Peter Golenbock

Peter Golenbock's books include two titles which hit the bookstands last Tuesday, In the Country of Brooklyn and American Prince, a book he wrote with Tony Curtis. His biography of George Steinbrenner comes out in the spring.

The introduction to In the Country of Brooklyn begins:

The is one of those magical experiences where at the beginning of the process you wonder if any publisher will be savvy enough to understand exactly what it is you’re trying to do, and at the end of the process you say to yourself, “How in the world did I accomplish this?”[read on]

A few days ago I asked Golenbock what he was reading. His reply:

More often than not, I read biographies or autobiographies. I recently finished reading Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown, a really great journey into the life of one of rock's geniuses. Before that I read The Great One, a biography of Jackie Gleason by William Henry, and before that I completed Bobby and J. Edgar, a truly great piece of reporting and writing about the Kennedys by Burton Hersh.

Learn more about Peter Golenbock and his work at his official website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Andy Clark

Andy Clark is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He is the author of several books including Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and The Future Of Human Intelligence, and the newly released Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension.

Earlier this week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Fiction Books:

Michael Chabon: Kavalier and Clay
Neal Stephenson: Interface

Comics:

True Believers (Marvel Limited Series)
The Authority (Wildstorm)

Non-fiction:

Jerry Fodor: LOT 2
Maryanne Wolf: Proust and the Squid

Visit Andy Clark's University of Edinburgh webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rachel Toor

Rachel Toor teaches writing at Eastern Washington University, is a columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and a senior writer for Running Times. She is the author of The Pig and I: How I Learned to Love Men (Almost) as Much as I Love My Pets and Admissions Confidential: An Insider’s Account of the Elite College Selection Process.

Her new book is Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running.

A few days ago I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

Thinking about the answer to this question made me realize that my reading habits are, well, both odd and entrenched. I always have one audio book of nonfiction going in my car. I just finished listening to John McPhee read Uncommon Carriers. (He has a kind of twang, for a Princeton boy, and sounds older than I think he should, given that he is, you know, a god.) Next up is Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary?

I always have a book, and about a zillion episodes of This American Life, on my iPod, which I listen to when I run (if I'm not running with other people or doing a speed workout). Right now I'm about a third of the way through my friend Jess Walter's novel, The Zero, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

By my bed I have towering stacks. During daylight hours, I'm only allowed to read nonfiction that is work-related. So I'm going through Nicholas Lemann's history of the SAT, The Big Test, and also Jerome Karabel's The Chosen, about the history of admissions at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. This is because I was asked to write a chapter for a three-volume history of the business of higher education.

Then, before I go to sleep, I always read from a mystery (or other genre-ish) novel. At this moment it's an older Lee Child, from his Jack Reacher series.

And, of course, I've just re-read Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains and am about to start in on (again) Michael Lewis's exquisite Moneyball, for a graduate class I'm teaching.

Visit Rachel Toor's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom is the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and a full professor in the Faculty of Philosophy. He has more than 140 publications to his name, including the books Anthropic Bias (Routledge, 2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (OUP, 2008), and Enhancing Humans (OUP, 2008).

Last week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

I happen at the moment to be reading A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, by James G. March. Judging by the title and the cover, it looks like yet another one of those decision-theory-for-managers books that clog the business section in most bookstores (you know the ones typically produced by business consultants who feel that they must publish one book to establish their credibility, whether or not they have anything new to say). And the undistinguished prose also bears the hallmarks of something composed in great haste. So much greater, then, my delight in discovering that this is actually a very good book - substantial, original, erudite, and wise (judging from what I've read thus far). A special virtue of the book is that the author has a grasp on two very different outlooks on decision-making: an economic expected utility framework, and a sociological perspective, and he is able to bring these together in interesting ways. The book certainly towers over all the competitors in the same category that I have come across. Instead of flicking through it quickly, as was my original intention, I'm now planning to give it a careful read.

I'm also reading The Shape of the Past: A Philosophical Approach to History by Gordon Graham, and a short technical paper, "Convergence of Expected Utilities with Algorithmic Probability Distributions," by Peter de Blanc). I've not read enough of these yet to comment.

I'm also reading as an audiobook (I love audiobooks!) The Diary of Samuel Pepys.

Visit Nick Bostrom's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Asali Solomon

Asali Solomon was born and raised in Philadelphia and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College.

Get Down, her first book, earned her a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, was chosen as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for 2007, and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

Earlier this month I asked Solomon what she was reading. Her reply:

I'm reading for the classes I teach, but it turns out to be serious pleasure reading. I just re-read Toni Morrison's Love, which disguises itself as a sort of playful riff on some of Morrison's other books, but turns out to be the history of everything: women, men, girls, black people, America, love, food, pettiness, class, cruelty, snitching, sex, Eden, social movements. It sounds daunting but it goes down easy and has about the most amazing final sequence I've read in any book.

I've also been brushing up on the stories of Flannery O'Connor, the only writer who can make me laugh out loud at ignorant racist white Southerners and their black farm help.

Then finally I'm reading Fledgling, the final novel by Octavia Butler, whose sudden death in 2006 I still can't get over. It's about a 50something genetically engineered black vampire in the body of an 11 year old girl who has to avenge the deaths of her family. It's one of the most profound and freaky books you'll ever read. (RIP, Octavia).

Read an excerpt from Get Down, and learn more about the book and author at the publisher's website and the Asali Solomon AALBC webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joe Abercrombie

UK fantasy writer Joe Abercrombie is the author of the First Law Trilogy: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings.

Recently, I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Over the last couple of weeks - in an airport, on a flight, and standing on the stairs for an hour this evening - I have been reading an exciting first novel that has set its genre aflame, called The Blade Itself.

I know what you're thinking. "But isn't that your book? How dare you promote it in such a barefaced manner? You pompous arse!" And you'd be right. I am a pompous arse. But not for that reason. Because although I have been reading an exciting first novel entitled The Blade Itself, the genre it set aflame was not fantasy but crime, and the author was not me, but a very pleasant young man from Chicago called Marcus Sakey.

Allow me to explain. It was, I think, several months after I sold my book, The Blade Itself, to a publisher, but several months before it was published, that I became aware that someone else had sold a book called The Blade Itself in the US. There is no hint of copying, the timing makes it impossible, we had simply, simultaneously, picked the same title, derived from a quote from Homer's Odyssey, "the blade itself incites to violence." Great minds think alike, I guess. And mine. When The Blade Itself was optioned for a film a few months ago I received a welter of congratulations from readers. A welter which greatly surprised me, since my agent had not been in touch. It was, in fact, Marcus Sakey's book, The Blade Itself, which had been taken to the bosom of Hollywood. In Siena, Italy a couple of weeks ago, my wife needed a book for the flight, so we stopped into a bookshop to peruse the English Language section. As I occasionally do when in a bookshop, I checked to see if my books were in stock. They did have The Blade Itself. You guessed it. Marcus Sakey's The Blade Itself.

So I thought I'd check it out. And I'm glad I did. It's a recognisable style of story - guy with a shady past makes good but his shady past comes back to haunt him - but it's nicely written with some good characterisation, a strong eye for detail, and the tough prose one would expect. At times I felt the plot tended to drive the characters rather than the other way around, but the build up and climax really were cracking, hence my finishing the book standing on the stairs. All in all a great piece of crime writing, and I look forward to reading whatever else Sakey puts out. Providing none of it shares titles with any of my other books, of course....

So my advice? Read The Blade Itself. Both of 'em.

Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz wrote of the First Law Trilogy: "Abercrombie has written the finest epic fantasy trilogy in recent memory. He's one writer no one should miss."

Learn more about the author and his work at Joe Abercrombie's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Martin Millar

Martin Millar is the author of Love and Peace with Melody Paradise, Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation, Lux the Poet, The Good Fairies of New York, Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving, Ruby & The Stone Age Diet, Lonely Werewolf Girl, and Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me ... and other novels and plays and short stories and articles.

Bookslut called Lonely Werewolf Girl "a combination political thriller and werewolf soap opera -- if your idea of soap opera includes some seriously bloody confrontations between creatures that can rip your arms off.... Basically, this book is a delicious 550-page romp through urban fantasy versions of London and the Scottish countryside that draws you in from the first few pages and does not let you go."

At the end of last month I asked Millar what he was reading. His reply:

I like Japanese comics, or Manga. In the past few months I've worked my way through a large bundle of Naruto, by Masashi Kishimoto. Naruto features hordes of fighting Ninja, which is basically what I want from Manga. I've been reading some of Bleach, too, by Tite Kubo. Both Naruto and Bleach are very popular Manga but I've been reading a few other interesting titles too, such as Apothecarius Argentum by Tomomi Yamashita, an unusual tale about a Japanese apothecary.

Also on the comic front I've been reading some huge volumes of Neil Gaiman's Collected edition of Sandman, which is great. I did read Sandman when it first came out, and I'm very pleased to have these collected editions.

Other than that I've been re-reading the collected short stories of Somerset Maugham. Somerset Maugham is one of my favourite writers, and an excellent story-teller, though I'm not sure if many people read him nowadays. I particularly like his stories based on his travels in the far east, through the rubber plantations of Malaysia and Singapore, in the 1920s.

I greatly enjoyed Sons of Avalon: Merlin's Prophecy, by Dee Marie, an Arthurian novel concerning the early days of Merlin, and now I've moved on to Selected Political Speeches by Cicero. I'm keen on classical history, and Marcus Tullius Cicero is my favourite Roman. We know a lot about him, thanks to all the letters and speeches he left behind. He was executed on the orders of Marc Anthony; I've never liked Marc Anthony because of that.

Visit Martin Millar's website, blog, and MySpace page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Reinhardt

Susan Reinhardt has been called “the Southern Belle’s answer to David Sedaris” and “a modern-day, Southern-fried Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry.”

She is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist and author of three books -- Not Tonight, Honey: Wait ‘til I’m a Size 6 (2005); Don’t Sleep With a Bubba Unless Your Eggs are in Wheelchairs (2007); and Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin (2008).

Recently, I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

It's really crazy because I read three books at a time. Currently, I'm reading one I'd never choose on my own, but a friend said the writing was sharp and clever. It's called Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, and it's by Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno, the film, and won and Oscar for it.

I'm also reading a sappy Nicholas Sparks novel, Nights in Rodanthe.

In addition, I read short humorous stories by authors like Laurie Notaro and David Sedaris.

Read Reinhardt's interview with Mary Ward Menke at January Magazine.

Visit Susan Reinhardt's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dan Hooper

Dan Hooper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago and an Associate Scientist in the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, where he investigates dark matter, supersymmetry, neutrinos, extra dimensions, and cosmic rays.

He is the author of Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe's Missing Mass and Energy, a SEED magazine Notable Book, and the newly released Nature's Blueprint: Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unified Theory of Matter and Force.

Last month I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

If you look at the stack of books currently on my nightstand, you will find Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within and Unended Quest by the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper.

Along with these, which I am actually in the process of reading, I have a much larger stack of books that I would like to get to eventually. These include The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind and the novel Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire (I very much enjoyed his other book, Wicked).

Within the last month or so, I finished reading Bill Clinton's autobiography My Life and The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. I also read a book about the philosophy of Ayn Rand, but can't say that I found it very compelling.

Visit Dan Hooper's website and view his lecture on dark matter and dark energy for non-scientists.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thomas P. Slaughter

Thomas P. Slaughter, Professor of History at the University of Rochester, is the author, most recently, of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (Hill & Wang, September 2008).

Last week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Do you really want to know that this morning I have read chapter drafts from two doctoral dissertations, a book manuscript for a New York publishing house, a manuscript submitted to a journal of environmental history, and my email? I also started on the New York Times during breakfast, and found that yet again I have not won a MacArthur genius award, but that no one whose work I despise won one either.

Now, I’m going to write; I’m working on a book called Independence: The Beginnings of the United States, which looks at the American Revolution from a global perspective on the eighteenth century and in light of Just War theory. When I get home this afternoon, I will dive into the snail mail; after that there will be the Algebra II text that my son is wrestling with and a draft journal entry that my daughter will be writing for her English class. The first is a challenge; the second will be gripping. Tonight, I will pick up where I left off last night in the Library of America volume Zuckerman Bound, which collects Phillip Roth’s trilogy from the 1980s. I finished The Ghost Writer and am now reading Zuckerman Unbound.

I also have the September issue of Lapham’s Quarterly on the nightstand; this one is about “Ways of Learning” and I am fascinated by the journal’s concept, organization, quirky choices, and brilliant strokes. I want to finish Elizabeth Kolbert’s article in the July 7th and 14th New Yorker, which is on the Danish Island of Sams, where residents have achieved zero carbon emissions and produce more energy from renewable resources than they use.

I used to read the New York Review of Books, but it bores me so I go to sleep a little earlier instead.

Read more about The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition at the publisher's website.

Thomas P. Slaughter's other publications include The Whiskey Rebellion and Exploring Lewis and Clark.

--Marshal Zeringue