Amy Cohen

Amy Cohen was a writer/producer on the sitcoms Caroline in the City and Spin City, a dating columnist for the New York Observer, and the dating correspondent for cable TV's New York Central.

In 2007 she published her acclaimed memoir, The Late Bloomer's Revolution.

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

As you'll see, I'm a very promiscuous reader. There's a lot of bouncing from books to screenplays to audio books based on my mood and whatever I'm working on.

I just started The Believers by Zoe Heller. I love her writing. Notes on a Scandal is one of my favorite books. I love Barbara's character -- she's so twisted and predatory and incredibly funny. As I was reading it, I kept thinking how much fun it must have been to write her with all her spot on, delicious bitchiness.

Before that, I finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which I've recommended to every woman in my family (my sister, my Aunt, my niece). A terrific story about women in the segregated south in the 60's (two housekeepers and the woman intent on writing their stories) with immensely likable characters.

Before that I read The Easter Parade by Richard Yates. He's one of my favorite writers, but the book is a rough, sobering tale that some might even call "so depressing I wanted to curl up into a ball afterwards." Others might just say, "Oy, I could use a drink after reading that." Like so much of his work, it's about people (in this case two sisters) who want things so desperately it aches, but ultimately don't get what they're looking for. But like all of his rough, sobering writing (Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Revolutionary Road), he's always worth it.

Whenever I'm feeling very stressed, I always love reading Stephen King. So when my friends saw me with Cujo, they wanted to give me a hug. Recently I read all eleven hundred plus pages of The Stand, which is about a rapidly mutating virus that wipes out most of the world's population -- but it's really more about the characters (at least the first half is). That's what people who haven't read Stephen King don't get -- they think it's all horror, but his characters are terrific and so well drawn. I got into all the descriptions of the post apocalyptic world, which felt very Mad Max. Reading it, I kept thinking of Jose Saramago's Blindness, which is about a different contagious epidemic -- this one causing blindness. It's interesting to see how two such different writers treat the ideas of disease and fear and anarchy and good versus evil as it applies to human nature (you know, just those small topics).

I also read my friend Sarah Dunn's book, Secrets To Happiness, which is incredibly sharp and made me laugh out loud, which isn't easy to do.

For dialogue, I like to read screenplays. I recently re-read the screenplays for Knocked Up, Little Miss Sunshine, as well as Woody Allen's Stardust Memories.

I'm a big audio book person (I had the best time recording my own audio book), which I realize is sacrilege to some, but I'm thinking those "some" don't ride the NYC subways. I love me a good audio book. Rarely a week goes by when I don't listen to David Sedaris (I have Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked on my i-pod). Recently I listened to two memoirs: J.R. Moehringer's The Tender Bar (about a boy in search of a father figure who finds several in his local bar) and Ruth Reichl's Garlic And Sapphires (the one where she's a critic in disguise -- just don't listen to it hungry, because her descriptions of thai noodles will leave you salivating.) I enjoyed both books a lot. I'm also a huge fan of Dylan Baker reading Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Lorrie Moore reading "You're Ugly Too" from her terrific collection of stories, Like Life. I love Lorrie Moore. She's so funny but also manages to punch you in the stomach on occasion. I always love listening to Meryl Streep, Blythe Danner and John Cheever reading The Collected Stories of John Cheever (his reading of "The Swimmer" is worth it alone -- he's got this great voice that evokes suburban scotch and cigarettes). But the greatest audio book has to be Jeremy Irons reading Lolita. I'd read it twice, but hearing him read it? The best.

Learn more about Amy Cohen and her book at her website and her MySpace page.

The Page 99 Test: The Late Bloomer's Revolution.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tamora Pierce

Tamora Pierce is a bestselling author of fantasy books for teenagers. Her books, known for their teenaged girl warriors and wizards, have received critical acclaim and a strong fanbase. Bloodhound, the second book in her Beka Cooper series, was released in April 2009.

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

Trigger by Susan Vaught

This is a fascinating book about Jersey, who’s home a year after he tried to kill himself with his dad’s gun. His brain and physical damage pose interesting challenges: a tendency to speak whatever words pop into his mouth, difficulty interpreting what people mean, the loss of the year before his attempt as well as parts of his year in the hospital after it. His parents’ marriage is in danger as they try to cope with him at home; his former best friend is furious with him for reasons he will not explain, while his friend’s younger sister has grown up into a beauty who’s willing to give Jersey a chance, and their grandmother is the only person who will speak to him honestly. It’s plain Jersey wasn’t the best kind of human being before his suicide, but it’s also plain that if he can fight his way free of the ghost of who he was and the expectations of those who think he’s useless because of those two big scars on his head, he’ll make himself into a really interesting man. I read and liked this book several years ago, but it was long enough, and enough books past, that I don’t remember the plot, so I’m ready to be surprised all over again. I picked it up after reading Vaught’s Big Fat Manifesto, which I also liked.

Read more about about Tamora Pierce and her work at her website, LiveJournal, and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Vanessa Farquharson

Vanessa Farquharson is a journalist at the National Post, based in Toronto, and the author of Sleeping Naked is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days.

She runs the Green as a Thistle blog.

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

Being an arts journalist, an English Lit major, and the author of a book about the environment means that I always have multiple books on the go and they tend to be either a new bestseller, an old classic, or a green-themed book.

Right now, I don't have any contemporary stuff in my hands, but I very recently finished a book called The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson -- it came out last year and there was a lot of hype surrounding it because the author is this Canadian, a first-time novelist, who spent almost 10 years writing the manuscript before securing a hefty $1.25-million advance. The diction can be a bit over the top at times, and there was something about the main female character that drove me nuts, but it raises interesting questions about pain, atonement and the creative process.

In terms of green books, I'm currently on Page 73 of Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin, which was given to me by a friend. Rubin was the chief economist at CIBC for almost 20 years and is an expert on peak oil; this book is meant to offer readers an easy-to-digest explanation of the current global oil supply and the challenges we're going to face in the near future as it dwindles. It's a bit dry, and there are still some macro-economics terms I'm not perfectly clear on, but he's just getting into the Alberta Tar Sands issue now and it's holding my attention much better than he was while droning on about the politics of OPEC.

And when it comes to the classics — I just finished John Wyndham's The Chrysalids, which was actually published in 1955, so I guess it doesn't really qualify as "classic", but it was pretty seminal at the time. My boyfriend was shocked that I hadn't read it before, so I sped through it during a week's worth of commuting to work and back. It had a definite Brave New World quality to it and was well-written, but I felt like I'd already been inundated with these eugenics issues back in high school.

Finally, for a real classic, I'm reading the Torah. This is more of a long-term project because there is no way the mammoth, hardcover version I have underneath my bedside table is squeezing into my purse every day. Either way, my goal is to eventually read the Torah, the Bible and the Quran (along with some academic interpretations along the way) because I was raised in an incredibly secular family and am pretty ignorant when it comes to the plots of these major religious texts.

Read more about Sleeping Naked is Green at the publisher's website.

View the sexy Portuguese cover of Sleeping Naked is Green.

Learn more about Vanessa Farquharson at the Green as a Thistle blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brian Schofield

Brian Schofield has been a journalist since 1998, and has worked as executive editor on GQ Active magazine, and as editor of the Sunday Times Travel Magazine. His writing has appeared in the New Statesman, The Sunday Times, the Independent on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, Conde Nast Traveller, GQ and FHM.

His first book, Selling Your Father's Bones, a work of literary non-fiction on the history and ecology of the American North-West, was published by Simon & Schuster in the US.

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

I'm not actually one of those people who reads several books at once - I find that when you finish one of them, you tend to abandon all the unfinished ones and move on, so I try to stick to 'one at a time'. So my current bedside read is the Las Vegas-based satirical novel Beautiful Children by Charles Bock. I don't read a lot of contemporary literary fiction, as I rarely find it tackles the big, compelling themes of 21st century life, and I'm not yet convinced Brock has something desperately important to say, but I'm only 70 pages in, so let's see. Vegas as metaphor for America has been well done before, but he's doing something different by focusing on the suburbs not the strip - and south-western sprawl as metaphor for America is a rich seam to mine.

As evidence of the quite different scale of modern non-fiction, to my mind, I've just finished The State of Africa (US title: The Fate of Africa) by Martin Meredith. It's an epic survey of a continent gone wrong, starting from colonial independence after World War 2, to the present day. I cannot recommend it too highly - to be part of humanity in 2009, you have to try to understand Africa, and this book offers a tremendous guide to the whole tragic saga.

Read about Schofield's top ten list of "furious books that scream at the system."

Visit Brian Schofield's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carol Anne Davis

Carol Anne Davis is a true crime writer and crime novelist who was born in Scotland but currently lives in England. Her new book is Parents Who Kill: Murderers of Newborn, Pre-Teen And Teenage Children.

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

I’ve just finished Flat Earth News by Nick Davies (published by Vintage), a brilliant expose of modern journalism. He courageously examines our increasingly-corrupt global media and what he calls `the mass production of ignorance.’

Having personally been misquoted by journalists - and had comments taken out of context - many times, I was already aware that what an interviewee says and what the public gets to read can vary wildly. I also knew that papers invented stories: one Sunday tabloid produced a feature about a celebrity prisoner being beaten up, but, at the time, I was doing research in that prison and know for a fact that the celebrity was unscathed.

I was also aware of how difficult it is to get an alternative view published in Britain’s press as, after Colin Stagg’s trial was rightfully halted, I wrote a feature about his innocence. The magazine which had commissioned the piece reneged on the deal as the common misconception was that Mr Stagg had gotten away with murder. A writer who championed him even had to go to New Zealand to get a book on the case printed, as no British printer wanted to get involved. Stagg was recently given an apology from the police and much-deserved compensation, after DNA proved that he wasn’t Rachel Nickell’s killer, but the tabloids continued to hound him, branding him as workshy. In reality, his vilification in the press had made it impossible for him to find and keep a job.

Flat Earth News illustrates that newspaper publishing today is crassly commercial, depoliticised and often devoid of a social conscience. Davies fearlessly names names and divulges the sort of anecdotes that most of us would hesitate to share with our best friends. Most media doors are probably closed to him from now on, but if we’re ever in the same bar I’ll be first in the queue to buy him a drink.

Visit Carol Anne Davis's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter M. Shane

Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law and Director of the Project on Law and Democratic Development at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Executive Director of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.

His new book is Madison's Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy.

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

Despite my best efforts at pursuing an organized reading program, my routine is pretty haphazard. Unfortunately (for me), the two areas in which I do most of my research, teaching and writing, are areas in which the volume of potentially interesting literature seems to explode on a daily basis. These are (a) the state of the U.S. presidency (and law as it applies to the President), and (b) the intersection of law, communication, and democratic development.

In the former category, I am currently looking at Scott Matheson's Presidential Constitutionalism in Perilous Times, Hal Bruff's Bad Advice, and Dana Nelson's Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People. I came across each of these after I published my own book, Madison's Nightmare. I am hoping the Matheson book will help me take a longer historical view of developments in presidential power I identified as becoming especially troubling between 1981 and 2009. The Bruff book is a really thorough analysis of what went wrong in the Justice Department's handling of national security-related legal questions after September 11. The Nelson volume is prodding me to consider whether my own critique of presidentialism goes deep enough. Even if Presidents remain squarely within the purview of their well-founded legal authorities, Americans might still be too preoccupied with the presidency as an instrument of democratic change; at least, that's the argument Dana is urging.

On the communication front, I find myself dipping into a lot of books in the hope of better understanding the convulsive media environment in which we now live. In terms of getting a sound overview of the political impacts of digital media, I learned a lot from Andy Chadwick's Internet Politics; it's a textbook, but still a very accessible read. Bruce Bimber's Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power offers an excellent historical framework. I've just started Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium by Albert Borgmann, which I hope will help me sort out a more philosophical direction on where we are headed.

In terms of books I am likeliest to sit down with for long periods and read cover to cover, my primary loyalties remain with Victorian novelists and their modern-day imitators. I'm on a bit of a Wilkie Collins run, having just finish Armadale -- a marvel of plotting. I am nearly finished with Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. I love fiction that envelops me in a world somewhat removed from my own, especially if it combines an artful narrative with social critique and cultural exploration.

Read an excerpt from Madison's Nightmare, and learn more about the book at the University of Chicago Press website.

Visit Peter M. Shane's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Renée Rosen

Renée Rosen's debut novel is Every Crooked Pot, a coming of age story about a lovable misfit born with a disfiguring birthmark covering her eye. It was named one of 2007's Summer’s Hot Reads by the Chicago Tribune and received a starred review from Booklist.

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

My reading tastes have been all over the board the past few months, with a mixture of old and new. I’ve also been very intrigued by the use of voice, especially multiple voices, which is what I found so captivating about Andre DuBus III’s House of Sand and Fog. I became completely engrossed with these different voices. Each character took on a life of his or her own and the suspense kept me turning pages, despite the story’s darkness.

Now I’m reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, an impressive debut novel that deftly uses alternating voices to weave a charming tale about three very different women struggling to survive in 1962 Mississippi. The skill with which Stockett delivers these different voices is admirable to say the least.

Life Class by Pat Barker is another novel that blew me away. It was even better upon the second reading. Set against the backdrop of WWI in Europe, Barker explores the lives of a group of art students entangled in their art and their relationships. Her language is sparse and her imagery is breathtaking. Despite one story line that never fully pans out, I adored this novel and could not put it down. Twice!

Going back in time, I recently picked up Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. Judging by today’s standards, it’s hard to believe that such a novel could have been so controversial. But in the early 1900s, Dreiser was way ahead of his time. Still, having said that, it’s sad but doubtful that a magnificent read like Sister Carrie would get published in today’s climate. The complexities of Carrie Meeber and the demise of one man who is obsessed with her is devastating and haunting. It’s one of those books that will stay with me forever.

And speaking of controversies, I was recently reading The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Goethe. What amazed me most about this little ancient gem was what I discovered in the forward. In a nutshell, it tells the story of unrequited love that ends in suicide and when it was first published, this terse novel was responsible for a slew of suicides. And yet this book was highly celebrated. There were plays and musicals devoted to Young Werther and what struck me was that this book, which was the DaVinci Code of its day in terms of popularity, is now scarcely known at all.

Read an excerpt from Every Crooked Pot and learn more about the novel at Renée Rosen's website.

The Page 99 Test: Every Crooked Pot.

--Marshal Zeringue

Helen Benedict

Helen Benedict is the author most recently of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009) and The Edge of Eden (Soho Press), a novel to be published in November, 2009.

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

I have just finished two novels about living under authoritarianism, one set in Yugoslavia during the Communist takeover just after World War Two, the other set in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Shadow Partisan by Nadja Tesich is a lyrical, compelling memoir-disguised-as-novel about growing up in Yugoslavia in the aftermath of World War Two. Anna, the child protagonist, lives with her hardened, brutish mother and indulged baby brother in a rural town, surrounded by peasants and their ancient superstitions. An intelligent, observant girl, Anna is totally different from everyone in her family and school, an outsider, so even as she doesn't understand everything she sees -- the end of the Nazis, the rise and fall of Communism -- she observes it all with uncanny insight. The voice of this young girl is beautiful, and it is fascinating to read of this area of the world before the Balkan Wars pulled it apart. The book doesn't read like a novel -- it simply follows the years of Anna growing up chronological order -- which is why I suspect it's really a memoir. But the writing is so lovely it doesn't matter. It was published by New Rivers Press in 1989, so is probably hard to find. It should be revived.

The second book, I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody by Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi novelist and film maker who now lives in the U.S., was published by City Lights Books in 2007. All things Iraqi fascinate me now, as I have just finished a nonfiction book about the Iraq War and am now writing a novel set in Iraq, too. Iraqi literature has a totally different tone and approach to Western literature, and often seems both experimental and ancient at the same time. This book plays with language and explores politics, but indirectly, as it is told through the voice of a man imprisoned under Saddam for writing an objectionable poem. It feels like reading a fever dream, one that is both meandering and bizarre yet strikingly clear at the same time. At times I was reminded of the formality and floridness of ancient Turkish poetry; at other times of Kafka. But either way, the novel gives you a clear sense of what it is like to seethe and squirm under the brutal hand of oppression.

Learn more about Helen Benedict and her work at her official website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Whitney Terrell

Whitney Terrell is the New Letters Writer-in-Residence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His first novel, The Huntsman (Viking) was a New York Times notable book and was selected as a best book of 2001 by The Kansas City Star and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His second novel, The King of Kings County (Viking) won the William Rockhill Nelson award from The Kansas City Star and was selected as a best book of 2005 by the Christian Science Monitor. In 2006, he was named one of 20 “writers to watch” under 40 by members of the National Book Critics Circle.

His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Details, The New York Observer, The Kansas City Star, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Recently, he embedded with the 22nd infantry in Baghdad, an experience he covered for the Washington Post Magazine.

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

Of late, I have been reading Updike, Updike, Updike. This is a jag that began with his death which spurred me, as I suspect it did many people, to go back and actually read his work again, rather than dealing with him as an idea, a “great author,” a brand name. I began with the third and best of the Rabbit books, Rabbit is Rich, and read back from there to Redux and finally to Run. I was shocked and abashed by how much he achieved in these books, how serious and consistent their purpose seemed, and how far they exceeded the achievement I’d granted them in my memory. The fault was all mine, not his. In the encomiums that followed Updike’s death, many spoke of his writing about sex, the titillating aspects of his work, as well as his majestic prose. But in the Rabbit books, he seems to me, more than any writer I can think of, the great American poet of death and loneliness. The novels, in the tone and sensation, recall Hopper paintings and in Rabbit, Run I imagine the down-market Chinese restaurant and the “Club Castanet” -- both places Rabbit visits with his mistress, Ruth -- as Pennsylvania equivalents of the café in Nighthawks. This is not the kind of comment that attracts readers, I suppose, and so perhaps it is best for Updike to be remembered as a sexy virtuoso. But it should be noted that his characters’ plentiful highpoints -- such as the moment where Rabbit claims to find God in a well-struck drive -- are brighter for this infinitely dark backdrop.

In a year where death is touching my personal life more than I would like, I was happy for his honesty. The Rabbit jag has led, of course, to a full-blown Updike review so that you can currently find, piled up under my bedside table, Self-Consciousness, Museums and Women, and his excellent collection of essays More Matter.

Visit Whitney Terrell's website to learn more about the author, his novels, and his non-fiction.

The Page 99 Test: The King of Kings County.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maile Meloy

Maile Meloy is the author of the story collection Half in Love, and the novels Liars and Saints, shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize, and A Family Daughter. Meloy’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, and she has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, she was chosen as one of Granta’s Best American Novelists under 35.

Her new book is the story collection Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

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

I just finished The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman. It’s the fourth and last of the Sally Lockhart mysteries, all set in the 19th century with a plucky heroine who falls into the detective business. They’re as wonderful as Pullman’s His Dark Materials, with history (exciting, fascinating history) in place of magic. When I was a kid, I read all of the Trixie Belden mysteries, to my grandmother’s dismay—she thought I should be reading something more edifying—and I loved them. I hadn’t read many mysteries since, so I think Sally Lockhart has answered a deep, forgotten need.

In the first book, The Ruby in the Smoke, Sally is sixteen, and her father has disappeared under strange circumstances connected to the opium trade. In The Shadow in the North, Sally is twenty-two and a financial advisor (bucking public opinion in 1878) and is fitfully in love when she starts tracking a new mystery and a strange magician. In The Tiger in the Well, she has a small child, Harriett, whom someone is trying to steal from her. By the Tin Princess, Sally is too grown up and married to be the heroine, so there’s a new sixteen-year-old girl, Becky, to take her place. The books are classified as young adult, but they’re suitable for actual adults—and who doesn’t like a sixteen-year-old girl detective?

The books are also for boys, in a way Trixie Belden might not have been. I know one boy (who will remain unnamed here) who doesn’t want anyone to know that he loves the Sally Lockhart books, because they’re about a girl. But there’s no reason for embarrassment. They’re full of knife fights and sharpshooting and disguise, and also love and intrigue. They’re an absolute pleasure.

Visit Maile Meloy's website.

The Page 99 Test: A Family Daughter.

Writers Read: Maile Meloy (March 2008).

--Marshal Zeringue