Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
In a hot bath on a cold winter afternoon, with a gripping novel, the house quiet, dogs worn out after a hike and fast asleep. I live in Taos, N.M., a high-desert mountain town where winters are very cold. My bathtub is enclosed in blue tiles, and sun pours through the skylight overhead, and steam wafts off the bath water and evaporates into bone-dry air. I like to look up from my book and realize with a happy jolt where I am, then immerse myself again. Bath, book.
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?
Most recently, the brilliant, heartbreaking, brutal “Sparrow,” by James Hynes, a historical novel narrated by a young slave boy in the Roman Empire. It takes place so long ago but it feels urgently immediate, and the writing is exquisite. Hynes writes like no one else.
Less recently, has anyone besides us children of 1970s bohemia read “Fletcher and Zenobia,” by Victoria Chess and Edward Gorey? It’s about a friendship between a cat stuck in a tree and a talking doll stuck in a papier-mâché egg, and the gorgeous moth who helps them both escape. There’s cake and peach ice cream and punch in a silver bowl. It’s moving and charming and beautifully illustrated by Chess. I loved it as a kid and still do.
What book should everybody read before the age of 21?
“Annie John,” the best coming-of-age novel I’ve ever read — Jamaica Kincaid is incandescently honest about girlhood.
What book should nobody read until the age of 40?
I would venture to say “Middlemarch,” because its philosophical and penetrating character studies might resonate more deeply for a reader with decades of perspective and experience.
