Question of the Day

Today we thank wOw reader Elizabeth Bennett once again for the Question of the Day. If you’d like to share your suggestions for future questions, please send them to us by clicking here. We’d love to hear from you!

Because of my Kindle, I’m actually reading 33 books which all seem fascinating. These all exist on my Kindle (only through amazon.com). Here are my top three and a list of some others:
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock
Mistress of the Art Of Death by Ariana Franklin
(its follow up) The Serpent’s Tale by Ariana Franklin

Others:
Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris
Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris
An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
John Adams by David McCullough
The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham
Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

Helen Mirren’s scrapbook memoir, just out, which is titled In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures from Atria Books (Simon & Schuster). This one is simply dazzling, all about how an up-by-the-bootstraps child of Russian parents became so famous that she has played Cleopatra, Queen Charlotte (King George III), Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II of Great Britain. And for all I know, next she’ll play Queen Maria of Romania!

I am peculiar about what I love to read. In general, in life, I like mystical, spiritual, mysterious, mood, the unexpected, the daring, bravery, the edge. I like musicals, to be moved, surprised, I like make-believe, fantasy, the never seen before, escapes, emotional adventure, dreams, discovery, improvisation, flower towers, the way Mick dances, billowing curtains, boats in a distance — I am sure you know what I mean. But, it’s odd, when I read for pleasure I read someone like Paul Theroux — one of the clearest most straightforward writers! I have just finished reading his “Twenty-Two Stories” in the April issue of Harper’s and loved them. I have loved all his books since the Great Railroad Bazaar and have pre-ordered his latest, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. He writes with very little of all I love as I said, above. He writes everything he sees with extraordinary vision but he moves clearly ahead and leaves the emotions up to you — you pull what he sees into emotions for yourself.

I almost hate to admit what I’m reading right now because it is hardly high literature but so much fun. I’ve been on at least 50 planes in these crazy last two weeks and, at one point, I was in Dallas with a long layover (during the debacle with American Airlines, which I have always thought was the worst airline in America, if not the world, with really really mean desk agents and even meaner stewardesses). Anyway, I’d read three newspapers cover to cover and all my research on Cindy McCain (I was flying to San Diego to interview her) and I was desperate for a book but there were slim pickings in the newsstand. So I picked up one of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser mysteries and became immediately hooked. I swear I’ve read five or six more since then — I read one on a round trip shuttle ride to D.C. from NYC just yesterday. They are really smart and snappy. I love the dog, Spenser’s enforcer Hawk, the details on the eating and drinking, and most of all Spenser’s relationship with his very cool true love Susan.

I also have Loving Frank, the novel about Frank Lloyd Wright’s affairs with one of his clients in my bag, and I really want to read the latest translation of War and Peace (one of my very favorites), but I have a feeling that none of that is going to happen until I read like all 80 of the Spenser books. It has been way too long since I’ve had a guilty pleasure and these are really good ones.

I’ve been relying on the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Nothing like a wise emperor to hold your hand in bed.
Then there’s Orhan Pamuk, whose prose you can ride like water. Philip Schultz, the poet, just won the Pulitzer for his book called Failure. The poems are extraordinary. None of this is a barrel of laughs.