The Good Thief by a fellow Brooklynite, Hannah Tinti. It is amazing.  

I try not to look at the internet until 11 or 12 each day - I find the day's best energy is in the morning hours, and it's so easy to squander all that goodness goofing around online. Increasingly, I'm writing longhand, trying to get away from the computer entirely. 

I'm reading a lot of books to my own kids these days, and have discovered an author named Mo Willems - he's got this book called Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus that is a small masterpiece of narrative economy. When I was a kid, I loved, loved, loved The Phantom Tollbooth.

 

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. Bartleby's co-workers are named Nippers, Turkey, and Ginger Nut. I'm a big fan of amusing character names.

 

Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. First of all, this guy writes nonfiction likes it’s the best, most gripping fiction in the world. So here he is, writing about his own harrowing adventure on Mount Everest, lovingly creating these characters, his fellow climbers - and then we watch, with him, as they are destroyed by the elements. It is a brutal and beautiful adventure story.

What is the first piece of writing you ever had in print?

I wrote a humour column for my college newspaper; I'm sure if I read it now I'd be deeply embarrassed. 

Get Your War On, by David Rees - the collected comic strips, from 2001 to 2008.  

Oh, so many! Comic books were my first real sustained exposure to complex storytelling; and then as a teenager, when I started to perceive myself as a writer, I was very into science fiction and fantasy - Philip Jose Farmer, Douglas Adams, Robert Heinlein, all those terrific universes. A bit later, Mark Twain, and  the aforementioned Dickens, of course! 

I read the funny pages, in the newspaper, whenever I can. The only downside of my beloved New York Times is that it doesn't have a comics page. 

 

I've mentioned a lot of classics already, and I'll add a couple more: lately, thanks to Sea Monsters, I've been on a bit of a Jules Verne kick, and I've really enjoyed the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft.  Probably my favourite living author is P.D. James.  

 

I went through a period when I read The Hotel New Hampshire, by John Irving, once a year, for about five years, so that might be it.

I have a novel for young adults, titled The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, to be published next year by HarperCollins. So I've got some rewrites to do on that at present. 

Nah. I like to scribble in the margins. What, oh what, shall become of margin-scribbling, in this brave new world of ours!?