What is your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

I like literary fiction. A good novel or short story is like making love between clean ironed sheets: total pleasure. When I was a teenager my guilty reading was, of course, erotic stuff. At fourteen, living in Lebanon, I discovered the irresistible mixture of eroticism and fantasy reading
One Thousand and One Nights
inside a closet with a flashlight. Nothing can be compared to the excitement of a forbidden book. Today nothing is forbidden to me, so there is no guilt. Too bad! (My grandchildren would have fits of boredom with the erotic scenes that turned me on in Lebanon.)

Which books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?

You will find too many dictionaries. I write in Spanish, but I have been living in English for twenty-five years with Willie, my gringo husband, who thinks that he speaks Spanish. I end up writing like Willie talks: in Spanglish. I go back and forth between both languages, and sometimes I only remember the word in French. I have dictionaries of synonyms, of colloquialisms, of mythology, even of magical terms.

What do you think of the contemporary state of magic realism? Do you have favorite magic realist novels?

Full-blown magic realism, like in the Latin American boom of literature of the '70s and '80s, is not fashionable anymore, but elements of it are still present in novels all over the world, even in English; think Salman Rushdie and Toni Morrison, for example. Magic realism is not a literary trick for me. I accept that the world is a very mysterious place.

What's the best book you've read about Chile?

This question is almost impossible to answer. I have written about Chile extensively, and therefore I have read many books on the subject, mostly for research.

Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer? Is there a particular book that made you want to write?

In my teens I read Russian, French, and English novelists that taught me about good storytelling. In my twenties I started reading the great writers of the Latin American boom (all of them male, unfortunately). They were a choir of different and harmonious voices narrating our crazy continent to the world and to us, Latin Americans.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
made me want to become a writer. García Márquez characters resembled my own family; his voice seemed easy. I thought, “If this guy can do it, so can I.”

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

Does it have to be just one book? I would send him all my books for free!

You edited a children's magazine early in your career and wrote books for children. What makes for good children's literature? Do you have favorite books for children?

First of all, books for kids need to be very entertaining. No preaching, no hidden messages, no condescending tone, no didactic stuff. Kids are smart: don't underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don't even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error. Kids like fantasy, imagination, humor, adventure, villains, and suspense.

What does your personal book collection look like? Do you organize your books in any particular way?

At home we have floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of beautiful leather-bound editions of classic literature that my husband has bought for years. They are mostly decoration: they look smart. Personally, I have my own bookshelves for books in Spanish that I keep because they are hard to get in the United States. All the rest comes and goes. I don't collect anything, not even good novels. Once a year I gather all the books I have read already or will not read ever (several boxes) and give them away. I don't miss them, because if needed I can buy them again.

Do you have a standby cookbook? What books do you keep in the kitchen?

I cook by memory and instinct, like I do most things in my life. I can't follow instructions. (I don't read a manual even when everything else fails.) My husband has a series of cookbooks, and I assume that his favorite one is
The Doubleday Cookbook
, by Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna, because it smells like garlic and is filthy with food stains.