Margot Livesey

Margot Livesey's first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then she has published six novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona and The House on Fortune Street.

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

I don't read as many books as I should by Antipodean writers. Richard Flanagan's gorgeously written novel Wanting made me want to correct this failing. Flanagan is a Tasmanian writer and Wanting is set in the nineteenth century, partly in Tasmania and partly in London. In 1854 Lady Jane Franklin, the widow of the famous polar explorer Sir John Franklin, visited the novelist Charles Dickens, then at the height of his fame, and asked him to rebut an article that suggested that her husband's crew had turned to cannibalism during the last days of their desperate expedition. This meeting provides the dark spark that ignites Flanagan's novel. In alternating chapters he explores Dickens's relationship with his wife, Sir John Franklin and a young actress named Ellen Tiernan and the Franklins' relationship with a young aboriginal girl named Mathinna. Flanagan succeeds in making both Dickens's inner life and the genocide of the aborigines in his native Tasmania equally powerful.

The Scottish writer, James Kennaway, was born in 1928 and died in a car crash in 1968. I first heard of him because he attended the school in Scotland where my father taught but happily, during the sixties, many other people knew him because of his brilliant novels. I just read his posthumously published novel, The Cost of Living Like This. The subject matter could easily sound trite - a married man in his thirties, who's dying of cancer, has an affair with a much younger woman - but the writing is electrifying, crackling with wit and energy and passion. I wanted to stop strangers in the street and read them passages.

Currently I'm re-reading Jane Eyre, and marvelling all over again at Bronte's capacity to invoke the giant passions of childhood and the stages of Jane's journey as she makes her way from girlhood to adulthood. This time I'm trying to pay more attention to Bronte's handling of religion throughout the novel. She was, after all, a minister's daughter.

Learn more about Margot Livesey and her work.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pamela Redmond Satran

Pamela Redmond Satran is the author of the New York Times bestseller How Not To Act Old, based on her blog of the same name, as well as of five novels and the coauthor of ten baby name guides. She is also a developer of the website nameberry.com and the cowriter of The Glamour List.

Among the topics covered in How Not To Act Old, the book:

-- How not to facebook old
-- How to grind without totally embarrassing yourself
-- What to say to get out of holding the baby
-- Why you should never bring donuts to work
-- How to die cool, if you absolutely must

Late last month I asked Satran what she was reading. Her reply:

Methland by Nick Reding – As gripping and terrifying as a horror novel, though I never read horror novels, Methland is a non-fiction book about the destruction of a small town in Iowa by the meth epidemic. I’m working on a new web project, a kind of serialized novel based on a television show I invented a few years ago, that’s set in the Meth Belt of Middle America. One of my characters is a meth addict and another is on his way there. I am totally fascinated by this and find myself relishing this dark true-life read especially while I’m writing so much humor stuff. The only daunting thing is that the truth is so much more outrageous and otherworldly than anything I could invent.

Julia Child’s My Life in France – This was sent to me as a review copy, and I grabbed it one day as I was heading out the door to the lake. I hadn’t yet seen Julie & Julia, had not read that book, and had never been especially interested in Julia Child. But I found this book unexpectedly transporting as the tale of a middle-aged woman’s discovery of herself, of her true calling, and of ambition. Even now, there’s so little that celebrates over-40 professional women and since images of age and of old and young have been much on my mind because of How Not To Act Old, I found this particularly illuminating. I was especially impressed that Child was able to recall and recount all this for her nephew when she was in her 90s.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson – I’ve really loved this series of Kate Atkinson detective novels, set in England and Scotland, but what I didn’t expect when I read this on a plane from Paris to New York was that it would revolutionize my thinking about a novel I’ve been working on for three years now. She’s so wonderful at inhabiting her very different characters’ points of view in a very intimate third person voice, that it gave me a window into what I needed to do with my own novel. She also has the very rare and enviable ability to be extremely funny while writing about very dark things. I started a fresh draft after reading this novel that’s much closer to each of my three main characters’ viewpoints and is much improved, thanks to Atkinson’s influence.

Perfection, by Julie Metz – This memoir of a wife who discovers her husband’s many affairs after he drops unexpectedly dead was one of the summer’s big beach reads, which is exactly where I devoured it in less than two days. I’ve been thinking of doing a marriage memoir of my own, so I was reading it with part of my brain meditating such questions as whether I’d be willing to reveal as much as Metz did, and if my story was intrinsically as juicy as hers. But – and this is great testament to an author from a fellow writer – ultimately I was able to get out of thoughts about my own theoretical project and be transported by her book.

Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline – Christina, Alice Elliott Dark, Benilde Little, and I have for many years had a novelists’ group in which we talk about craft, business, and occasionally trade manuscripts. Christina’s just-published novel is a wonderful examination of four people and the relationships they make and break with each other over many years. Having read this book in a couple of drafts and reading it again now reminds me that writing fiction means changing the details and events and changing them again until you arrive at the most compelling possible story.

Visit Pamela Redmond Satran's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jordan Christy

Jordan Christy is a music publicist and has worked with dozens of artists and celebrities, in addition to various TV and media outlets. She has also written for local and national fashion magazines and music trade publications.

Her new book is How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World: The Art of Living with Style, Class, and Grace.

Last month I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

I just finished Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman and am happy to report that it elicited twelve chuckles and six laugh-out-louds (which is not easy to do). I am a non-fiction reader at heart, and prefer those non-fiction books to be funny, if at all possible. Nora Ephron delivers every time. Nora, if you're listening, I would like you to write the screenplay when my book gets made into a movie.

I also just read Hitman: Forty Years Making Music, Topping the Charts, and Winnings Grammys by the legendary producer David Foster. I work as a publicist in the music industry by day, so I'm always amused and entertained by other insider's thoughts and insights into the industry. It was fun to learn how he got started in the biz, as well as hear his personal experiences with some of music's greatest legends.

If you were to ask me this same question, "What are you currently reading?" tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, you would probably get the same response for this next book. My 9-month old is currently obsessed with My Little Counting Book by Roger Priddy, so we read it about 14 times a day. These Priddy books are phenomenal tools for associating words, colors, and numbers ... but I feel they could accurately rename it, My Ginormous Counting Book, as it weighs about twenty pounds, and when open, is as big as my daughter.

Visit Jordan Christy's website, blog, and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeff Parker

Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman and the collection The Back of the Line, and the coeditor of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States. He served as the program director of Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is currently the acting director of the Master’s Program in the Field of Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.

He and Mikhail Iossel co-edited the newly released Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia.

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

The last great book I read in English was Roberto Bolano's Savage Detectives. He is really, I think, the true heir to Borges and Marquez. I turned a friend on to him who preceded to read everything he has in translation. He kicked me the story collection Last Evenings on Earth, which I devoured in just a couple sittings. The thing is, formally speaking, they're not such great stories. And Bolano is not a stylist at all. In fact, if the translation is on, then his style is rather crude. But he has that kind of inexplicable magic that some writers have: he creates alternate realities that manage, despite their formal experimentation--and I know this sounds cheesy as hell--to transport you completely. I have 2666 sitting on my shelf but do not have the time quite yet to make the commitment, but I will. I will. I should say my typical habit, upon discovering a book I like a lot by a writer I've never read before, is to stop there. I am easily disappointed and a disappointment in subsequent work reflects back on the previous and so I like to keep my idea of one thing my idea of that thing. So far Bolano is an exception.

I also recently read Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang to see what the fuss was about. The marketers claim it is the book that started the environmental "terrorism" movement a la Earth First and Animal Liberation Front. It is a really fun book with a questionable, and, I believe, cautionary ending. But it is not great.

Because I spent the past year reading short stories in Russian for a new anthology I just co-edited, I got hooked on several of the authors and have been reading their stuff in Russian. Natalya Klyuchareva's novel Rossiya: Obshchi Vagon (I don't know of a satisfactory translation for this; it refers to the "Common Wagon" class on Russian trains and some people have suggested translating it as Russia On Wheels, which I don't really like) and Zakhar Prilepin's story collection Boots Full With Hot Vodka both of which really, urgently need to be translated into English. They are too good not to be.

Read more about Ovenman and Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jen Calonita

Jen Calonita is author of the teen series Secrets of My Hollywood Life and the new novel Sleepaway Girls.

Earlier this week I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

Since I finished Broadway Lights (aka Secrets 5, which is due in March 2010), I've been catching up on some of my summer reading. Here are a few of my favorite things I've read this summer:

Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella --- I love everything and anything by Ms. Kinsella and her latest did not disappoint. It's a friendship story wrapped around a mystery and it's hilarious. It's about two "twenties girl" -- Lara, who is in her twenties, and Sadie, who appears as a twentysomething ghost (she's actually Lara's great Aunt Sadie who just passed) and the two form an unlikely bond as they search for Sadie's missing dragonfly necklace, which Sadie just can't rest without.

The Daughters by Joanna Philbin -- What? You've never heard of this one. I know. That's because it's not out till next year, but I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at this sweet, charming teen series and I just know you're going to love it too. The series is all about what it would be like to be the daughter of a famous celebrity and the first book is about a famous model's daughter, and what it's like to walk in her shadow. It was great!

The Glamorous (Double) Life of Isabel Bookbinder: A Novel by Holly McQueen -- I tend to go for chicklit novels that will make me laugh out loud. I can't help it -- if it's light, funny and sweet, it's my type of book and this one by first-time author McQueen doesn't disappoint. It's about quirky girl named Isabel who dreams of being a successful author. Only problem? She hasn't written a single word yet. First she wants to perfect her author "look." Hilarious!

The Queen of Babble Gets Hitched by Meg Cabot -- I'm such a fan of Meg Cabot's teen books that I figured it was time I picked up some of her more adult fare. Lizzie Nichols, a wedding gown restorer, is a great character and this latest book in the series is about her big dilemma -- does she dump dreamy and rich but sort of cardboard fiance Luke and go for his best pal Chaz, who wants to be a teacher? Meg Cabot is the queen of being smart, witty and writing great dialogue and I thought this was so fun. I can't wait to go backwards and read the first two books.

Visit Jen Calonita's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Richard Mahler

Richard Mahler is the New Mexico-based author or co-author of eleven published books on travel, self-transformation, nature, social trends, and cooking. His newest book, entitled The Jaguar's Shadow: Searching for a Mythic Cat, is available now from Yale University Press.

Richard Knight of Colorado State University calls The Jaguar's Shadow “A wonderful book. Not only is it a detailed compilation of the economic, cultural, and ecological issues swirling around the jaguar, it is a balanced account of these complex issues.”

Not so long ago I asked Mahler what he was reading. His reply:

I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell and am half-way through his Outliers: The Story of Success (Little, Brown & Co., 2008). Gladwell has a pitch-perfect ear for the telling anecdote and is not afraid to reveal himself through interaction with his interview subjects. I identify with him because he asks questions and confesses ignorance in the same way most of us would. More importantly, I find his topics simply fascinating. They are rich, unmined veins of human behavior and psychology: how little things in life add up to big differences, the power of subliminal thinking, and what contributes to a person excelling at what he or she does. I suppose writers have discussed these sorts of things before, in academic journals and specialized books, but Gladwell has a wonderful way of keeping the conversation as lively as a good dinner party while at the same time introducing the little-known facts and up-to-the-deadline research results that are the hallmark of a champion reporter.

Another truly fun book I've just started is Jennifer Ackerman's Sex Sleep Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Like Gladwell, this author takes a seemingly simple, even mundane topic and engages me with one surprise after another. With both clarity and eloquence, Ackerman dissects what happens inside our bodies, for instance, when we try to do two things at once. Or what is going on biochemicaly when we begin to feel hungry. Or why young men have erections for an average of three hours in any given day. As someone who regards his physical aging with some trepidation, I am enjoying how this book takes apart the myriad systems of the human organism and explains their function. Sure, I should have learned this 40 years ago, but it seems much more relevant now to understand—and perhaps begin to accept—why my skin is getting thinner, my memory isn't as sharp, and there's intermittent ringing in my ears.

The most fun book of all on my nightstand is the illustrated autobiography of Frank Lima entitled The Great Morgani: The Creative Madness of a Middle-Aged Stockbroker Turned Street Musician (self-published through Diversified Printers, 2007). This is largely a collection of color photographs showing Lima in all manner of costume, playing his accordion on the sidewalks of Santa Cruz, CA, where I lived for three years. As the title implies, this 50-ish musician was a successful stockbroker for many years in his eclectic hometown, tucked on the northern end of Monterey Bay on California's Pacific Coast. So successful, in fact, that he earned enough money by mid-life to do exactly what he wanted to do from then on. Lima has chosen to dress in outlandish, even bizarre, costumes that he makes himself, while making music for passersby. There is no busker like this one.

Visit Richard Mahler's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gene M. Heyman

Gene M. Heyman is a research psychologist at McLean Hospital, a Lecturer in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Boston College. His new book is Addiction: A Disorder of Choice (Harvard University Press).

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

Camus, Albert (1996). The First Man. New York: Vintage Books.

My reading tends toward nonfiction, but I often have a novel going too. Over the years, my favorites have been Dickens and Philip Roth. Yesterday I finished Albert Camus' posthumously published, unfinished, last novel, The First Man. My impression is that Camus was less than half way done with the story and was planning to go back, revise, delete, and fill in hastily sketched scenes and characters. Nevertheless, the book is a “must read.” I can't imagine anyone who would not find pleasure and inspiration in the main character, Jacques.

The novel is autobiographical, but told in the third person. Jacques grows up in an impoverished French-Arab neighborhood in Algiers. He shares a small, bare apartment with his nearly deaf-mute mother, a tyrannical grandmother, a madcap, possibly brain-damaged, uncle, and an older brother. The brother is one of several blank spots in the book. We learn virtually nothing about him, although he is nearly the same age as Jacques. Possibly Camus planned to flesh him out after the narration was more underway. At the age of one, Jacques loses his father in World War I. The Camus family never recovers. They have few possessions, little family lore, no cultural traditions, and no books. What they know about France is that in the summer it is not as hot as it is in Algeria. What they know about Algeria goes no further than the boundaries of their neighborhood. Only Jacques can read.

Against--or perhaps in spite of--this bleak background, no boy in fiction has had a more intense childhood. For Jacques anything can become an adventure and glorious game. The trolley driver who avoided a dog on the tracks becomes the “heroic friend of the animals,” and the heavy-set brakeman who takes the corners so fast that the trolley loses its overhead wire wins Jacques’ admiration and the nickname “the bear.” On the way home, Jacques and his friends cross swords with a bald shopkeeper, whose great naked dome they loudly jest doubles as a racetrack for flies. Insulted by their gibes, the shopkeeper hires some thugs to teach the boys a lesson. Jacques and his best friend Pierre escape, but the others do not. At recess, Jacques plays soccer, despite the warnings of his grandmother. If she finds scuffmarks on the soles, she promises she will beat him with a whip. There are often scuffmarks, and she always keeps her promise. In the apartment, he lies on the floor with his uncle's dog so that he can feel the furry warmth of the panting animal. At age forty, he fondly remembers the smells of the wet wool trousers of his schoolmates.

On days off from school, Jacques and Pierre roam the city. One of their favorite haunts is the "Home for Disabled Veterans,” a sprawling building, with thick walls, cool hallways, and a redolent kitchen. It is located just beyond the last trolley stop at the edge of a grand abandoned park. The veterans are missing an arm or leg both. A few scoot around in wagons on the stone floors. A young, once-athletic veteran playfully threatens to kick Jacques and Pierre in the ass with his one leg. The adjoining park is densely wooded. There are tall eucalyptuses, royal palms, and rubber trees with low branches that take root again as they spread from the central trunk. Exotic flowers and thick hedges cover the ground. In a small clearing hidden by the dense foliage, Jacques and Pierre build an herbal laboratory, where they concoct poisonous potions. They gather oleander leaves, known for their soporific powers, cypress cones, which litter a cemetery, and the petals of strange plants. They have no particular victims in mind, but estimate that their concoctions could decimate most of Algiers.

But the boys’ best days at the convalescent home were when the notoriously fierce North African winds reached gale force levels.

On those days the children would dash to the closest palms, where long dried palm branches were always lying around.... Then, dragging the branches behind them, they ran to the terrace; the wind blew furiously, whistling through the big eucalyptuses that were wildly waving their top branches, disheveling the palms, making a sound of paper crumpling as it shook the big shiny leaves of the rubber trees. The idea was to climb up to the terrace, lift the palm branches and turn their backs to the wind ... then abruptly turn around. The branch would immediately be plastered against them, they would breathe its smell of dust and straw. The game was to advance into the wind while lifting the branch higher and higher. The winner was the one who first reached the end of the terrace without letting the wind tear the branch from his hands, then he would stand erect holding the palm branch at arm's length, one leg extended with all his weight on it, struggling victoriously for as long as possible against the raging force of the wind. There, standing erect over the park and plain seething with trees.... Jacques could feel the wind from the farthest ends of the country coursing down the length of the branches and down his arms to fill him with such a power and an exultation that he cried out endlessly, until his arms and shoulders gave way under the strain and he let go of the branch, which the storm carried off along with his cries. Pgs 243-244.

The immediate context is the crippled veterans with their missing limbs. If we widen the circle, we see Jacques impaired family and their barren apartment, where even words were hard to come by.

In day-to-day affairs, Jacques' exuberance joins forces with his remarkable intelligence and strong sense of honor. He excelled in the classroom, and at early age had a nuanced sense of right and wrong. He would shamelessly lie for boyhood pleasures, such as playing soccer, but was stricken if asked to lie about something important, such as money. The ever-brave Jacques is paralyzed with uncertainty when his grandmother forces him to tell a lie to secure a summer job. He also must have been puzzled by his own intelligence when those closest to him could not read and had so little knowledge of the world. As an adult, Camus joined other left-wing intellectuals in the fight against fascism and exploitation of the less fortunate, but he parted with the Left over the Soviet Union and the war in Algeria. Camus correctly saw that the Soviet Union had become a totalitarian state and argued that the French settlers deserved a place in a new independent, multi-cultural Algerian state.

Camus died when Jacques was about to enter his last year of high school. We never learn what happens to his friend Pierre or to the playful, somewhat zany uncle. There are a few hints about the women who are soon to enter Jacques’ life, but there is no hint of the literary career that lies ahead. No one could possibly guess that Jacques would win the Nobel Prize for literature and write hugely influential, highly principled political essays. In the 1960s, every American college student who took French read L’Etranger at least once. I am sure that biographers have tracked Camus’ path from the obscure Algerian lycee to the Nobel Prize. Sadly, we will never hear Camus’ version of the rest of Jacques’ story. I would like to know if Camus maintained his childhood trick of turning everyday events, even the most humble, into an adventure and parable. I like to think that he did.

Read an excerpt from Heyman's Addiction, and learn more about the book at the Harvard University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Chip Brantley

Chip Brantley is the author of The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot.

The cofounder of Cookthink.com, Brantley is a former food writer for the San Francisco Examiner and features writer for the Albany Times Union. He has contributed to many other publications, including Slate, the Boston Globe, the Oxford American, and Gastronomica.

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

I'd been thinking about reading Roberto Bolaño's 2666 for a while and felt like making it my big summer commitment. But my friend Joel suggested easing into 2666 by starting with some of Bolaño's stories and his shorter (but, at 672 pages, still long) The Savage Detectives. So I read Last Evenings on Earth, which is a sinister and just incredible collection of short stories. I'm not sure how to articulate why I love them. You could break them up and examine them, and I'm not sure you'd be any closer to knowing how and why they work so well.

From there, I moved right into The Savage Detectives, with the goal of finishing it in a week or two. That was six weeks ago. One of the reasons it's taking me so long is because I took a break to read Warren St. John's Outcasts United, and I've also been reading a lot about pistachios (for a new project). But also, Savage Detectives is one of those books I fall immediately into while I'm reading it, but then don't really look forward to returning to once I put it down. For the past couple of weeks, I've been reading in spurts, and I'm now getting close to the end of the long middle section. I've vowed to finish it before the end of August so that I can move on to something else.

I haven't decided whether or not to head right into 2666. I've ordered and am looking forward to Patrick Radden Keefe's The Snakehead, a book about the smuggling of Chinese immigrants into New York, and Langdon Cook's Fat of the Land, a book about foraging. Also, my father-in-law just gave me Daniel Silva's The Kill Artist, the first of his Gabriel Allon books, and that might be the perfect Bolaño intermission.

Visit Chip Brantley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Gebert

Michael Gebert is the creator of the Chicago-based food video podcast and blog Sky Full of Bacon, and writes about food and media for various publications. He is the author of The Encyclopedia of Movie Awards.

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

After 9/11 I found it hard to read fiction. There were two reasons for this. One was a conviction that today's fiction writers simply weren't up to the task-- look at Updike's book about a terrorist in which he imagines him to be pretty much exactly like every other Updike protagonist, or John LeCarre's last ten unreadable anti-US screeds. The world was so much richer as revealed by non-fiction writers, from Bernard Lewis with his polymath understanding of the Arab world to books like Rise of the Vulcans or The Looming Tower, so full of complex real-life characters. Honestly, what novelist in the last 30 years has conjured up characters as compelling as The Looming Tower's main figures-- the philandering FBI goodfella John O'Neill, his should-be ally but bureaucratic archenemy the CIA terror geek Michael Scheuer, the pitiless intellectual Dr. Zawahiri, the aimless rich kid turned terror celebrity Osama Bin Laden? What a wonderful movie it would make, if Hollywood had the balls.

The other was much closer to home-- I had two young sons and I was reading to them all the time. So to a certain extent my fiction itch was scratched by kid lit, and to be honest, a lot of it-- especially if it was written after 1930 and before 1970-- was better than a great deal of adult fiction I'd read. In particular I'd mention Johnny Tremain, a first-rate coming-of-age novel in which the protagonist's progress from feudal apprentice to free man nicely parallels America's struggles in the Revolutionary War; any adult could read it without condescension. But there are many others I enjoyed sharing with them-- Walter Brooks' Freddy the Pig novels, less precious than E.B. White's animal books; droll Roald Dahl, of course; Sid Fleischman's Americana novels; Norman Lindsay's dada The Magic Pudding; and so on.

Eventually the urgent hunger to read current affairs books died down, and my professional life has taken me more toward food writing; there are many pleasures in food writing but they're rarely the same ones you get from a great novel, so I've been turning back to fiction, though I have to say it hasn't always been easy. One thing I have devoured with pleasure is the University of Chicago's series of reprinted Parker novels by the late Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark). The early ones capture in fine spare prose a drab, seedy America of the 60s which Parker, the hyperlogical sociopath, slices through like a knife; they're the epitome of the crime novel taken to abstraction.

For some reason I keep trying Victorian novels, but life today just isn't paced for them; I admire Trollope's satirical eye but it's hard when you've read 80 pages and it's still just breakfast at the first house. They wrote literary gas guzzlers for an age when time was cheap. One I did succeed with a couple of years ago, and have recommended widely since (so I might as well do so here too), is Willkie Collins' No Name. It's about two sisters who are screwed out of an inheritance by a quirk of the law, and how one of them uses every feminine wile there is to go after the fortune. This female cynic and conniver is such an unexpected and delightful character to spend time with that you aren't bothered too much that the book doesn't really reach a satisfactory conclusion. Hmm, thinking about it, she's sort of like Parker, slicing through the cant of her age like a knife. I guess that says something about what I like in fiction, or about me.

Visit Michael Gebert's website to learn more about Sky Full of Bacon and links to his writing about food and media.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steven Strogatz

Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, and is currently Director of the Center for Applied Mathematics.

His books include Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, about which the Nature reviewer wrote: "Strogatz ... is a first-rate storyteller and an even better teacher ... SYNC is a great read."

Strogatz's new book is The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life while Corresponding about Math.

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

At the moment I'm reading Panic In Level 4, the latest page turner by Richard Preston. Ever since The Hot Zone -- the scariest book I've ever read -- I've been a big fan of Preston's. He's one of our best science writers. I love his cinematic style, eye for detail, dry humor and understated language, especially when he discusses something really freaky or macabre.

Freeman Dyson's recent collection of essays, The Scientist as Rebel, has also given me lots of food for thought. His broad view of the scientific enterprise is always as illuminating as it is iconoclastic.

On a recent cross-country plane flight, I tried dipping into Rabbit, Run, by John Updike but couldn't find any empathy for Rabbit and gave up after about 40 pages. Embarrassing, but true.

Instead, I turned to something that I thought might be cheesy fun (which it was) but which also turned out to be surprisingly thoughtful: Pete Sampras's tennis memoir, A Champion's Mind. The story of his childhood and his rise to greatness were unfamiliar to me, and made me admire him and appreciate him in a way I never had before. Like everyone else, I always thought he was a bit of a boring player, but now I understand what was going on in his head during all those Grand Slam matches.

Visit Steven Strogatz's website.

Among the early praise for The Calculus of Friendship:

"As these two men find truer, deeper friendship through an exchange of letters on math, you may be surprised to find yourself, as I was, moved by powerful emotions. I never thought I'd get choked up by an equation--but these guys are plotting out the hardest kind of change to track: the movement from Me to Us."
--Alan Alda

"The Calculus of Friendship is an intriguing journey that casts mathematics in a most unusual light. Through thirty years of correspondence between student and teacher, we enter a private world where the rigors of logic are the last defense against the vagaries of life."
--Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe

--Marshal Zeringue