Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
It could only be in fantasy scenarios. Like everyone else, my attention span is garbage. And long-form reading? OMG — it takes a MUSCLE these days! I don’t trust people who say they read eight books a week. LIAR!!! That’s not reading! That’s composting word salad! Also, I get too distracted by words. No matter how “ideal” the setting. One true sentence feels like a bump of a very expensive drug — it totally sends me into a transcendental state!
But back to the fantasy scenarios. I have often wondered what it would be like to read in a zero-gravity environment. Or in the gardens of Versailles, pre-revolution.
Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?
’60s and ’70s smut literature.
What’s the last book that made you cry?
The newspaper is the only thing I read that makes me cry.
The last book that made you furious?
The newspaper is the only thing I read that makes me furious.
The most terrifying book you’ve ever read?
“Roots,” by Alex Haley. (Does it count as “reading” if I mostly skimmed it? It was brutal!)
Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?
