|
|
Stephanie Kent and Logan Smalley are the co-creators of the online project Call Me Ishmael. Kent is a writer, media producer and amateur boxer. Smalley is an award-winning filmmaker and the founding director of TED-Ed. They live in New York City with their rescue dog, Matilda, and co-authored The Call Me Ishmael Phone Book: An Interactive Guide to Life-changing Books (Avid Reader Press, October 13, 2020). They agree on many things, but which books to read is not one of those things.
On your nightstand now:
Kent: New York by Edward Rutherfurd. It's a beast of a thing, an 800-plus-page novel about the history of my beloved New York City. I first picked it up at the beginning of the pandemic because these long, lonely quarantine days seemed like a great time to tackle a longer book. Sadly, it's been slow going, because my ability to be awake after 9:30 p.m. leaves something to be desired, and I only get through a few pages each night before I fall asleep.
Smalley: My nightstand is normally reserved for a stack of fiction books. Nothing is normal these days, though. The only book on my nightstand is very nonfiction, and it's called The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by astrophysicist Dr. Katie Mack. Yes, it's about the way(s) the universe will end. No, it's not depressing. Yes, I'm obsessed with it. No, I'm not obsessed with death. In such wild times, it has been really rewarding to be reminded by such a capable communicator as Dr. Mack that we are part of the biggest and oldest and youngest thing that ever was and ever will be.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Kent: Lately I've been thinking about Amelia's Notebook by Marissa Moss. The cover looks like a composition notebook and is full of diary entries by a fictional preteen girl. I loved it then, but have been reflecting on it this month as our Phone Book is released, because Amelia's Notebook was probably one of the first books I ever picked up that had such a playful format. I was inspired.
Smalley: I hereby summon the crowd wisdom of Shelf Awareness readers to please, please, please help me re-learn the title of a book that I coveted as a child. The memories are fuzzy, and I don't have much information to provide, but here goes: It was a children's book, taller and wider than an average children's book, and in the middle of its otherwise emerald green cover bloomed a hand-painted tableau of a young warrior climbing a mountain to fight (or befriend) a beautiful but fierce dragon. The cover also contained lots and lots of clouds. That's all I have in terms of identifying features. The entire book was full of gloriously illustrated myths, legends and fables about dragons, and I'd be very grateful to anyone who helps me find this book.
Your top five authors:
Kent: At this moment in time, in no particular order: Ocean Vuong, Brit Bennett, Jaed Coffin, Greg Hrbek, Samantha Hunt.
Smalley: Also at this moment in time, and also in no particular order: Stephanie Kent, Stephanie Kent, Stephanie Kent, Stephanie Kent, Stephanie Kent.
Book you've faked reading:
Kent: Most of the Jane Austen ones. I'm sorry and ashamed.
Smalley: I've been in many heated arguments with friends and foes about various aspects of Lord of the Rings. Who hasn't, right? At great risk, I admit here and now that I have sometimes, but not all the time, and only in pursuit of ending (or winning) an argument.... I have not less than once lied and told people I read The Silmarillion cover to cover. I own the book. I have started the book so many times. I have not read past page 20.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Kent: I am personally responsible for at least 10 people purchasing The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. Just mentioning the title gives me chills. It caused one of the best cries. Of. My. Life.
Smalley: I'm proud to have preached Cixin Liu's The Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy many years before Netflix thought it was cool.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Kent: Last year, I was walking around the Brooklyn Book Festival and spotted a big children's book with this gorgeous orange cover and an illustration of a little girl with boxing gloves. It was Feather by Rémi Courgeon, and I bought it and I've read it many times and it always brings me joy.
Smalley: Touching back to an earlier answer, I probably would have eventually bought Dr. Katie Mack's The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), but it became a "must have this immediately" situation when I viewed a tweet in which Dr. Mack demonstrated how the optical illusion on her book's cover is enhanced when it interacts with light. As you may note with the cover of The Call Me Ishmael Phone Book, I'm a sucker for covers that contain interactive secrets.
Book you hid from your parents:
Kent: My parents were wonderfully cool about books. I don't remember ever being told I couldn't read a book I picked out. I read Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks when I was 10 or 11, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers around 13, and spent a lot of time in the "Divorce" section of the self-help aisle at Barnes & Noble when I was 15 and dumped.
Smalley: My dad had a solid collection of old books that he salvaged from his childhood. He stored them inside a relatively tall bookcase, and though he didn't lock the glass doors that served to protect the most important books on the shelf, he did lecture me that I wasn't old enough to read that collection yet, and that it was important keep them good condition so that they might be worth lots of money one day. I pillaged the entire shelf, one book at a time, and he was none the wiser.
Book that changed your life:
Kent: I've just read Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and it has acutely sharpened my rage against those who don't protect and respect our natural world.
Smalley: In my senior year of high school, I was at a high risk of permanently losing interest in reading. Thankfully, shortly before graduating, I picked up Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and re-experienced how awesome reading can be.
Favorite line from a book:
We'll join forces for this one. We love this line from The Watchmen by Alan Moore so much that we included it in our wedding ceremony:
"Come... Dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg. The clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home."
Five books you'll never part with:
Kent: My old, beat-up, overly highlighted copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgereald from when I read it in high school. The illustrated edition of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott from my mom. Bruce Springsteen's autobiography Born to Run, which I read with my dad. My signed copy of What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada. My copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho that was given to me with romantic intentions.
Smalley: I know citing the Lord of the Rings trilogy risks sounding trite, especially referencing it twice in one questionnaire, but you must understand that I read all three books while traveling with a newly formed soccer team (all strangers) on an international trip without my parents at age 11. I was extremely lonely and homesick, except for when I was reading and helping Frodo and Sam reach Mount Doom. Two left: The Silmarillion. Just kidding. The copy of Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse that my mom gave me, and an especially marked-up copy of The Merriam-Webster Dictionary that Steph and I share.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Kent: Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. I was dizzied by how wonderful it was to read that book, and I've not read it since for fear the experience won't be exactly as intoxicating and all-consuming as the first time.
Smalley: This is an easy one for me. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein. "But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul." I try to re-read Frankenstein every year, but I would give an arm and a leg to re-experience reading it for the first time.
Favorite opening line in literature:
"Call me Ishmael."