By the Book (19 page)

When and where do you like to read?

I usually read at night, in the bed, before falling asleep. In the summertime, I love to read on the porch in a rocker under a ceiling fan.

What was the last truly great book you read?

The word “great” gets tossed around too easily. The last book that kept me completely engrossed while delivering a powerful story was
Life After Death
, by Damien Echols. He spent eighteen years on death row in Arkansas for crimes he didn't commit, and was released last year. Though he's innocent, the state refuses to exonerate him.

Are you a fiction or a nonfiction person? What's your favorite literary genre: Any guilty pleasures? Do you like to read other legal thrillers?

I read much more nonfiction, usually while researching the next novel. Books and studies on unlawful convictions, unfair trials, overcrowded prisons, prosecutorial misconduct, etc. I read most of the other legal thrillers on the bestseller lists to keep up with the competition.

Who are your favorites among the competition?

When
Presumed Innocent
was published in 1987, I was struggling to finish my first novel. Scott Turow re-energized the legal suspense genre with that book, and it inspired me to keep plugging along. Scott is still the best lawyer-novelist.

What book had the greatest impact on you? What book made you want to write?

The Grapes of Wrath
, by John Steinbeck. I read it when I was a senior in high school and was struck by its clarity and power. I'm not sure if it inspired me to write, but I do recall thinking, “I wish I could write as clearly as John Steinbeck.”

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

Fifty Shades of Grey
. Why should he miss all the fun? Plus, it might loosen him up a bit.

What are your reading habits? Paper or electronic? Do you take notes?

My wife gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas and I am having great fun with it. I'm not sure I am reading more, but I am certainly ordering more. But there is always a stack of hardbacks on the night stand waiting to be read. I'll start three a week and try to finish one. I'm too lazy to take notes.

Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?

I love humor and for this reason I've always enjoyed Mark Twain. He was without a doubt the funniest writer who ever picked up a pen. I'm not sure I ever cried while reading a book.

What were your favorite books as a child? Do you have a favorite character or hero from one of those books? Is there one book you wish all children would read?

As a small child I loved Dr. Seuss. Later, the Hardy Boys and Chip Hilton. Then I discovered Mark Twain with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Tom Sawyer is still my all-time favorite literary hero.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

I tried a couple of times to read
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
but never finished it.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? Have you ever written to an author?

Mark Twain, but when he was forty, not seventy. He was a pretty nasty old man. I'm not sure what I would ask Mark Twain, but I'm pretty sure it would not be for investment advice. I wrote him a letter when I was a kid but never heard back. What an ass.

Which of the books you've written is your favorite? Your favorite character? What's your favorite movie adaptation of a book you've written?

My first book,
A Time to Kill
, is still my favorite, and Jake Brigance is still my favorite character. The best adaptation was
The Rainmaker
, with Francis Ford Coppola.

If you could choose among your novels the next to be adapted into a movie, which would it be and why?

Who doesn't love a good movie? For this reason, I would enjoy seeing all of my books adapted to film. There are currently three or four “in production”—not sure what that means but I suspect it means little is happening. Gone are the days when I sold the film rights for a nice check, then sat back and waited eighteen months for the movie. Long gone.

Calico Joe
is being developed by Chris Columbus, who wrote a great script and plans to direct. It appears to be a fast track and should be fun to watch. My involvement is always limited, as it should be. I know nothing about making movies and have no desire to learn.

What's the best book about the law ever written?

To Kill a Mockingbird
.

The best book about baseball?

Bang the Drum Slowly
, by Mark Harris.

What's the one book you wish someone else would write?

My next legal thriller. No—make that my next five.

You've traveled all around the country for your book tours. Do you have a particular favorite place to visit as an author? A city that's especially welcoming to writers?

I've visited several death rows doing research, and they are fascinating. Prisons in general give me inspiration for stories and characters. My next book is about a lawyer in prison, and I went to visit a couple. Rich stuff.

I don't understand how anyone can write in a city. I live in the boondocks where it's quiet and peaceful and when the words are slow I go for long walks through the hills. To my recollection, I've never written a single word of a novel in town.

What do you plan to read next?

I have a friend who is an obnoxious Yankee fan (aren't they all?) and he's hounding me to read the latest biographies of Mantle and Maris:
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood
and
Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero
. I'll give 'em a shot.

John Grisham
is the author of
The Firm
,
A Time to Kill
, and
Sycamore Row
, among other novels.

 

On Poetry

My taste is very old-fashioned (with the exception of my beloved Frank O'Hara, unless he's now old-fashioned, too): I like Keats, Tennyson, Milton, Shakespeare, Hopkins, all those dudes.

—
Michael Chabon

We have many shelves of poetry at home, but still, it takes an effort to step out of the daily narrative of existence, draw that neglected cloak of stillness around you—and concentrate, if only for three or four minutes. Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. I last felt that in relation to a poem while in the sitting room of Elizabeth Bishop's old home in rural Brazil. I stood in a corner, apart from the general conversation, and read “Under the Window: Ouro Preto.” When I finished the poem I found that my friends and our hosts had left the room. What is it precisely, that feeling of “returning” from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger—then it fades, but never completely.

—
Ian McEwan

On the subject of literary genres, I've always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I'd love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story. Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

—
J. K. Rowling

I have many poetry collections—that's my version of self-help. Yeats, Robert Lowell, W. S. Merwin. Most of my books have a poem as an epigram to guide me; the most recent one starts with “Late Fragment,” the poem Raymond Carver has on his headstone. Not enough people read poetry.

—
Anna Quindlen

P. J. O'Rourke

What book is on your night stand now?

Kearny's March
, by Winston Groom. The author of
Forrest Gump
has become a wonderful military historian and tells us how, as a result of the Mexican War, we acquired not just Texas but New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and—every silver lining has its cloud—California.

When and where do you like to read?

Every evening by my living room fireplace in a splendid Eames chair, giving thanks to my bad back for excusing this extravagant purchase.

What was the last truly great book you read? Do you remember the last time you said to someone, “You absolutely must read this book”?

Jane Eyre
, last week. I hadn't read it in forty-five years. If then. (I suspect CliffsNotes were involved.) I didn't even remember who was locked in the attic. I told my wife she had to read it. She'd just done so (which I didn't remember either) and gave me a look that conveyed Charlotte Brontë's message to all men: The secret of a happy marriage is to have a burning house fall on you.

Do you consider yourself a fiction or nonfiction person? What's your favorite genre? Any guilty pleasures?

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself. My favorite genre is the comedy of manners, where Christopher Buckley reigns. My guilty pleasures are the usual—crime and suspense. But my literary conscience doesn't bother me about Ruth Rendell, P. D. James, Elmore Leonard, and Alan Furst.

What book had the greatest impact on you? What book made you want to write?

Friedrich Hayek's
The Road to Serfdom
gave cogent shape to a slew of inchoate feelings. No particular book made me want to write. I like to make things but, being clumsy with my hands and glib with my tongue, words are my raw material.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

The Road to Serfdom
, no matter who is president. But a president is a busy man, and Hayek's syntax is heavy going. Being a native German speaker, Hayek strings together railroad sentences ending in train wreck verbs. For an easier read about the connection between economic and personal liberty, I suggest Milton and Rose Friedman's
Free to Choose
.

What are your reading habits? Paper or electronic? Do you take notes? Do you snack while you read?

Behold the book with its brilliant, nonlinear search engine called flipping-through-the-pages. A Kindle returns us to the inconvenience of the scroll except with batteries and electronic glitches. It's as handy as bringing Homer along to recite the
Iliad
while playing a lyre. I dog-ear all my books, underline passages, and scribble “Huh?” and “How true!” in the margins. The only fit snack while reading is the olive in a martini.

Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?

A good book does all four. Three out of four isn't bad. Two is acceptable, except for books that make you cry and teach you something, which are to be avoided at all costs.

What were your favorite books as a child? Do you have a favorite character or hero from one of those books? Is there one book you wish all children would read?

I didn't care much for children's literature. I liked to read at random in the
World Book Encyclopedia
. My favorite character was Julius Caesar. His leadership style was refreshingly different from my grade school principal's. I wish children would read Emily Post's original
Etiquette
, in which Mrs. Post says—in so many words—“Pull your pants up, turn your hat around, and get a job.”

Disappointing, overrated, just not so good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

Ian McEwan's
Saturday
—I quit just when the plot reached its crisis. I didn't care what happened to any of the characters. (On a related note, I was reading the Harry Potter series to my ten-year-old daughter, and she made me stop in the middle of the last volume. “Too much teenage mush,” she said. I said, “Don't you want to know if Lord Voldemort wins?” And she said, “Oh, come on, all those books and you think Harry Potter is going to die at the end?”)

What's the worst book about politics you've ever read?

Economics
, by Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus, the standard textbook on the subject for my generation. Although not supposedly about politics, it contains as much bad political thinking as can be packed into a decent liberal democratic framework. (I'm not counting
Das Kapital
, which I consider a comedy of manners, or
Mein Kampf
, the worst book I've ever read, period.)