Phillip Toledano was born in 1968 in London to a French Moroccan mother and an American father. He has a BA in English literature and his art education came from his father, who was a full-time artist. Toledano is a conceptual artist--everything starts with an idea, and the idea determines the execution--and his work varies in medium, from photography to installation, sculpture to painting. The themes are primarily sociopolitical, although lately he's strayed into the deeply personal. His fifth book, The Reluctant Father (Dewi Lewis Media, January 14, 2014)--is a chronicle of becoming a father for the first time at the age of 40.
On your nightstand now:
The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain Banks.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Your top five authors:
F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, Saul Bellow, W. Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh.
Book you've faked reading:
Most poetry, especially Pablo Neruda's, mostly when I was a teenager, for obvious reasons....
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Book you've bought for the cover:
That's hard to say, since with e-readers, covers don't mean so much anymore.... I DID read old books in my father's bookcase when I was a kid, because of their saucy covers which actually had nothing to do with the contents--Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham comes to mind.
Book that changed your life:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Favorite line from a book:
"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." --from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.