1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)? Novels. Then magazines. Then nonfiction. Then newspapers. Poetry is last, although I do enjoy it.

2. What is your favorite novel? The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. It's my enduring favorite. I like a lot of other things, but this is the book of my girlhood and will always have a special place in my heart. I re-read it several times a year.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!) I like Billy Wilder's poetry a lot. He's the current United States Poet Laureate. Here's one called Sweet Talk from The Art of Drowning.

Sweet Talk
You are not the Mona Lisa
with that relentless look.
Or Venus borne over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell.
Or an odalisque by Delacroix,
veils lapping at your nakedness.

You are more like the sunlight
of Edward Hopper,
especially when it slants
against the eastern side
of a white clapboard house
in the early hours of the morning,
with no figure standing
at a window in a violet bathrobe,
just the sunlight,
the columns of the front porch,
and the long shadows
they throw down
upon the dark green lawn, baby.

4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read? There's so much! I have five different book lists on my Handspring Visor PDA. I can't name just one thing except maybe the Sunday New York Times. I wish I read that each week.

5. What are you currently reading? It's a long list. These are all the books currently sitting on the floor by my bed, most of which I've started or plan to start this weekend:

• Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth by Derrick Bell (started)
• The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser
• Flashback by Nevada Barr (in the middle of)
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro (started)
• I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson
• Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson
• Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff
• Eleanor Roosevelt Volume 1 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook
• Eleanor Roosevelt Volume 2 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook
• Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King (started)