For a little bit of history in the late 18 hundreds, this area around the bookstore here in Greenwich Village was the epicenter of publishers and booksellers. Dodd mead and company, divine press, they all had editorial offices and down below they all had their bookstores to display their new books along Fourth Avenue on that side known as book row there were 48 stores of which the strand is the sole survivor. As the owner with the 18 miles of books i am not easily fazed by a thousand bucks but the literary bucket list has taught me in my tracks. [applause] his expansive scope is coupled with a delightful wit and a perfect eye for surprise detail. Never again will you have tond wonder what to read next. A thousand and books to read before you die is a onestop shop holiday gift for anybody who likes books and who doesnt like books. Have to say i cannot think of a better person to have written a book like this man james. Princeton graduate with a degree in English Literature and a veteran bookseller who started his career in briarcliff working for just or 2. 70 an hour. [laughter] he has moved on as the cofounder and guiding voice for the acclaimed book catalog the common reader. Up until recently he was the Vice President of Digital Product at barnes noble. Everybody is wondering about the future of books in bookstores and at the strand i like to say we are going great. [applause] and to have her friends at cspan book tv with us tonight as an american treasure who have done an amazing job to promote incredible books. For the format tonight i will ask james some questions and then we will open up the microphone to your questions. But first i hope everyone got there literary quiz. No . You are not doing it. [laughter] in 2016 the New York Times challenge their readers to pass the strand literary quiz job application. Tonight james and i are challenging you to test your book smarts with a new version of the quiz the 1000 books to read before you die quiz. Any 21st century devices prohibited to answer the questions you cannot phone a friend or use google or alexa leor seery. At the end of the event he will give us the answers and spoiler alert, we have five prizes for the soon to be affirmed bookworms. The top prize is a 100dollar Gift Certificate for the strand and a tote bag overflowing with book items including many books from workman press. And now without further ado please join me in a big warm welcome to our author, james. [applause] thank you. So tell us how this book takes place. About 15 years ago the latew, peter workman approached me about this book. He had published quite successfully a thousand places to see before you die that you iemay know. That was very successful and one evening as i recall, we were having cocktails at the workman home in connecticut. Carolanne is here with us tonight from workman publishing. [applause] and peter said, i think we should do one of those books about books. Would you like to ride it . Without hesitation i said yes. And then i hesitated for 14 years to deliver the manuscript. So in addition to being a visionary he has been extraordinarily patient. Peter used to take me out for lunch if not every year if not twice and would always talk about you and the book. He died five years ago i know he was so fond of you so part of me thinks he is very proud of this moment. I hope that is the case. Im pretty sure it is. I thank you would be very pleased to see all these people here are no so many people are talking about the book and to see such a beautiful crowd and beautiful execution of the book of the whole workman team this was and extraordinary effort it was almost exactly one year ago today that i sent him the last bit of manuscript for this book if you seen it is 1000 pages long beautifully illustrated and designed and went off to the printer i think in march so between november and march there was a lot of workdu done and is just gorgeous. I think peter would be delighte delighted. Did you read all 1000 of the books . I read the vast majority of them. But as you knowen what after time some books youve talked about so often that you become convinced you have read them. Im sure there are a couple dozen like that in here but i have become f familiar enough to write about them. You have the y bible and te 9 11 report and things like that. Yes there is a broad range of titles those in fact i did read. Yes. 14 years is a long time. Describe your process to will eliminate the 130 million books that are in print. The process to dignify the word i did at the start was make the enormous risk of books which was several thousand and this was books i had myself for that i love selling or had grown to love through the advocacy of other readers mentioning meaning that catalog of the common reader and that was a Wonderful Community you could call it the social community goreaders except al invented the internet. [laughter] the newsprint catalogs with hundreds of thousands of customers around the country and they often word right in after they purchased our books to say they were delighted to discover a certain book and also to recommend other books that they thought wrong with the selections we were making and my wife is here. [applause] and as she knows we still have eight filing cabinets in our basement filled with these letters that people sent us prompting us to discover new books to put them in thee catalog and even to bring some of them back into print invented by publishing people like urban graft he was sitting in the audience we got our recommendation that said do you know this book he said no and so we got together he did a paperback edition and we sold him the catalog. So that kind of reader enthusiasm for books was the criteriaia to be a book either i want to give to someone to say you have to read this or someone had given to me with the samell passion. There are still many more books that could be included so finally i decided as a framework i was reading a book by Edmund Wilson and at one point with the passage of the miscellaneous learning of the bookstore and organized by any larger principles so that same day proof one perfect rubric so what if i only had a thousand books and had a bookstore with only 1000 books and i want to have something for anyone who might come in and so that helped me to narrow it down and get the range that i wanted because i wanted the book to be fun to explore not just the static work. You could open up bookstore like this with a chain of 1000. We could talk about that and go into partnership. But looking at the end of the Book Description you have try this and the audiobook and other books written by that author so you kept going on and on. Every book has an essay to give context with the incantation to the book and then there are the endnotes which has a bibliographic information when the book was published in the best translation and the utcommendations for further reading either other books by the same author in the book about the civil war or football and then other books to try. 5500 books referenced that are all indexed in the back. And also i should add that we built a website 1000 books to read 1000 books to read. Com with one question at the top what books everybody read before they die . That is my list, three buttons next to those books i have chosen and a snippet from the book it is agree, life is too short, and add it to the pile all of you can go on to the site and add your own book beyond the thousands that i have chosen for this book. It is designed as a tool for stores and for libraries there are no sales people can pick the list or genre. If you were writing a book the one you had to read before yoube die . Now that i finish it it would be this one. [laughter] for a long time i wasnt sure i would get there. I love your subheaders and the civil war you describe that as the american alien and then you said single white bibliophile outofprint companion she mustve had a lot of fun putting these books and the witty manner. Sometimes they came easily and sometimes they took longer to actually writing the essay as mark twain once said in the letter to somebody writing this very long letter because i didnt have enough time to write you a short one. [laughter] going back to the choice did you get pressure from your daughter or wife or workman publishing to include books . Everybody has their opinion. Did you feel that . I write in the introduction that once people know you are writing a book 1000 books to read before you die you can never enjoy a dinner party because everybody has their own word to put in but i didnt feel pressure is more of the enthusiasm of everybody. That was part of the fun of the process and the whole project is to promote those discussions among the readers and booksellers and librarians and just traveling around those libraries across the country promoting the book and then to talk to audiences like this and bookstores would have displays with books from within the book and say we also with those that should be in it and thats part of the fun. And we have the table we are checking out i thank you had everything in the book. Was hard sometimes not giving the ending or the synapses of the book i you did not with the affair and you did not tell us what would happen. I was very conscious not to provide any spoilers to the book c for certain kinds of books you wouldnt want to give it away so sometimes i have to rein myself in but to figure out part of the research was knowing enough for that reason in particular. So across all genres you have Childrens Books and travelogues and interpretations of dreams. I believe people read the way they eat maybe a hotdog for lunch one day and theo next day fancy french meal with wine and the whole 9 yards and that is important and i wanted the book to represent that to be more ofld a menu that people would find inviting rather than aor prescription of physical therapy so i wanted to have something for every type of reading appetite so we could start this book as a reader with parents and Good Night Moon and where the wild things are and then the comingofage and cs lewis so cradle to grave reading you could call it. Do you want to read your passage . Yes then we will open for questions. I will start with a line that i already used once people know you are writing the book 1000 books to read before you die you never get another dinner party the same way no matter how many pages you have written every conversation with a fellow readers almost sure to provide new titles to seek out or to expose the gap in your knowledge with those to underline the points of reference for years 1000 books felt like far too many to get my head around and now it is too few by several multiples why will say we should already be obvious this book is neither comprehensive or authoritative even if a good number of the titles would be on most list of essential reading its meant to be an invitation to a conversation or an argument about the books that are missing as well asud those included because the question of what to read next is the best prelude to the more important ones like you to be and how to live such faith in the learning and imagination is something i have been lucky enough to take for granted as fact and freedom the free one it could be forgotten the amnesia of in the moment and how quickly to find identities that has the complexity of ideas to get lost in a story that inherently is to acknowledge to broaden ones perspective beyond the confines a good book is the opposite of a selfie the right book at the right time can expand our lives leaving us more thoughtful and generous and brave and alert to the worlds wonders and inequities. More lives. More time. [applause] if you like to ask a question please stand up. Raise your hand i will bring your microphone. So tell me the value of National Book awards. They were weighted but it did not help i reviewed all the list of prizewinners to make sure i wasnt overlooking something but except to give easy access to the book it didnt mean all that much. What are you reading now except you are probably not reading now. [laughter] because you are so busy but whats the last book that you read . A twopart answer. The last book that i read to recommend these truths which is a history of thee United States from the discovery up until two years ago that is remarkable to be 800 pages long but it reveals scenes that we are grappling with as a country now 1776 and before so i recommend that to everyone. And an author that is appearing at another strand event tonight its called the three body problem and i am not quite sure. Its a marvelous Science Fiction book i recommend it quite passionately from someone i trust him he will leave it as that. We might have some copies left over. Could you speak a little bit about the challenges and the interesting aspects ofha reading something that is in translatio translation . Yes. Thats a great question. I try that i was writing for the American Market but the more than 200 works in translation, i think we are having a fire drill. And there are a couple of issues because if you talk about homer or the greek tragedies or Latin Literature there are many translations. Bee theres nothing worse than someone picking up a great book like the odyssey and having a translation that is dated or stilted, or doesnt really speak to modern reader. So for those books i was pretty familiar with and recommended translations. For classic works its the same thing. Every great book for each new generation has a new translation. In part because the language changes and in part because publishers want to keep it under copy right. But that means theres lots of choices to make. So i was careful there too. What is particularly difficult in terms of works in translation is that any work that we get of contemporary literature that are translated from another culture, are already filtered by an editor or a publisher who is deciding this book would appeal to an american or british market. Thats why its translated. You never know if youre getting a deep picture of what the literature is of another culture. So its problematic. But its fun, too. Guest so i really love your description of cradle to grave reading. I think the interesting followon questions is books change when you read them and what youve read before. So how do you think about your process for when a person might be reading a given book. Im sure your perspective on a Childrens Book differs from when you were a child and when you were reading it to your daughters. Talk to us about that. James thats a great question. I wanted this back to appeal to someone who was 17, and also 37, and not just someone at my age. When you read a book when youre younger, it has a certain meaning to you, and some books get richer if you reread them when youre older. Particularly of middlemarch by George Elliott which is my own favorite novel which i read when i was 19. And i thought was the wisest book i ever read then. So much so i read it every decade since then, and it just seems to have gotten so much wiser. And it was all in there at the beginning but you notice different things. And then there are other books that you read that were really important to you, in my case a book like on the road by jack care wack, which was a marvelous back to read when youre young, its important those books get represented here now. Its a great book but not quite as overwhelming when you read it when youre 20 years old. Then enthere are books that are totally different. I was fortunate enough to meet the author Joseph Heller once as a cocktail party. And at the moment i met him his book catch22 qeats had been listed on a list that the Modern Library put out the hundred best novels of the 20th century, and it was number 6. I went up to him at this party because he lives down the road from my wifes parents. And i said congratulations on you know the book being on the so high on the Modern Library list thank you very much. But i think they picked the wrong book. And he glared at me, he said what do you mean . I said well i always thought your second book, something happened was a much better book. And he just glowed. He said so did i. [laughter] andand so i told him about my experience about the book i read it in the 1970s, it was probably in college and i thought this was the funniest book i had ever read. I memorized whole pages of his description of office life because i found them so amusing. And he said to me, he goes and i told him that and he said well its really a middleage persons book and i said yeah, i know i reread it last year and i found it completely horrifying. All the things that i had found very amusing when i was a 20yearold as a middleaged person i was just saying therebut for the grace of god go i. So the books change and they speak to you in different ways at different times. I was reading patty smith, just kids. Published in 2010, and i first picked it up and she was stealing books from scribners, and i cannot read this book. She told booksellers and i picked it up recently and its so poetic, and brilliant but i needed that time to absorb this. Guest i just wanted to know did you include any books you disliked but felt they were important or to be read whether they made you angry or deserve to be there as a warning or whatever . James yes, atlas shrug. Its a book that assumes so much prominence because its a love by by many readers, is fine but in our culture the philosophy that such as it is that it wasnt enough to make up for the wooden characters and all of that but its been a book of enormous influence and i think its important that i wanted to read it and i something to say about it. Its kind of like that book is if you be read it and maybe you love it but its kind of like watching your Football Team win a game 1037 because its so stilted in one direction. I presented it in context of the thinking and of its importance and then i use some version of that line about the Football Game because thats the way i found it. I have a literary question and a technical question. Literary question is, there are two books youve listed here is that i think are my candidates for the Great American novel. That is a concept. For a hundred years the concept of the Great American novel. What do you think is the Great American novel, did you read it . And the tactical question is screens versus books. Did you read any of these books on screens, or kindles, or did you Read Everything in paper and is there a difference . James i was the Vice President of digital problems for barns andnonal. So i read these on nooks. I did read them on screens. I am promiscuous when it comes to reading. I would read on screens or as susan san day said i would read on milk cart fns it was in front of me. I think ereading is convenient if youre traveling or communicate you can take several books at once. Its great for people who have want to make type bigger and smaller. So i dont have any qualms about that except i dont know if any of you read ebooks but this is a digression but i found this interesting when you started reading them, and still to this day if im in the middle of a novel, and a character appears who appeared earlier and i cant remember who it is, my hands will start to like flip back and because in a physical book you have this kind of sense that it was like 3 flips back and it was on the lefthand side. But on the exbook youre in the middle of the ocean you have no idea where you are or how to get back. The other question the Great American novel what are your two . Guest sister carry and american past torral. James theyre both in here and i love those books and american pastoral, the scenes in which roght depicts the vibrant life of newark and the rapid decline. Those of us who are did she say im from the bronx originally, and i know when i was small what a vibrant city it was. As was brooklyn before brooklyn was you know recast as a sitcom recently. But, the that whole kind of urban decline had never been in my reading so vividly captured. But if i had to pick one it would probably be moany dick. Because it embodies the kind of combination of work ethic, and craft, and labor, and craziness on the other hand and sense of manifest destiny that is all part of the american psyche both of those things. So guest hey jim. Very very exciting to be here, thank you so much. That was a perfect segway moany dick, there are a lot of people that know you for a long time and grateful to you for your inspiration both as someone who is always shown us the beauty of books and what it can do in our lives but just as a dear friend. So if i could get personal for a minute. We talked a lot about books we havent talked about you. Two things. One, a common reader was an incredible accomplishment. This is an incredible accomplishment. You can have passion for books. You can love the arts. You can do all that but you made both those things happen. Both when probably you and i both thought youre nuts. Can you talking a little bit and i think you used some of the words talking about moby dic and what you add mired that both influenced you inspired you and helped you throughout both of the processes. James well thank you. There will be an envelope for you later. [laughter] you know i part of me wants to say and i think this is in large part true that i fell in love with books and the written word very early. I never wanted to do anything else. I tried to find ways that would keep those things primary to what i had to do every day for my job. And i was either determined or unimaginative enough to keep doing the same thing and finding another way to do it. So when one operation like a common reader closed and found some other way to do it, this book came along about that time, and some other books and i didnt really want to do anything else. I wanted to find a way to keep being near the stuff that i loved and that gave me energy. So, more than anything else, it was the sense that i love doing this, i was good at it, and i liked Nothing Better than to be able to express in some way succinctly what a book was about or what it said to me. And as long as i could have that opportunity to write about books in that way, and to share that with others, that was you know what i was going to do. Also you know there is a lot ofism receivization a common reader came about because i was working in a bookstore and i said to myself how can i do this and you know not sell books i dont like, and not have to be here on saturday . So i came up with a catalog. Guest thanks so much for sharing tonight. My question is whether any particular attention was paid to the races gender, national at of the authors represented in your book or if the focus really was on just the literary merit of the substance or those things can be divorced at all . James i dont think they can be divorced as easily as wed like to divorce them. So i was looking for books of quality that spoke to readers, whatever their providence was. I was conscious of the fact that women certainly throughout history have been underrepresented if you start a book with homer, and go all the way up its not until the late 19th century and even the middle 20th century where the outputs become somewhat equal so youre going to have an imbalance there. In terms of ethnicity and race and language it was the same thing. I was conscious of not following any other dictate to what it would be other than it was good reading. So there is i think a fair representation of those different categories, although not as research as i would like it to be. For reasons having to do with my own limited reading but also having to do with the nature of literary history. Guest given that a thousand book list is a moving target can you tell us about the thousand books that made it on to the list and the thousand books that first didnt . James the last book i wrote about was a book called it was also the most recent book in the book. Which is life in code a personal history of technology by ellen oldman. She is a very interesting writer. She began her career as a software developer, in the early days of silken valley, and she was one of the few Women Developers at that time. And about 20 years ago she wrote a book thats become something of a classic among coders called close to the machine which was about how coders think and so on. And then she went on to write two novels, one called by blood, and the other called the bug. And then last year she published this book called life in code which is a series of essays, thats about technology but more about the world that technology has made for us and how we live in it today. And its a marvelous book you learn a lot about technology and coding and even more about life. Shes a marvelous writer. Thats probably the book ive given to the most people myself because i wanted them to read it in the past year. The one that didnt make it was the last one that was there, its a book Childrens Book picture book called burnt toast on davenport street by a man named tim eagan, and it is a marvelousy funny delightful warm book about a family of animals and its a great picture back to read to a toddler but its important to me and because i discovered this book one day in Childrens Bookstore in manhattan where i was with my younger daughter iris was about 3 years old. And she was wandering around while marg o and i and the eldest sister was looking. She saw the book at her eye level. She marched over and took it off the shelf. She brought it over to me and said i want this one. I brought it home and read it to her, and that was the first of probably 792 readings of that book. And it was a great book. So i was so delighted that she had somehow through osmosis gotten the bookselling gene. She knew immediately this was a great book. So that is a great personal attachment to me. That did make the cut. Youre putting your whole family to work. James yes. Host we have time for one final question. Guest my question jim would be are there any authors you thought you might have shortchanged that you wanted to have multiple entries that you liked that author so much but you had to put in one author that had one great book but maybe not as good as the second or third book . James well the whole project has been plagued with that kind of issue. Whether the person was in the book at all, whether you could put more books in it. Theres about 3 dozen authors who have more than one book. And even some of those now looking back im not sure i got right. So virginia wolf has four books because shes a paferls writing and the more i read at this point in my life the more astonished i was. But when i finished the book i went back and reread a novel of hers called the waves, which i believe is better than any of the books i wrote about in it. So its always changing and always new. And there is so many books that could be in here the book is alphabetical by author so in the as alone, you know asops fables, poetry, the novels oficate atkinson, the military histories, i could go on and on with the stuff i left out. So theres a part of me that every day since i finished this book feels like a slacker. Host okay can, its quiz time. Were going to find out who is the best well read person here. Five prizes, so james is going to read out the questions and then the answers and then were going to trust you to evaluate your own work. [laughter] james okay, is everybody ready . Question number one. Who said tis the good reader makes the good book . That was ralph waldo emerson, a wonderful quote. Question number two. In which decade christopher berlins story set . The 1930s. What french gastrowrote tell me what you eat and i should tell you what you are . That was breat savron in the following of pace. This one is pretty amazing. How long did it take for the first english translation of victor youth os 1862 novel Les Miserables to appear. It appeared in 1862, the same year as the books publication in france. It is the mark of youth os popularity that translators working in other tongues matched that achievement. So there were multiple International Additions of a 1500page book in the year of its original publication. Which is pretty amazing. In what novel does the sentence appear . Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing . That was from the picture of dorrian gray by oscar wild. And he also quoted himself in his play lady wind meres fan he used the same line. That was after, though. Fill in the blanks of this line from phillip k dic in his election commentary. It is sometimes an inappropriate response to blank to go blanking. And the answer is b, reality insane. It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane what best selling series of historical novels were written by the english translator of simones the coming ofagy am . One of the most prolific translators was Patrick O Brian who wrote all of ship ferring tales the master in commander being the first one made a movie with russel crow out of that. So thats how he made his living before his novels became popular. Alfred besters pioneering 1957 Science Fiction novel the stars my destination is a retelling of what 19th century french classic . Thats the count of monty chris o. What lateblooming bib lio file is the central figure in Alan Bennetts the common reader . That would be Queen Elizabeth the 2nd. The pen name for the Science Fiction visionary Alice Bradley sheldon was james tiptry junior. What performer starred in both the iconic 1939 film abdicitation of the wizard of oz and the 1956 american premier of Samuel Beckets waiting for godot. Burt lower. Was the cowardly lion and in godot he played estrugone. What book of the bible plays a pivotal role for the protagonist of brad burys fahrenheit 451. Thats the book of eclasses. The make way for duckles is the classic that never goes old which of the name does not belong to the one of the eight little ducks. Jack, tack, spack, or quack. The answer is c, back. What awardwinning 2010 novel devotes several thousand pages of it pagings to a powerpoint chart . Thats thegon squad by jennifer eagan. This is one of my favorites. Which heroine of a Childrens Book has been cited as three Supreme Court justices as a former influence . Nancy drew. Sandra day oconnor, ruth baiter ginsburg and sonia sotomayor, in interviews years apart and independent of each other when they were asked what set you down the path to a life in the law they all said nancy drew. Which book did Dorothy Parker write, this is the greatest review of all time. This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force. Thats interestly enough the novel was by the only forsay by mussolini the book was called the cartinals mistress. What do dan brown, scott tur o, and richard quilledder have in common. Theyre all graduates of amherst . When bob dylan won the nobel prize in literature in 2017 he became the second nobel lawiate to be awarded both that prize and an Academy Award, who is the other . George burnered shaw, won the Academy Award for bestwriting screenplay for the 1938 version of pygmalion, with windy hillered and leslie howard. When this news was brought to him in london he reported said i have never been so insulted in my entire life. Who invented the phrase stream of consciousness . That was william james. What naturalist has more than 300 plants and 1,000 animals named for him and more places on earth and heavens than any other person in history. Alexander van hum bolt. Its a marvelous book by andrea wolf called a biography of nature. Thats where i learned that. And this one is for im sure all of my fellow graduates from a Catholic High School in the bronx who are here tonight will know this immediately. In what autobiography does the phrase give me chastity and selfrestraint but dont do it just yet appear . Thats in the confessions of is it augusten. Which of his own works was dickinsons favorite, thats david copper field. Jane reeses wide sea was a response to which 19 little century novel . That would be jane eyre. What ashed are entered at poets corner in westminster abby had his heart buried in the churchyard. Thats thomas hardy whose biography should have been written by stephen king. What was the working title of Joseph Hellers catch22 for the eight years he spent writing the book . It was catch 17, so Joseph Heller spent eight years working on this book in his own head it was called catch 18. And then a few months before publication of his book a book by leon urus, called mili18 came out and was a great bestseller so his publisher said you have to change the title because people will be confused by the 218 books so they had to come up with another one and they came up with catch22 qeats which sounds funnier than catch18 for some reason. And the last question is far too long. The answer to the last question is far too long. [applause] host so you all go ahead and tally it up, and are you ready . Tell me who has gotten 20 or more questions correct . Its going to be like an auction. Who has 18 or more correct . 15 or more correct . I thought you guys were bookish. 12 or more . Okay. [applause] first prize, 100 gift card and lots of books. Nice job. Okay. So were at 12, right . Okay, 10 . Yay. [applause] and thats a 50 gift card and tons of books. And then lets try for 9 . 11 . Okay. Any more 11s . Who has 9 . Perfect. Those are the fourth and fifth prizes, 25 gift cards and loads of books. Host thank you so much james. Youre a great audience. Thank you cspan. So james is going to stick around and sign copies of his book. Thank you. James thank you everyone