When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.
While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.
I spend a lot of time reading and try to make sure that I can get a little bit of alone time every day.
Whenever I can, I like to go to Cotswolds, in England, where my husband had a cottage. I spend my time reading his diaries, which I would like to publish.
I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.
If you spend all your time reading books that you only pretend to understand, year after year, there isn't much room for anything else.
My research process doesn't vary much. I do a little reading to establish a timeline and decide how I'm going to approach the story.
Before my teens, my contemporaries were reading Tolkien and were absorbed by his works, but try as I might, I could not be drawn in, perhaps as something in me resists the epic, medieval-feeling fantasy.
I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal.
I think reading is important in any form. I think a person who's trying to learn to like reading should start off reading about a topic they are interested in, or a person they are interested in.
Unscrupulous writers often count on the fact that most people don't bother reading footnotes or tracking down citations.
I had to find my way of translating the excitement you get when you're reading comic books to the big screen.
Reading a book, watching a movie, going to a play, it's transporting, and very, very exciting. And to be a part of that, creating things with your imagination, whoa.
Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word.
My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts.
I didn't understand the Kindle's true value until I finished an e-book on the beach. In sixty seconds - and without benefit of pants - I had brand-new reading material at my fingertips.
Reading for me will be a combination of books, magazines, Tumblr and just kind of the Web in general on the iPad.
If I'm a guy reading a newspaper, and I hear this actor who I know gets great seats at basketball games, and he's complaining about being typecast, I think, 'Hey man, count your blessings.'
On the whole, I don't like reading long books. I'm not a fan of 'Ulysses.' And I haven't quite finished 'War and Peace.'
I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.
