Today, fantasy is, for better or for worse, just another genre, a place in a bookshop to find books that, too often, remind one of far too many other books; it is an irony, and not entirely a pleasant one, that what should be, by definition, the most...
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few page...
At a book festival in Fort Lauderdale, I met David Eisenhower, Ike's grandson, who was promoting his book 'Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower,' in which he describes attending the Yankees' 154th game in 1961. The whole fa...
I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in Engl...
I've only read three books by Stephen King. When I was 10 I read 'The Long Walk,' one of his pseudonymous Bachman books. In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read 'The Dark Half,' which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psych...
When I won my way to the international science fair, I didn't want to embarrass myself. It was the first time I was going to be away from home, the first time taking an airplane. I went to the local library, checked out every single etiquette book, a...
I didn't write my book, 'I Don't Care About Your Band,' in order to give women a brand-new set of dating rules they need to feel terrible about not abiding. I wrote my book to make the women who read it feel good about themselves, and a little more e...
I used to want covers that represented the book's contents very closely and were also pretty. Many folks automatically believe that this is what makes a good cover. But I've changed my mind about this. While the cover should not lie (by implication o...
The book of 'The Hobbit' was given to me to read by a friend of my mother when I was about 12 years old: it set my life on a different path. Next, I read 'The Lord of The Rings' trilogy, then 'The Silmarillion' and Homers 'The Odyssey' and every Gree...
You know, I have a lot of books on my iPad, but when I try to read them, I find myself wandering off to play games. Those are books I'm interested in. I can't imagine what would have happened to me in college if my biology class had been on the same ...
There were two books I remember changing my life as a introverted, bookish 14 year old. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. One was set in a fantastic world, populated by outlandish characters,tired prose, foul mons...
I confess that I am a messy, disorganized and impatient reader: if the book doesn't grab me in the first 40 pages, I abandon it. I have piles of half-read books waiting for me to get acute hepatitis or some other serious condition that would force me...
What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else...
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet...
As we go through this transition where a lot more people will be reading on devices, nobody is paying enough attention to make sure it's a smooth transition. I believe we still need places where people can go to handle, hold and talk about books, get...
Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you without you even digesting them. I don't mean a book that has two-syllable words. I mean chapters you can read in a toilet break. Happy endings. We are...
The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry. And I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younge...
People are going to think I'm morbid, loving all these sad books. I actually don't mind a happy ending in a novel—certainly, it's nice when it happens. But when you've invested so much time and your fingers have pushed through all that paper and yo...
I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in." Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddamn hint. Not him though... "What the hellya reading?" "Goddamn book." He shoved my book back with his hand so that he could see the...
Getting responses on "Through the Milky Way" that it is creating an emotional investment by some of my readers. A gentleman I have know for awhile took the book on a vacation to the beach. While reading it, his wife came up to him and asked him why h...
Books are an amazing thing. Anyone who thinks of them as an escape from reality or as something you should get your nose out of and go outside and play, or as merely a distraction or an amusement or a waste of time is - dead wrong. Books are the most...
