Ted Gup

Ted Gup is a legendary investigative reporter who worked under Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, and later at Time. His latest book is Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life.

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

I tend to revisit my favorite authors and though I am associated with investigative reporting, my favorite reading is far from sleuthing. I return again and again to E. B. White, the poets Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, John Donne ( which makes me a formalist) and numerous essayists -- Ruskin, J.S. Mill, Walter Lippmann, Thoreau, Emerson, Joyce Carol Oates, Bertrand Russell -- as well as naturalists like Barry Lopez, David Quammen, etc. I rarely if ever read contemporary fiction -- not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because I can never seem to get sufficient traction with what has already been written and withstood the "test of time," if you'll pardon the cliche. I also read collections of columnists and I enjoy dipping into history books and reading random chapters. I know this is eclectic (to be charitable) but that's the sort of thing I most enjoy reading.

Ted Gup is the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism at Case Western Reserve University. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and has received the George Polk Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Book-of-the-Year Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors, and many other awards. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Nation of Secrets won the 2008 Goldsmith Book Prize.

Visit Ted Gup's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Vali Chandrasekaran

Vali Chandrasekaran writes for television’s My Name Is Earl. In 2006, his script Jump for Joy was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award. He has been an editor of The Harvard Lampoon and a management consultant for Boston Consulting Group, and he runs the Web site Vali’s Views. In a memorable turn on-screen, he played the role of “Vali” on the NBC hit comedy The Office.

He and Steve Hely wrote The Ridiculous Race.

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

I'm a monogamous reader, not one of those people who reads many books simultaneously. However, this monogamy doesn't cover books that I've already read. I reference those frequently whenever I write.

Currently, I'm reading Sin In the Second City, Karen Abbott's vivid history of an early 1900s high-class whorehouse. The book starts with the murder of rich department store heir and, within the first 70 pages, features characters named Bathhouse John, Hinky Dink Kenna, Big Jim, and Mushmouth Johnson. By page 100, readers relive the night Prince Henry of Prussia visited the brothel and watched harlots dance in fawnskin and devour a platter of raw sirloin. It's an interesting insight into what used to give rich-dudes erections.

The book that I'm currently referencing is John Swartzwelder's How I Conquered Your Planet. Swartzwelder has written 59 episodes of the Simpsons and invented Homer Simpson. (Matt Groening may have created Homer, but Swartzwelder made him the funniest character on television.) One veteran Simpsons writer told the New York Times "John Swartzwelder is the greatest writer in the English language in any form." I know a few incredibly funny TV writers who consider this an understatement.

Whenever I write, I have a copy of How I Conquered Your Planet on my desk. The book, about an incredibly stupid detective named Frank Burley, is my favorite of Swartzelder's five self-published novels. Whenever I feel stuck, I open the book to a random page and start reading until I hit a great joke. Here's what I just stumbled upon, after reading for 10 seconds:

Setup: Frank Burly is on trial for trying to overthrow the aliens that had taken over earth. "Now I'd seen enough TV shows about trials to know that you've got to surprise 'em. The lawyer who wins is the lawyer with the biggest surprises. So I showed up wearing different clothes everyday. And one day I stood in a completely different spot... But the prosecution lawyer surprised everybody even more by how much evidence he had against me."

I've heard authors described as "writer's writers." Swartzwelder is something more rarefied than that: He's a comedy writer's comedy writer. To be honest, I don't think there are any others.

Visit The Ridiculous Race Facebook page and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Evison

Jonathan Evison is the author of All About Lulu, and the founder and moderator of The Fiction Files, an on-line literary discussion forum. He likes rabbits.

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

Frederick Exley – A Fan’s Notes

I’ve been meaning to read this book for over a decade. More often than not, due to alphabetical proximity, All About Lulu sits right beside A Fan’s Notes in bookstores everywhere, along with Middlesex, forming a Lulu sandwich (gotta’ love the bread on that sandwich). When I finally got around to inhaling A Fan’s Notes in three sittings last week, I felt as though I’d discovered a long lost father, as though it were possible to have been influenced by a voice I’d never heard before. It has been suggested to me by some (most recently my brilliant friend Greg Downs, author of Spit Baths, that every writer is fundamentally Shakespearean or Dickensian in their approach to character. Exley-- from Mr. Blue to Paddy to the Counselor—is decidedly Dickensian, from his characterizations, right down to his mastery of the sprawling, spiraling, digressive, hilariously convoluted sentence. Exley’s characters are small people operating in a big world, or more precisely, being operated upon by the big world (in the case of his protagonist, quite literally).

While Exley’s voice is at times as ribald as say, Bukowski (I’m reminded of the singular, almost sacrosanct respect reserved by Mr. Blue for the mysterious and daunting possibility of cunnilingus), Exley’s insights into the squalid business of alcoholism, sexual perversion, and abject failure, are far more nuanced, distilled, and textured than anything from the imagination Bukowski.

I loved A Fan’s Notes for its honesty, heart, and irresistible voice.

William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom

Here, now, is a guy who lands firmly on the Shakespeare side of the continuum; big characters exercising their influence on the world. We’re doing a group reading of Absalom, Absalom right now on The Fiction Files, and I’m really trying to approach it with an open mind. I’ve had a contentious relationship with Faulkner always, and my opinion of him is often unpopular. I love his ambition. I love his themes. I love his settings. And sometimes I’m enamored of his sentences. But oftentimes (to my ear) his language chokes on its own exuberance. Sometimes he writes like a drunk guy trying to sound sober (coincidence?). When he starts stringing so many modifiers together that I feel like he’s trying to distract me, I think of old Hemingroid’s comment about Faulkner mistaking big words for big emotions, and I stop trusting his language. At times I can’t escape the feeling that Faulkner does not want to offer his reader full access to his material, that he’d rather keep his reader at a distance, preferably in a state of confused admiration. I’ve felt this also with the later works of Joyce. This could well speak to my own shortcomings as a reader, though. At any rate, I’ve just started Absalom, Absalom, and I’m sinking into Faulkner more than ever (though he still sounds drunk half the time).

Among the early praise for All About Lulu:

"The star-crossed lovers at the center of All About Lulu forge a middle ground between Archie and Veronica and Kurt and Courtney. Evison has delivered a witty, understated, heartfelt, and, at times, almost unnervingly honest debut."
—Adam Langer, author of Crossing California

"At once exuberant and clear-eyed, scabrous and wise, Jonathan Evison's All About Lulu has something for every reader--love, betrayal, growth and, ultimately, redemption--all wrapped in the addictive voice of William Miller, Evison's fiercely likeable narrator."

—Keith Dixon, author of The Art of Losing

Visit Jonathan Evison's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Patrick Lennon

Patrick Lennon is author of the Corn Dolls (2006) and Steel Witches (2008).

After reading his posts as guest blogger at The Rap Sheet last month, I contacted him and asked what he was reading. His reply:

There's hot rain in England, and I've just packed the manuscript of my next book off to my agent, so I have a few days now with the lightning outside and a handful of books I've been eyeing up for a while.

First, there's Up In Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard. The great feeling - as always with him - is of characters shooting around the book like pinballs, one of them a Detroit butcher who thinks he's Heinrich Himmler's twin. A real pleasure. I've always been conscious that three of my favourite writers - Elmore Leonard, Franz Kafka and Thomas Hardy - were all alive at the same moment in the mid 1920's. I don't know what that means, but I find it interesting.

Then there's Cripple Creek by James Sallis - the first of his books that I've read. I like this kind of heightened, small-town thing. And at the foot of the first page, someone's singing 'I heard the voice of a pork chop say, Come unto me and rest.' That's a very good sign.

I'm also going back to Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell, which I laid aside a few years ago. It's one of a series of secret agent yarns that O'Donnell published in the 1960's - not as corny as I'd thought on first reading, and punctuated by flashes of hallucinogenic violence. A good antidote to the 'James Bond as literature' mood circulating at present.

And because it's summer and thunder’s rolling around, I’ve brought out my copy of The Cantos of Ezra Pound - to be read in the garden under a canvas awning.

Learn more about Patrick Lennon at his website and The Fletcher File, the blog marking the publication of Steel Witches.

--Marshal Zeringue

Craig Robinson

Craig Robinson is "an English future ex-smoker, currently living in Berlin."

When I saw that Rebecca Armstrong of the Independent placed Robinson's Atlas Schmatlas atop her list of the ten best atlases, I got in touch and asked him what he was reading. His reply:

I'm rather embarrassed to say that over the past six months that I've spent travelling around the Americas, I've not finished a single book. I've started reading several, but I've got sidetracked, not picked the books up again, and ended up dumping them along the way. I started a PG Wodehouse book, Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Oil!, a Paul Auster book that I forget the name of, and The Shroud of the Thwacker by Chris Elliott. I still hold out hopes for the Auster and Elliott books to end up being read completely, but the others I'll have to re-acquire and give another go at some point. It seems strange, though, because everyone tells you to take a couple of good books when you're travelling, but reading has kinda been the last thing on my mind while I've been doing it. I sit on buses and trains and planes, and I'm just happy to look out of the window for the most part.

Craig Robinson is an artist, illustrator, designer and animator living and working in Berlin. His popular website is Flip Flop Flyin'.

Atlas Scmatlas is his third book. Learn more about the book and check out some excerpts.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tony Perrottet

Tony Perrottet is the author of four books - a collection of travel stories, Off the Deep End: Travels in Forgotten Frontiers (1997); Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists (2002); The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Greek Games (2004); and Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped (July 1, 2008). He has also contributed to international publications including Smithsonian Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, Esquire, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, the New York Times, and the London Sunday Times, and is a regular television guest on the History Channel.

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

I'm currently going through a very pleasant reading phase: After two years of poring over dry academic works with titles like “The Cultural History of Masturbation” or “Chastity Belts in Private British Collections” for Napoleon's Privates, I've been meandering through some books I've been meaning to read for ages. There's no real pattern: I've just finished The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (famously composed while he was paralyzed except for his left eye) which was a pretty humbling experience (it makes you want to drop everything and run wild in Central Park), and at the opposite end of the gravity scale, Woody Allen's hilarious collection Mere Anarchy.

I've just started John Berendt's City of Falling Angels - I finally managed to get to Venice last year to visit Casanova's prison cell in the Doge's Palace, having traveled almost everywhere else in the world, and was delighted to find Venice was nowhere near as Disneyfied as I'd feared, so I'm keen to read what Berendt comes up with. (He's a master of mixing history and travel into a ripping yarn).

I've also started Capote's In Cold Blood, which I'm embarrassed to say I've never read - it's certainly off to a powerful start, and the descriptions haven't dated at all.

Meanwhile, I'm heading out West this summer on my annual Smithsonian Magazine story gig - this time to Monument Valley in Utah -- so I've just bought Hampton Sides' Blood and Thunder about Kit Carson to get me in the mood, and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove to take with me on the road. I actually read Lonesome Dove last time I was in the Southwest many years ago, and it made a big impression on me. It's the ultimate road trip page-turner: McMurtry's use of narrative makes it utterly addictive, and I think anyone writing non-fiction can learn something from it…

Read an excerpt from Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped, and learn more about the book and author at Tony Perrottet's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marie Winn

Marie Winn is the author of Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife; Red-Tails in Love: Pale Male's Story; The Plug-In Drug: Televisions, Computers, and Family Life; and many other books. She was born in Prague, but has spent most of her life in New York City, where she lives not far from Central Park.

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

I'm the literary equivalent of an over-eater, an over-reader. If reading were fattening I'd be obese. I've just had a fairly long fast, being unable to read for pleasure while in the throes of writing. Now that I've finished my book, I'm making up for it with gluttonous reading. Here are a few of the books I'm reading at the moment, with a word of explanation as to why I'm reading each. I'll also note the likelihood of my finishing them.

The Snake Charmer by Jamie James [Hyperion]. I love snakes. I also have an indirect connection with Joe Slowinski, the California herpetologist whose life and tragic death this book recounts. There's no way I'm not going to finish this book. It's full of fascinating snake lore and tells a gripping story.

In Search of Memory by Eric R Kandel [Norton 2006]. This book has been on my night table for almost two years and now at last I can read it. I'm fascinated by the relatively new science of neurobiology and Kandel is in the forefront of it. Also his history as a refugee from Hitler, detailed in this memoir, somewhat parallels my own. I take in the difficult parts of Kandel's book--the explanations of how the brain works and what happens in what part of it-- the way I do poetry, not always understanding everything but finding myself fathoming it in an almost non-verbal way. I'll probably have it on my night table for many more years as I make my way through it.

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel [Yale]. I'm dabbling in this beautiful book an editor sent me because she knew I was writing about nocturnal matters. The book has nothing to do with my subject, in fact, but it's about bibliophilia, or perhaps bibliomania, and I'm certainly familiar with both. It reminds me a bit of another book about a book addict--

The Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford, [Picador, 2003] a marvelous literary memoir I savored for many months a few years ago. I simply didn't want to finish it.

Read Michiko Kakutani's review of Central Park in the Dark, and learn more about Marie Winn and her work at her website.

Among the praise for Central Park in the Dark:

"How great is New York? Right in the middle of all that finance and culture and diplomacy, there’s a great reservoir of wildness—and people crazy-wonderful enough to explore it day and night. Marie Winn’s account will make you want to grab your headlamp and head for the park, wherever you live."
—Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life

--Marshal Zeringue

David Orr

Earlier this week at Writers Read, Maddalena Bearzi praised "David Orr’s book Earth in Mind [as] a 'must read' for those of us who feel our planet is becoming totally unsustainable or for those who don’t know enough about the environmental issues facing us in the near future."

Which led me to ask Orr what he was reading. His reply:

just finished Simon Schama's Citizen, reading Paul Robert's The End of Food; and Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything.

David Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College and a James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lewis Shiner

Lewis Shiner is a novelist and short story writer.

Of his new novel, Black & White, Jonathan Lethem wrote:

Black & White, Lewis Shiner's long-awaited return to the novel, is social realism so urgent and committed as to be an act of witnessing. Like books by Richard Price and George Pelecanos, Shiner's is both a page-turner and an urban documentary with a big, fierce heart.

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

I'm currently wrapping up Che Guevara:A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson, which I'm reading as research for a new story. Che is on T-shirts all over the world, and I wanted to make sense of some of his contradictions: a compassionate humanist who carried a rifle; a doctor who killed; a freedom fighter who embraced the totalitarian regimes in the USSR and China. Anderson is an advocate of Che's ideals, but not a hagiographer. The book, at 754 pages (not counting notes) is thorough, but never boring, and gives a nuanced picture of a complex human being.

My favorite fiction I've read this summer is The Octopus, by Frank Norris, from 1901. This novel of robber barons in California is as relevant right now as it was the day it was published: "We are told we can defeat them by the ballot-box. They own the ballot-box. We are told we must look to the courts for redress; they own the courts ... despoiling a government treasury of a million dollars, yet picking the pockets of a farm hand of the price of a loaf of bread." Halliburton, anyone? Some of the writing is heavy handed, especially the oral formulas, but the plot builds to a devastating climax.

Read an excerpt from Black & White, and learn more about Lewis Shiner and his work at his website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maddalena Bearzi

Maddalena Bearzi is the President and Co-founder of the Ocean Conservation Society and is a visiting scholar in the Departments of Anthropology and Biological Sciences, at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has studied dolphins and whales in California and different parts of the world. Her new book, with Craig B. Stanford, is Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins.

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

David Orr’s book Earth in Mind is a “must read” for those of us who feel our planet is becoming totally unsustainable or for those who doesn’t know enough about the environmental issues facing us in the near future.

Population growth, fisheries collapse, forest shrinkage, species extinction, temperature rise and many other issues are pushing the natural carrying capacity of Planet Earth to the limit. The emerging question is “how can we live sustainably?”

"A sane civilization" writes Orr, "would have more parks and fewer shopping malls; more small farms and fewer agribusinesses; more prosperous small towns and smaller cities; more solar collectors and fewer strip mines; more bicycle trials and fewer freeways; more trains and fewer cars; more celebration and less hurry; more property owners and fewer millionaires and billionaires; more readers and fewer television watchers; more shopkeepers and fewer multinational corporations; more teachers and fewer lawyers; more wilderness and fewer landfills; more wild animals and fewer pets. A sane civilization would not advocate unending economic growth at the expense of all planetary life.”

Is this just "utopian thinking” on Orr’s part? Many might think so but in Orr’s opinion "No! In our present circumstances it is the only realistic course imaginable. We have tried utopia and can no longer afford it." Orr words explore the relationship between educational, economic and ecological systems, offering intelligent solutions and, at the end, taking a critical look at how we see ourselves in nature and how we need to change that view if we are to survive.

About Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins, from Publishers Weekly:

Endowed through evolution with large brains, the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) and the cetaceans (dolphins and whales) are second only to humans in intelligence. In this delightful and intriguing book, dolphin specialist Bearzi and primatologist Stanford discuss the similarities between these groups. Both use tools, have sophisticated means of communication and cooperation, solve problems innovatively, transmit cultural traditions to the next generation and are able to imitate others. Like humans, apes and dolphins form complex social networks, and they are capable of deception and manipulation.

Visit Maddalena Bearzi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue