On your nightstand right now:
Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, thanks to an essay in William Gibson’s Distrust that Particular Flavor.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Strangely, it was probably The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I grew up in a house where my father’s science fiction novels dominated every bookshelf — and there were a lot of bookshelves. I didn’t understand a tenth of what was really going on in the book, but I read it over and over all the same.
Your top five authors:
In no particular order, Michael Swanwick, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman, Elmore Leonard, and Terry Pratchett. I like literate SF/F, I like quick, clean prose, and I like to laugh.
Book you’re an evangelist for:
Stations of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick. It’s the tale of a bureaucrat tasked with chasing down a magician who is spreading proscribed technology on a world about to be consumed by a great flood, and it’s based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It also features tantric sex lessons from a witch.
Book you’ve faked reading:
Hmmm. I never managed to finish The Da Vinci Code; I went to see the movie just to see if I had missed anything. (Nope.)
Book you’ve bought for the cover:
Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard. It was the first novel of his that I read. I was hooked by the end of the first scene.
Favorite line from a book:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” — The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. Coming in at a very close second: “We realize this means the destruction of solar systems, but consider the alternative.” — A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge. And: “The bureaucrat fell from the sky.” — Stations of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The entirety of Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga.