In my office, on my chaise longue, with one of my cats on me, on a spring or fall day where the temperature is nice enough to have the windows open, and there is a nice breeze (and also I’ve taken my Claritin for the day I live in rural Ohio and we have all of the pollen). I love her films, though (and much prefer the 2005 film of “Pride and Prejudice” over the 1995 BBC mini-series, which is heresy).ĭescribe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). She’s a great writer, without doubt, and also, not for me. The problem is not her, it’s me: The rhythms of writing and speaking and even just how commas are used have changed enough that for me reading most pre-20th-century work feels like sitting on a lurching train, getting knocked about.

So I picked up “Pride and Prejudice,” and soon enough set it back down again. I bounced hard off Jane Austen growing up, but so many friends are so deeply in love with her writing - and I have enjoyed her filmed adaptations enough - that I thought I’d give her another try. I’m very bad at guessing which contemporary works will be seen as “great books,” and often I am deeply surprised which ones get the label over time.Īre there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?

The book was incredibly useful when I wrote “Old Man’s War,” and I come back to it whenever I start researching for a military-oriented work. In terms of books already generally acknowledged as “great,” that would be “The Face of Battle,” by John Keegan, which was one of the first serious books of military history to take on the history of battle from a grunt’s-eye view of things. Szpara “Spin,” by Robert Charles Wilson (reread) and, on the phone, “Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel (I’m sooo late) “Uncommon Type,” by Tom Hanks and the upcoming “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking),” by Katie Mack, which I’m reading in PDF galley form because the end of the universe is professionally relevant to me. Currently there: “All This Could Be Yours,” by Jami Attenberg “Docile,” by K. I made a New Year’s resolution to spend more time reading than I do staring at Twitter, so as a result the turnover on the nightstand (including the books on my phone, which has a nightstand charging cradle) is pretty rapid right now. The author, whose new novel is “The Last Emperox,” says, “Life is short and there are many other books.”

The goblin emperor book