What Writers Are Reading
Just as chefs know the best comfort foods, authors are pretty good on guilty-pleasure reading. We asked a crew what they read when they were looking for pure pleasure. Any era, any genre. Here's what they fessed up to.
Even though the summer is not very old, I've accidentally read three excellent books so far. Two were about 9/11—Don DeLillo's Falling Man, which is so much better than its reviews, and Helen Schulman's A Day at the Beach. I have loved DeLillo since White Noise came out 22 years ago. When he's on, there's no one better. I would read his jury excuses—in fact, this would be an excellent idea for a future novel. And Schulman's book makes me feel physically ill with jealousy that I did not write it, but physically ill in a good way.
The third summer book I've already read is Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles, a memoir that blew me away although I am a nice Protestant girl not normally drawn to book-length writing on the Eucharist. I am going to foist this on every single hard-core left-wing religious nut I know. And make no mistake: there are many of us.
Lamott's most recent book is Grace (Eventually).
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