I hate those e-books. They can not be the future... they may well be... I will be dead.
When I wonder what the future of books will be I often think about horses. Before automobiles existed everyone had a horse. Then cars became available and their convenience compared to horses was undeniable.
I can imagine a future in which real books will exist but in a more limited particular way.
I don't write literary fiction - I write books that are entertaining but are also I hope well-constructed and thoughtful and funny and have things to say about men and women and families and children and life in America today.
In my experience it's not just that serious books get a hearing on comedy shows. But serious books get a serious hearing as well as a funny one on comedy shows.
What's funny about that is when I was writing Twilight just for myself and not thinking of it as a book I was not thinking about publishing and yet at the same time I was casting it in my head. Because when I read books I see them very visually.
It's funny that I got to do 'On the Road' because the thing that had the biggest impact on me growing up was reading books. I was very inspired by the book and this spirit of Dean Moriarty and how envious we all are of somebody who can be that carefree.
I don't hate humanity and I'm not interested in people who do. Although it's funny actually some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. 'London Fields' is one of my favorite books ever. And it's indefensible! But he's so funny... I forgive him everything.
I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me.
Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.
Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.
I'm calling my book series the 'with God series.' And this next 'with God' book is Friendship with God which comes out in November. This books challenges us to bring about the end of 'better' on this planet.
Another hero was Tom Swift in the books. What he stood for the freedom the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He's always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.
With paper printed books you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.
If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease we must demand the increase.
'Caught' is a novel of forgiveness and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn't be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills or it won't work.
In our house we repeated the pattern of thousands of other homes. There were a few books and a lot of music. Our food and our furniture were no different from our neighbors'.
I'm the only girl on The Food Network who grills - I have two bestselling grilling books. I try to really focus on what men and women can do outside together out on the grill. I think it's really fun to have men and women out there together having fun working and enjoying themselves.
I'm reading a lot of different books but I always think I have to switch it up a little bit. It's like food - everything in moderation same with my books same with my reading. You read books that are good for you and you learn a lot of stuff then you read 'Fifty Shades of Grey ' which is like candy.
I wanted to be a great white hunter a prospector for gold or a slave trader. But then when I was eight my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books.
Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants but they are dumbed down and I hate it when they dumb them down.
The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always young readers will be the real losers.
At each of these northern posts there were interesting experiences in store for me as one who had read all the books of northern travel and dreamed for half a lifetime of the north and that was - almost daily meeting with famous men.
By virtue of some of the ways the game is played in terms of message discipline in terms of access for reporters and especially in the way that sources and subjects especially famous subjects treat the media almost by default there's more news that's falling into books.