Heartbreak. I love books that leave me weeping inside. (I would have killed Harry Potter at the end of Book 7.) “A Little Life,” by Hanya Yanagihara, “Room,” by Emma Donoghue, “Never Let Me Go,” by Kazuo Ishiguro, “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison, and “Sophie’s Choice,” by William Styron, destroyed me in all the best ways.
Do you distinguish between “commercial” and “literary” fiction? Where’s that line, for you?
I love what Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography: “I know it when I see it.” I feel the same way about “commercial” versus “literary” fiction. I appreciate both. One difference for me personally? I know I’m reading a “literary” novel if I’m using lots of Post-it notes. But the truth is, if I’m turning the pages avidly, I don’t judge.
What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?
“The Book of General Ignorance,” by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson. It’s where I learned that if I’m ever battling a crocodile, a rubber band will serve me better than a paper clip.
What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?
I’m a grandson of survivors of the Armenian genocide. One Christmas, my wife gave me a 1934 edition of “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” Franz Werfel’s epic novel about the heroic stand of 4,000 Armenian men, women and children against the Ottoman Army atop a small mountain on the Mediterranean Sea.
What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?
I was an avid reader. I was also an avid artist with Magic Markers, and I drew the Starship Enterprise in the sky above the Caribbean on the dust jacket of my mother’s first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” and I colored in the leaves on her first edition of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” so the cover resembled a Peter Max poster.
The books that stuck with me are the ones that are heartbreaking: “Flowers for Algernon,” by Daniel Keyes; “To Kill a Mockingbird”; and “Johnny Tremain,” by Esther Forbes. I can still tell you the last line of all of them.
How have your reading tastes changed over time?
John Mulaney jokes that dads are always “cramming for some World War II quiz show,” and I’ve read a lot about World War II the last 15 years.