On your nightstand now:
Oliver Sachs's book on music, a collection of stories about kids fighting in Lord Nelson's naval forces and How to Train Your Dragon--mostly because I liked the movie so much.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Doctor Dolittle series, closely followed by the Freddy the Pig series, followed--later--by the Horatio Hornblower series.
Your top five authors:
Katherine Paterson, M.T. Anderson, Avi, Patrick O'Brian, Stephen Jay Gould.
Book you've faked reading:
I'm not quite sure what this means. A book I've said I've read, but haven't? Hmm... Remembrance of Things Past--which no one has ever read. Even Proust never read it.
Book you are an evangelist for:
The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Oh, there was a steampunk book I bought a few weeks ago, strictly for the cover. But I can't remember the title.
Book that changed your life:
Bleak House, no question. Greatest of Dickens's books. Maybe, after that, Trollope's The Warden.
Favorite line from a book:
"Call me Ishmael." A stunner, introducing character, time, biblical association, narrator--and drawing the reader in with three successive stressed syllables. Not bad.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Narnia Chronicles.