Ann Patchett

Everything about it was a surprise.

I guess that the unanticipated...

challenge is how it has affected my reading life.

Because I used to read Henry James over and over.

I've read The Awkward Age twice.

Not a whole lot of people can say that.

That's just gone from my life.

Everything I read now is a book that hasn't been published.

And I almost never get to reread and really to go back and read a classic that I'd never read before on this trip.

I brought Elizabeth Bowen's Death of the Heart because I thought it's a really long flight.

Oh, okay.

I was interviewing Louise Erdrich, and we were talking about rereading, and she said the book she goes back and rereads every year is Elizabeth Bowen's Death of the Heart, which, by the way, I had never heard of.

And so I thought, my favorite writer, this is her favorite book, I've got to get on this.

Yeah.

I mean, the UPS truck comes twice a day.

There are days I get five manuscripts from people who—

want me to blurb their book, want me to promote it, want me to edit it, want me to tell them if it's okay.

And if I just get the envelopes open and recycle responsibly, I feel like I'm doing a great job.

It's past the point that I could possibly feel bad about it.

It's that I know the writer, I know the editor, I know the publicist.