The Writer’s Library by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager

 

The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives consists of twenty-two author-interviews during which Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager ask the authors a set series of questions. Twenty-one of the interviews are conducted in person, and one, that of author Donna Tartt, via email. Despite the questions all being pretty much being the same from author to author, Pearl and Schwager manage to turn all of the in-person interviews into genuine conversations with the various authors (and one poet) they visit. The Donna Tartt interview is by far the stiffest of the twenty-two and clearly demonstrates the limitations of email interviews as compared to the in-person variety.

No matter who is being interviewed, whether the author is young or old, famous or lesser known, these four questions are key parts of the conversation:

“Did you come from a reading houselhold? How did you learn to read and at what age? Were you a voracious reader as a child? What were your favorite books as a child."

 Oftentimes, too, the interviewees are asked about their favorite classic and contemporary authors, what they read, if anything, while they are involved in their own creative process, whether they limit their pleasure (as opposed to research) reading to certain genres - if they read genre literature at all, which authors influenced their own work, and if there had been one book in their lives that convinced them they wanted to become writers also. 

Pearl and Schwager helpfully attached a summary to the end of each interview listing the key books and authors mentioned along the way. Each of the lists is headed up something like: “Some Books and Authors in Donna’s Library.” 

It is difficult to read The Writer’s Library without comparing your own early reading experiences to those being recounted by the various authors. You can’t help but wonder how your own early childhood experiences compared to theirs, or how differently your own life may have turned out if one or two key people had not appeared in your world just when they did.

I never really expected to finish The Writer’s Library when I first began reading it, figuring that it would soon become repetitive and predictable - and probably boring. Well, I was wrong. Pearl and Schwager’s enthusiasm for their project was so contagious that most of the authors they spoke with were soon so caught up in the fun of the whole thing that I never grew bored. And, despite having already read many of the books referenced in the twenty-two lists, I still managed to come away with a substantial lists of books and new-to-me authors of my own that I’ll be exploring for weeks to come. I enjoyed this one.