David Rosenthal

It's like, yeah, yeah, you made your point, but I didn't hear it.

I don't want it.

I think it's the creatively fun goal because that's the challenge rather than just imposing your editorial view on the world.

Present it in as elegant a way as possible and let the reader make what they make of it.

Once you realize that's the thing to do, it's so much more fun than trying to muscle people around.

It's all of a sudden you're dancing with a reader instead of hurling them all over the dance floor.

If you were to ask me how you were going to fail, that's exactly the kind of thing I would say.

You'd run out of gas or run out of material that made your socks go up and down.

Yes, yes.

But the name is just a residue of your former incarnation.

Yeah.

So what are we going to carve out?

Really?

Absolutely.

So it's books that I've read in the last year?

So I've got to confess, I've had a very weak reading year because I've been really deep in two projects where I've been working.

And when I'm working, often all I'm reading is for work.

But I can think of a couple, one at the beginning of the year and one I just put down.

First one I read because my son was in high school at the time, had read it, and he was enthusing about this 800-page novel.

And I thought that just didn't happen very often.