I'm reading 'Ten Storey Love Song' by Richard Milward. I read his first novel, 'Apples,' after hearing a reading of his in the Hague. I really enjoyed it, so I've started this one.
I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.
Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of fiction when I was in my 20s.
Hemingway was really early. I probably started reading him when I was just eleven or twelve. There was just something magnetic to me in the arrangement of those sentences. Because they were so simple - or rather they appeared to be so simple, but they weren't.
I read a lot when I'm away. I love courtroom dramas and I'm always looking for new authors.
I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.
Aside from John Grisham, there isn't really anybody besides Tess that I've truly gotten into. But, I do like them. When I have more time to read, I will absolutely look for some more authors. It's just about finding a world and a character that you're intrigued by.
Thus far, I've devoted my entire career to publishing genre short fiction, but I now look forward to applying that same level of curation to finding the best new novels and new authors.
It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.
Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years
I am becoming increasingly difficult to please as a reader, but I adore being surprised by a really wonderful book, written by someone I've never heard of before.
I first read Heinlein when I was very young.
Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.
Publishers, editors, agents all have one thing in common, aside from their love of cocktail parties. It's an incredible taste and an ability to find and nurture authors.
I had never read Upton Sinclair. I didn't read 'The Jungle' in high school or anything like that. But it's pretty terrific writing.
My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.
My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written.
I had a period when I read Nobel Prize winners. I figured they had to be good. I discovered some people I didn't know about, like the Icelandic writer Halldor Laxness, who wrote "Independent People." .
I'm seen as somebody who writes for adults because I'm an older man myself. Some of them find me, and a lot of them don't.
Like many people, I only knew of Ford Madox Ford through a book called 'The Good Soldier,' which is everybody's favorite Ford Madox Ford if they have one, but I came to read 'Parade's End' when it was suggested via Damien Timmer of Mammoth Screen.
All prizes have a role, if they are run with integrity and with a clear focus on reading and quality writing. I don't think any of them is necessary, but they all play an incredibly important role in building a body of literature, in introducing new authors to new readers, and extending reading.
I really, honest to God, didn't know what to read until I was out of college and living in Boston, and someone said, 'Well, why don't you read Hemingway?' And I thought, 'OK. I guess I'll try this Hemingway fellow.'
I read reviews and consider myself pretty 'plugged in' to the literary cosmos, yet one of the things I love best about book-touring is the opportunity to compare notes with favorite booksellers around the country. I always come home with books by authors I'd never heard of - or books I've read about but didn't realize I might love.
I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn't get into it. About seven years later, I rediscovered Hardy and consumed four of his novels in a row.
Dahl was my favorite author as a child. When I got older, I discovered his adult stories and fell even more in love with him.
