Joseph Finder's new book is Killer Instinct (St. Martin's, $24.95,
0312347472), whose laydown date is tomorrow. Here he answers questions
we pose occasionally to people in the industry:
On nightstand now:
Always a huge, teetering pile. Philip Roth's Everyman. Priscilla McMillan's The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Barry Eisler's Rain Fall. J. P. Marquand's The Late George Apley. And a big stack of New Yorkers.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Though I also loved Eleanor Cameron's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet so much that I wrote her a letter, and she wrote back, and we corresponded for years. That's when I decided to become a writer. Only now our fans e-mail us.
Top five authors:
Vladimir Nabokov (my all-time favorite of his is Pnin, not Lolita, and I love his essays), Eric Ambler (the granddaddy of all of us suspense novelists), Nikolai Gogol (as trippy today as he must have been 150 years ago), Saul Bellow (not only a magician with language, but he actually did plots too!), Nelson DeMille (ever read The Gold Coast? You should.).
Book you've "faked" reading:
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique.
Book you are an "evangelist" for:
Peter Abrahams' The Tutor. (I used to be an evangelist for Tom Perrotta's Little Children, but people seem to have caught on.)
Book you've bought for the cover:
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. The cover is one of Chip Kidd's masterpieces. When I got to the part about the boy born with flippers instead of limbs, I closed the book and put it on the shelf and continue to admire the cover.
Book that changed your life:
J. K. Lasser's Your Income Tax.
Favorite line from a book:
"The top of Babe's head came off." From William Goldman's Marathon Man. His grad student hero, Babe Levy, meets the Nazi concentration-camp dentist, Dr. Christian "The White Angel") Szell, who has a unique way to "extract" the information he wants from Babe. Dentists should have filed a class-action suit against Goldman.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Magus by John Fowles.
On nightstand now:
Always a huge, teetering pile. Philip Roth's Everyman. Priscilla McMillan's The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Barry Eisler's Rain Fall. J. P. Marquand's The Late George Apley. And a big stack of New Yorkers.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Though I also loved Eleanor Cameron's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet so much that I wrote her a letter, and she wrote back, and we corresponded for years. That's when I decided to become a writer. Only now our fans e-mail us.
Top five authors:
Vladimir Nabokov (my all-time favorite of his is Pnin, not Lolita, and I love his essays), Eric Ambler (the granddaddy of all of us suspense novelists), Nikolai Gogol (as trippy today as he must have been 150 years ago), Saul Bellow (not only a magician with language, but he actually did plots too!), Nelson DeMille (ever read The Gold Coast? You should.).
Book you've "faked" reading:
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique.
Book you are an "evangelist" for:
Peter Abrahams' The Tutor. (I used to be an evangelist for Tom Perrotta's Little Children, but people seem to have caught on.)
Book you've bought for the cover:
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. The cover is one of Chip Kidd's masterpieces. When I got to the part about the boy born with flippers instead of limbs, I closed the book and put it on the shelf and continue to admire the cover.
Book that changed your life:
J. K. Lasser's Your Income Tax.
Favorite line from a book:
"The top of Babe's head came off." From William Goldman's Marathon Man. His grad student hero, Babe Levy, meets the Nazi concentration-camp dentist, Dr. Christian "The White Angel") Szell, who has a unique way to "extract" the information he wants from Babe. Dentists should have filed a class-action suit against Goldman.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Magus by John Fowles.