On your nightstand now:
Every children's book under the sun.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Sherlock Holmes stories. The scarier the better.
Your top five authors:
Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, George Eliot, Chekhov, Yeats.
Book you've faked reading:
The Magic Mountain, though I'm an expert on the first 80 pages.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Autobiography of Edwin Muir--one of the best autobiographies of a poet or of anyone I've ever read. Equal to Nabokov's Speak, Memory, though written in a quieter voice.
Book you bought for the cover:
When I was in high school, I bought Little Women so that I could cover my dirty books under it.
Book that changed your life:
The Great Gatsby. It showed me how writing can be both luscious and clear.
Favorite line from a book:
Huck Finn's "You can't pray a lie."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Magic Mountain, especially the first 80 pages.
