MIRANDA BEVERLY-WHITTEMORE

Miranda is the author of three novels: New York Times bestseller Bittersweet ( 2014), The Effects of Light (2005) and Set Me Free (2007), which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best book of fiction by an American woman published in 2007. A recipient of the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, she lives and writes in Brooklyn and Vermont.

Visit her website or her Bittersweet Booklaunch Blog.

I’m in an odd space with reading at the moment. I’m just starting to write a new book, which means I have to be careful about the language and ideas coming in, because I’m easily swayable (it can throw me off course to digest something at the wrong moment of book gestation). Also, I have Bittersweet coming out very soon, which makes for a chicken-with-itshead-cut-off uneasiness that makes sinking into someone else’s novel challenging. I guess that it’s because I’m stuck in the middle of two big writing moments that I’m reading more than one book (which is unusual for me). Here’s what’s on my nightstand at the moment:

P.D. James, A Taste For Death — My mother reads everything. She got that from my grandmother, who read up until her dying day at 103 (and was hesitant to start a new book that last week of her life because she was afraid she would die before she found out the ending). I consider it to be my great fortune that my mother reads a book a day, which means she’s always got a recommendation. When I was visiting my parents on a recent weekend and in need of a good, gentle read, she handed me this thick P.D. James, which used to be my aforementioned grandmother’s, and said, “This is slow but it’ll suck you in.” I’ve been enjoying a chapter or two before bed, appreciating its rhythm and attention to detail. Also, the language is just fantastic in that British style and tradition.

A.S. Byatt, Possession — This is the third time I’ve read Possession; this time I’m reading it to help me think about the book I’m writing, which also goes back and forth in time, uncovering secrets in the present day, that are, in turn, teased out in the past. Byatt’s book is such a fabulous achievement — I am always blown away by her ability to pull off the poetry! Not only is it historically on pointe, it has all these secrets hidden inside it, which in turn inform the story. Such an accomplishment.

Nicole C. Kear, Now I See You — Full disclosure: Nicole is a friend of mine. But even if I didn’t know her, I would admire this new memoir tremendously for its ability to turn something seemingly tragic (her diagnosis, as a college student, with a degenerative eye disease that would render her blind) into an hysterical romp that makes you laugh until you cry. More than once I’ve found myself gasping for air as she describes being in labor at her Italian family’s Thanksgiving, or wearing a disguise to the Gowanus Canal so she can practice using her cane incognito. I admire writers for whom humor is effortless — it’s just not in my wheelhouse, but it’s something I’m working on (although I find humor ends up being very shy if you try to force it).

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse — I was having an angsty moment the other day and pulled this down from my shelf (I’ve read it at least a dozen times, and every time I find something new in it). Word to the wise: don’t read Woolf when you’re feeling blue about the state of the world! She’s just so brilliant, but her darkness finds every open wound on you. Still, I haven’t been able to reshelve it; it’s kind of sitting there staring at me. Woolf by osmosis.

Ian McEwan, Atonement — Also not a great choice for a blue day. But I thought a lot about this novel when I was writing Bittersweet — the idea of an Edenic place ruined by a single act — and wanted to dip back into it. I suppose this is a real indication of how I read; wanting to be back in the mood of something and then borrowing it for a short time, but not necessarily reading the whole thing from cover to cover. McEwan is currently holding hands with Woolf on my nightstand.

DOUG BORSOM

Doug studied physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, but transferred to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois to study literature, and discovered creative writing classes. He completed his MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1975. “I don’t think of myself as a writer,” he says. “It’s just something I do.” After Iowa, he taught creative writing for three years at Southwest Missouri State before returning to school to study mathematics at the University of Wisconsin. For 20 years, his day job was in the computer industry. Doug lives in Pasadena and is writing a novel.

What’s by my bed now:

George Orwell and more Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days, and essays — Ever since I read “How the Poor Die” some years back, I’ve been meaning to return to Orwell. Now I am.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi — Another gaping hole I’m finally going to fill. And there’s a tie-in with Orwell. According to Christopher Hitchens, Orwell was fascinated by Twain’s depiction of the Mississippi and hoped someday to raft down it. Unfortunately, Hitchens rafted a different river first, and missed his chance.

George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah — A socialist, hung out with Hollywood celebs, co-founded the London School of Economics, wrote a load of plays. Back to Methuselah is five, count ’em, five plays that cover something like 30,000 years. Shaw’s plays read well, and I’m looking forward to this.

Jennie Fields, The Age of Desire — So many good things have been said and written about the book. And it’s by Jennie Fields, a friend and admired classmate at Iowa. And it’s about Edith Wharton. Three-for-three. Of course I want to read it.

Shirley Jackson, Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories, edited by Joyce Carol Oates — Like all of us, I’ve read “The Lottery” and heard about Jackson’s reputation as a master of the unsettling. In addition to publishing a new book every 17 days, Joyce Carol Oates was destined to edit this collection.

Edward Teller and Judith Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics — Teller, a brilliant Hungarian refugee (brilliance was common among them), was known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” He relished the title and doted on his offspring. His other child was the strategic defense initiative, nicknamed the star wars space defense. What a family.

A couple recent New Yorkers.

DAVID CORBETT

David is the New York Times Notable Author of five novels, dozens of stories, numerous scripts, and too many poems. Recovering Catholic, ex-PI, one-time bar-band gypsy, his book on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character — “[A] writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul,” Elizabeth Brundage — was published by Penguin in 2013. His latest novel, Save By An Evil Chance, will appear in April 2015. Visit his website.

A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven — As deft a balancing act between Heartbreaking realism and wicked black humor as I’ve read outside the works of Pete Dexter (see below). An opening scene with a gutted Thanksgiving turkey, fingers dripping with meat juices, lips coated in same, and then an illicit kiss between the protagonist and his brother’s wife — and it just takes off from there. Uncanny pacing for a so-called literary novel — violent and smart, and did I mention funny?

Duane Swierczynski, The Blonde — The reading equivalent of listening to Eddy Angel channel Link Wray. Gutsy and quick on its feet, with so many deft strokes and oddball observations and switchback plot turns, not to mention (lest we forget) the eponymous blonde who, of course, is not who she seems — a patch of red in a private spot gives her away. More to the point, she’ll die if someone isn’t within ten feet of her. Literally. Beat that, Salman Rushdie!

Jean de La Bruyère, Characters — A gift from my agent, in celebration of the publication of my book, The Art of Character. This is the kind of item only the French write, reminiscent of Stendhal’s De l’amour and Flaubert’s Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, except not as narrowly focused as the former nor as witty as the latter. A compendium of aphorisms on human nature, based liberally on the Moral Characters of Theophrastus.

Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, editors, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature — Jungian in bent, a much more interesting exploration of our propensity for damage than the Mark Larrimore volume, The Problem of Evil, and far less judgmental than The Criminal Mind by Katherine Ramsland, or The Psychopathic Mind by Reid J. Meloy, or as self-help sappy as The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.

Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling — They just don’t write books like this anymore, except maybe the work of Bonnie Jo Campbell and Donald Ray Pollock — tough and clear-eyed and human. Young men adrift and careening toward trouble in the Pacific Northwest of the late 1950s. On the Road meets Fight Club without the precious need to be important. If you’re paying attention, there’s no need to be transgressive. Reality will answer that call any day of the week.

Nick Reding, Methland — A haunting look at a small Midwestern town’s devastation at the hands of an insidious drug, but with an eye to the larger picture — the migratory patterns gutting rural America, the tectonic economic shifts marooning America’s young, the aimless hum of hopelessness in the land.

Pete Dexter, Spooner — My hero. I read and weep. A male Martha Gelhorn (no, Hemingway doesn’t get that nod). Sentences as clear as glass and twice as dangerous. The human condition reported with humor and heart but utterly stripped of sentiment. The driest of martinis, with a beer back. Can’t get enough of this guy. Truly, deeply, I hate him.

Can there really be a sequel to a book of the ‘best?’ Yes! Back again and better than ever, this delightful excursion into writers' private territory — what they are reading between the sheets — is a kick. And the best part is that these authors tell you not only what books they're into, but why. Me? I'm adding another title to what's on my nightstand — Books by the Bed #2.

— William Souder, author of On a Farther Shore: the Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson and the newly re-issued Pulitzer Finalist Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America.

Despite the hundreds of affectionate selections inside Best of Books by the Bed #2, it’s much more than a grouping of greats, unjustly forgottens and personal favorites curated by 28 writers of all stripes, from heavyweights to hermits. In chapter after chapter, the most memorable characters of these books, and the authors who love them, mix and mingle their plots, loves, obsessions, and secrets by the flickering light of a bedside candle. The impulse is generous: to give fresh reading experiences to readers, and perhaps nudge deserving books a little closer to familiarity, if not immortality.

— Don Wallace, author of The French House: An American Family, a Rustic Maison, and the Village that Restored Them All

Books are food for writers’ souls. And it’s a pleasure to discover where the writers we admire are finding their substance. Best of Books By The Bed #2 gives us a sneak peek not only into the books these writers choose but what they’re looking to find in them. From deeply thoughtful to playful, these lists surprised, intrigued, and inspired me. And are sure to lead you to stack new books by your own bed. I've just written down five to pick up at my local bookstore. Oh oh. The stack by my bed is teetering!

— Jennie Fields, author of four novels including NY Times Editor's Choice, The Age of Desire

The indefatigable Olsens helped Forest Avenue Press gain national traction on several of our titles, and after promoting their launches, kept promoting them with a relentless, heartfelt grace that earned us more followers and more readers. Cheryl’s tweets with lines from our books reminded me why I fell in love with those books in the first place. All of us are so grateful for Cheryl and Eric’s commitment and passion for getting good books into the hands of readers they might not reach otherwise. This collection of guest posts from their website is yet another example of their growing legacy.

— Laura Stanfill, publisher, Forest Avenue Press; editor, Brave on the Page

Is the pile of books by your bedside starting to resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Are you worried that a slight shift in the earth’s crust at midnight will bury you under a stack of novels and short story collections? If so, take heart. Not only will Best of Books by the Bed #2 let you know you’re not alone in your willingness to risk booksphyxiation, you’ll also be rewarded with a wealth of great book recommendations that will make your bedtime reading all the more pleasurable.

— Harvey Freedenberg, freelance book reviewer