“Years ago I read everything by Hemingway and Raymond Carver,” says the co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and author, most recently, of “Imperfect Union.” “It’s a different experience to read Elif Shafak and Lauren Groff.”
What books are on your nightstand?
It’s a stack. Here is a selection.
“The Anarchy,” William Dalrymple’s history of the East India Company.
“Hill Women,” Cassie Chambers’s memoir of growing up in Eastern Kentucky, where my wife and I went to college.
“My Hero Academia,” a Japanese graphic novel that our oldest daughter assigned me to read.
“Dreams of El Dorado,” H. W. Brands’s history of the United States’ settlement of the West.
“Members Only,” Sameer Pandya’s new novel about the only person of color in an exclusive club.
“The Governance of China,” Xi Jinping’s tome on his political views.
“These Truths,” Jill Lepore’s history of the United States.
“Behind the Scenes in the Lincoln White House,” a memoir by Elizabeth Keckley, a onetime slave who became dressmaker to the first lady Mary Todd Lincoln.
What’s the last great book you read?
My nightstand also has “Anna Karenina,” though I haven’t finished. My wife, Carolee, says this Great Book can’t be so great if I can’t get through its 700 pages, but I think Tolstoy’s sentences and insights are unmatched. I can vouch for the beginning, at least.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
There are different ideals for different phases of my life. Working backward from the present:
It’s a cold and rainy day, and there’s a couch near the fire, and black coffee, and a spy novel is on my lap.
It’s bedtime for one of our girls, and I am reading Harry Potter aloud, eliding the scariest pages as we go.
I’m in a house in Pakistan, having bought Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” in an Islamabad shop called Mr. Old Books.
In Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, in December 2001, the power is out and I’m rereading Raymond Chandler’s “The Lady in the Lake” by the glow of a headlamp.
Attending Hunter College in Manhattan, I’m on the bed of a dorm room that is cold because I unknowingly left the window cracked open all winter, reading Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker,” a book that was much too thick to open when a professor assigned it but now that class is canceled by a student strike I have time.
I’m 12 and home sick for the day, under a blanket on the couch with a Time-Life book about the U.S. war with Mexico.
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?
William Faulkner’s short novel “Old Man.” A convict is unexpectedly swept out of captivity by the Mississippi flood of 1927. Having floated so far downriver that he would never be recaptured, he spends the rest of the novel doggedly trying to get back into prison.
Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?
Amazing books have come in recent years from Pakistani novelists, including Mohammed Hanif, Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie and Fatima Bhutto. Their beautifully written, edgy and political novels take on problems of their country and the world.
Do you have any comfort reads?
Years ago I bought “The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,” four used hardcover volumes for $4. I open it to one of the years of his life and follow along.
What moves you most in a work of literature?
Writing that makes me see what the characters see. Like a story in Lauren Groff’s “Florida,” which puts you inside a house with a woman who rides out a hurricane alone.
Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?
I devour historical fiction. Robert Harris, Alan Furst, M. J. Carter.
Given time, there’s no genre I would automatically avoid. “My Hero Academia,” the Japanese manga on my nightstand, is fascinating because an important character, All Might, admires America and seems to be created from American comic book stereotypes.
How do you organize your books?
Old favorites — Robert Caro biographies, Carolee’s E. B. White essays — are in a bookcase in the bedroom. Books relating to my research have a few shelves in the living room. The rest I shove on any shelf I can find in the house, because whenever I take a book down to read, a new children’s book instantly takes its place.
Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?
Antihero: Judge Holden, the huge hairless gunman in Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.”
Hero: The father who never gives up protecting his son in Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.”
What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?
Because I was socially awkward, books were my lifeline. I checked out science fiction anthologies from the public library in Carmel, Ind., and mysteries like “The Three Investigators” series. A mystery anthology that included Raymond Chandler’s “Killer in the Rain” caused me to read all his novels, starting with “The Big Sleep.” Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was from Indiana so I read every book of his. My brothers will tell you that I read the encyclopedia, which is technically true! “World Book Encyclopedia” had a children’s supplement with stories of heroes like young Winston Churchill in captivity in South Africa, or young Louis Armstrong in reform school in New Orleans. I hardly imagined that I could travel the world, but books let me know it was there.
How have your reading tastes changed over time?
I’ve grown more attached to writers with nuanced female as well as male characters. Years ago I read everything by Hemingway and Raymond Carver. It’s a different experience to read Elif Shafak and Lauren Groff.
What book would you recommend for America’s current political moment?
Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men.” A Southern demagogue gets himself elected governor to battle the elites, but gradually surrenders his principles.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
John Ridley, Attica Locke and David Simon. All have written for the screen as well as the page.
What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?
“Little Women.” I wrote a history involving a 19th-century woman, Jessie Benton Frémont, and people brought up “Little Women” at every other stop on the book tour.
What do you plan to read next?
While researching a book about Lincoln, I’m awaiting delivery of a used copy of “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.”
"book" - Google News
July 02, 2020 at 04:16PM
https://ift.tt/2BuScDd
Steve Inskeep Is Drawn to Books With Nuanced Female Characters - The New York Times
"book" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Yv0xQn
https://ift.tt/2zJxCxA
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Steve Inskeep Is Drawn to Books With Nuanced Female Characters - The New York Times"
Post a Comment