Book Lust has 175 categories and over 1,800 recommendations for best books. How did you decide on the categories and recommendations?
In many cases I knew there were books that I wanted to include in Book Lust, and came up with the categories to fit them--First Lines to Remember is one. I wanted to include Pete Dexter's The Paperboy and that seemed like a good place to put it. Other categories came via friends--Pawns of History, for example, or A, My Name is Alice were recommended to me. Others I knew that I needed to include to give the book balance, like Science Fiction and Fantasy, or Romance. Then there were particular authors that I wanted to highlight, including Elinor Lipman, Ross Thomas, Iris Murdoch, and others.
How do you come up with your content titles? Some are truly wonderful like "Grit Lit" about "Southern-fried Greek tragedies" and the last title in the book "Zero: This Will Mean Nothing to You." What is your favorite chapter?
The final titles of the categories, as they appear in Book Lust, were arrived at in different ways. Most started out being much quirkier, i.e., much less clear as to what the content was, but it became clear when the book was in the copy editing period that we needed to make the contents clearer to the reader. So I had originally had a section called, simply, "This Will Mean Nothing to You," which we ended up calling "Zero: This Will Mean Nothing to You." Other titles, like Grit Lit were suggestions from friends. One of my favorite categories is "Great Dogs in Fiction," but I also love the section "100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade."
You have been quoted as saying that you are a voracious reader and that you don't read at work. When do you do your reading and how do you decide what to read? Do you reread you favorites?
I basically read all the time that I'm not at work. I usually have three books going at one time--a work of fiction, one of non-fiction, and one I'm either re-reading or reviewing for Booklist, Library Journal, or the Seattle Times. I decide what to read pretty much like everyone else does--reviews (I read Booklist, LJ, and Publisher's Weekly, as well as the NY Times Book Review, as well as the Washington Post Book World when I can get it) and recommendations from friends (or people who meet me on the street). I also browse the shelves of bookstores and libraries a lot, looking for titles and covers that catch my fancy. I am a big re-reader, but the books I go back to I've read so many times that I practically know them by heart, so I just go straight to my favorite parts.
I'm sure readers are interested in what you are reading now. Would you share several titles with us?
Right now I am deeply immersed in Central Asia--I am reading two wonderful books--a historical novel set in the 1840s in Afghanistan (although the author also transports you to high society London and India) called The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher and Chasing the Sea by Tom Bissell, an account of his travels in Uzbekistan, part of the former Soviet Union.
You have an MLS from the University of Michigan and a master's in history at Oklahoma State University. You have worked in bookstores and public libraries. In the introduction to Book Lust you mention Miss Long and Miss Whitehead as being "the two main influences on my reading life." How does your background influence what you read?
I do love history, which is why I ended up getting an M.A. from OSU (I kept taking classes with no particular end in sight until after many years they informed me that I had taken enough courses to get an advanced degree), so I read a lot of that. When I was growing up, Miss Whitehead and Miss Long, the children's librarians at my neighborhood library in Detroit, introduced me to many of the books that I still recall with fondness (and included in Book Lust), like the Robert Heinlein space operas (Red Planet, Space Cadet), The Lord of the Rings series, C.S. Lewis, The Moffats, The Saturdays--I could go on for pages here! My work in bookstores and libraries has served to broaden my reading because of the necessity of doing good work recommending books to others.
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