Given the range of writers that exist in the Gotham office, it stands to reason that the range of what those writers are reading would be pretty diverse, and so we posed the simple question in the office today: What are you reading?
One new intern Bageot is reading Philip Dick again, this time it’s The Man in the High Castle. It’s Bageot’s third time attempting to get through it, but each time he finds it loses his attention. He has the same problem with Catch-22, which, according to him, tries way too hard to be funny. He got half way through Catch-22 and couldn’t figure out when the actual plot was going to start.
Another new intern, SueAnn, is reading Pieces Of Me, a memoir by Lizbeth Meredith. She found it in a Barnes and Noble while traveling in Alaska and, as the book takes place in Alaska, was pleased to find that she recognized a lot of the setting.
Aizhan, our new intern from Kazakhstan, is boasting some impressive reading chops (though Alex claims that his is more impressive). She is reading Crime and Punishment in Russian. However, she is a native Russian speaker. When asked if she preferred reading in Russian or English, she said that she likes both. She used to prefer Russian, but now that she is understanding English better, she finds it just as enjoyable.
Alex is quite proud that he is “reading” two 700-page novels at once. Though the veracity of this statement was tossed into question immediately when Alex revealed that, while he was indeed reading the Goldfinch, a mammoth of a book, he was listening to The Woman In White on audiobook, which begs the question: Are you really reading a book if you’re listening to it? Street was adamant that there was a clear distinction between reading and listening.
Melissa just finished the oh-so-popular Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan, which is currently the featured novel in One Book New York, and is now reading collected short stories by Amy Hempel. She does have a True Crime book on deck, though she could not recall the title. She pointed out that while she never reads True Crime, she does listen to True Crime podcasts, and her sister got her this book as a gift.
Street is reading a backlog of New Yorker articles, all the ones that he didn’t have time to read while he was busy reading Lord of the Rings this summer. And, as any Tolkien-ite would know, when one gets lost in Middle Earth, things tend to get backlogged.
And as for me, I’m reading, or just finished reading, French Exit, by Patrick DeWitt. DeWitt has a very Coen-brothers-esque dark humor that finds depth in surprising places and when you least expect it. In an interview about this book (his most recent of four novels), he said that he aims to have 60% humor and 40% drama. It’s working. And you should read him. Or watch him. His Man Booker-nominated novel The Sisters Brothers is now a film and gets released on September 21st.
Now we want to hear from you. What are you reading?
Wow, those are some impressive reads! My tastes run more to the pedestrian – I’m reading yet another in the genre that is my favorite, what I call “mind candy” – fictional crime novels. Currently, I’m reading Brad Meltzer’s “The Escape Artist,” which is a perfect escapist book, come to think of it!
I just finished I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon. It has a unique time line–one narrator’s story goes forward in time and one goes backward. So amazing that it works and builds tension, keeping at least this reader, an Anastasia skeptic, questioning my assumptions right to the end.