November 26, 2007 -- Monday evening

Reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami.

His favorite book--The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas.

A book that has helped him get through a time of his life--David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. He read it a couple of times when he was twelve or thirteen and the downward comparison was helpful in getting through the teenage years.

The role of reading in his life--it takes you out of reality, lets you live vicariously through the author.

Something he's read recently that was good--Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley, which he picked up because he heard it was the best English novel since World War II. It's a love story filled with ideas on topics ranging from relativity to communism.