For a little bit of history in the late 1800s this area around the bookstore in Greenwich Village was the epicenter of publishers and book sellers. Charles scribners and son. Divine press, they all had editorial offices, and down below they all had bookstores to display their new books. Along 4th avjust around on that side was known as book row at its height there were 48 used book stores of which strand is the soul survivor. As the owner of the strand with its 18miles of books i am not easily phased by a thousand books, but james literary bucket list tonights featured book has stopped me in my tracks. [applause] his expansive scope is cup ltd with a delightful wit and a perfect eye for surprise detail. Never again would you have to wonder what to read next. 1,000 books to read before youy gift for anybody who likes books. And who doesnt like books. I have to say i could not think of a better person to have written a book like this than James Mustich printten grawt with a degree in literature and a veteran book seller who started his bib liophilic career as a shop affbrier Silicon Valley working for 2. 70 an hour. 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 Products at barns andnonal. Everybody is wondering about the future of books and book stores at the strand id like to say were going great. [applause] and were thrilled to have our friends at cspan book tv tonight. They are an american treasure whos done an amazing job at promoting incredible books. For the format tonight ill ask james questions and well open up the mic to your questions but first upon being seated i hope everybody got their lifter litey quiz. No, youre not doing it . In 2016, the New York Times challenged their readers to pass the strands literary quiz job application. Tonight, james and i have challenging you to test your book smarts with the new version of this quiz. The 1,000 books to read before you die quiz. The use of any 21st century guys is prohibited in answering these questions so no you cannot phone a friend, use surrey, google or alexa. At the end of the event james will give us the answers to the quiz, and spoiler alert, we have five prizes for this soon to be affirmed bookiest of book worms. Our top prize is a 100 Gift Certificate for the strand and tote bag with overflowing with book items including many books from workman press. And now without further ado, please join me in a big warm welcome to james mustic. James thank you nancy. So james how did this book take place . James about 15 years ago now, the late peter workman approached me about the book. He had published quite successfully a book called 1,000 places to see before you die, and that was very successful, and one evening as i recall we were having cocktails at the workmans home in connecticut, carol ann, the publisher of workman publishing is here with us tonight. And peter said, i think we should do one of those books about thousand things books about books, would you like to write it . And i without hesitation said yes. And then i hefted for 14 years to deliver the manuscript. In addition to being visionary workman has been extraordinarily patient. Peter user friendly to take me out for lunch at least every year if not twice a year and talk about you and talk about the books so i think he died five years ago so part of me i know he was fond of you so part of me thinks he must be very proud of this moment that were all together. James i hope thats the case, im sure it is. I think hed be pleased to see all the people here, and to know that so many people are talking about the book and to see such a beautiful execution of the book by the whole workman team. This was really an extraordinary effort in terms of the design led by janet who is sitting right there. An extraordinary job of design. [applause] it was almost a year ego today i sent in the last bit of manuscript for this book and the book if youve seen it its a thousand pages long. Profusely illustrated, beautifully designed and it went off to the printer in march. So between november and march there is a lot of work done and the production and everything is just gorgeous. I think peter would be disblietd did you read all thousand of these books . Well ive read the vast majority of them but as you know when youve been a book seller long enough there are some books that youve talked about so often that youre become convinced youve read them. So im sure theres a couple dozen like that in here but ive become familiar with them to write about them. You have the koran, and the bible in there, and the 9 11 report. James its a broad range of titles, but those in fact i did read. Yes. 14 years is a long time. Can you describe your process in eliminating all the 130 million books that are in print to whittle it down to a thousand books . James well i think process is dignifying the whole thing with a little more rigor than it had. But what i did at the start was make an enormous list of books. Which was several thousand. And this was books that i had loved myself, or books that i had loved selling and grown to love through the advocacy of other readers. You mentioned the catalog i ran for 20 years called which common reader, and that was a wonderful community. It was a you could call it a book blog, with a social community of readers, except al gore had yet to invent the internet so we just printed these news print cat logs and mailed them out. We had hundreds of thousands of customers around the country and they would write in after they purchased books to say that they had they were delighted to discover a certain book but also to recommend other books they thought belong would the collections that we were making. And my wife marg o, who is here. [applause] and i as she knows we still have eight filing cabinets in our basement fills with these letters thats people would send us prompting us to discover new books to put them in the catalog and bring some of them back into print. Abetted by publishing people like herman graph who is sitting there in the audience, many books we have a recommendation like the worst journey in the world was one by cherry juregard. He said herman, did you know this beak, he said no. So we got together and he did a paperback edition and we sold it in the catalog. So my that kind of reader enthusiasm for books was the critearium. It needed to be a book i wanted to give to someone and say you have to read this or someone had given to me with the same passion. It was still many more books that could be included so what i finally decided to do as a framework was to i was reading a book by edmund wilson, the great literary critic, and at one point he has a passage about the miscellaneous learning of the bookstore unorganized by any larger principle, which seemed to me a perfect rubric for this project. So i said to myself what if i only had a thousand books, and i could only have a thousand books and wanted to have something for anyone who would come in looking for a book. That helped me to narrow it down and get the right kind of range ness. I wanted the book to be fun to explore when people would open it. Not a static reference book. And you can open up a bookstore like this. James we could talk about that. We could go into a partnership. I know you said a thousand books but i look at the end of the Book Description you have try this, and then you have the audio books, and then you have other books written by that author too so you kept going on and on and on. James every book of the thousand has a short essay to give context and to be kind of invitation to the book. And then at the end of each of these essays there are end notes which has bibli graphic information when the barbecue was first published. What the best translation would be, and also recommendations for further reading. Other books by the same author or further further reading on te subject, whether its civil war, or world war ii, or football, and then also other books to try if you like that one. So also, theres about 5500 books referenced in this book. And all indexed in the back. And also i should add because i always forget to say this. Weve built a website 1000booktoread. Com which has one question at the top of it. It has my list what book everybody should read before they die. It has three buttons next to the books ive chosen and a snippet of the book itself. The buttons are agree, the second button is lifes too short, and the third button is add to be read pile. And you can all go add your own book beyond the thousand that ive chosen for this book. And theres no on the site. Its designed as a tool for stores, and for libraries. People can come in on their phones and sort the list by genre or by subject and find interesting things to read. So if you were writing a book the one book you had to read before you die james now that i finished it would be this one. For a long time i wasnt sure i was going to get there. I want to say i love your subheaders and on shelby the civil war you described it as the american ili said, and i love the 84 caring crossroad you said single white bib lio file seeks out of print companion. So you must have had fun with those. And those were sometimes they came easily and sometimes they took longer to come up with than actually writing the essay. Because its hard to write short. As mark twain said in the letter im writing this very long letter because i didnt have enough time to write you a short one. I know going back to the choice of which books did you get pressure from your daughters or wife from workman publishing to include books because everybody has their opinion, and did you feel that . James well i write in the introduction to the book that once people know youre writing a book called 1,000 books to read before you die you can never enjoy a dinner party in quite the same way again. Because everyone has their own words to put in but i didnt feel too much pressure. It was enthusiasm from everybody for books they love. So that was part of the fun of the process and for me, really part of the fun of the whole project is to promote those discussions, among readers, and among book sellers and librarians. We are just traveling around various stores and libraries across the country promoting the book, and that was a lot of fun to talk with audiences like this. And bookstores have would often have displays of the book with books from within the book in it. And i would always say to the book sellers you should have a table with books that should be tip that i left out. Because thats part of the fun. I know you went down to the strand 30eu9 table and you were checking out what the choices were and i think you had everything in the book. Those are our four favorites. Was it hard to sometimes not give the ending of the books in a synapsis of it . In the end of the affair you did not say thank you and rebecca you did not tell us what happened. James i was conscious of not providing any spoilers to the books because that would particularly for certain kinds of books you wouldnt want to give it away. So i had to reign myself in sometimes. And its hard to figure out what part of the research was knowing enough to know what not to say for that reason no, in particul. You went across all genres you have Childrens Books, a lot of travel logs, you have interpretation of dreams so you really were so expansive. James i wanted to have i believe that people read the way they eat. So, they might want a hot dog for lunch one day and the next day theyll go out for a fancy french meal with wine and the whole nine yards. And thats really important to our reading lives and i wanted the back to represent that to be more of a menu that people would find inviting, rather than a prescription that was homework or physical therapy. And so i wanted to have something for every type of reading appetite so you can start this book as a reader, if you have willing parents with Good Night Moon and where the wild things are, and go all the way through to the coming of age, and cs lewiss cradle to grade reading you could call it. Do you want to read your passage . James im going to read a little bit from the introduction and then well open it up for questions. Ill start with a line i already used but it leads into other things. Once people know youre writing a book called 1,000 books to read before you die you can never enjoy a dinner party in quite the way you did before. Now matter how many books youve managed to consider, and how many pages youve written, every conversation with a fellow reader is almost sure to provide new titles to seek out, or more worryingly, to expose an egregious omission from a gap in your knowledge to say nothing in revealing the privileges and prejudices, underlying your points of reference. For years, a thousand books felt like far too many to get my head around. Now it seems too few by several multiples. So let me say what already should be obvious. This book is neither comprehensive nor authoritative even if a good number of the titles assembled here would be on most lists of essential reading. It is meant to be an invitation to a conversation, even a marry argument about the books and authors that are missing as well as the books and authors included. Because the question of what to read next is the best prelude to even more important ones like who to be, and how to live. Such faith in readings power and the learning and imagination it nourishes, is something ive been lucky enough to take for granted as both fact and freedom. Its something i fear may be forgotten in the great amnesia in our in the moment news feeds and al gorhythmically identities which hide from our view the complexities of feelings and ideas that books demand we quietly and determinedly engage. To guest lost in a story or study is inherently to acknowledge the voice of another. To broaden ones perspective beyond the confines of ones own understanding a good good book is the opposite of a selfie. The right book at the right time can expand our lives in the way love does making us more thoughtfully, more generous, more brave, more alert to the worlds wonders and more pain by it inequities. More lives, more kind. [applause] so who had like the ask a question. We ask you stand up and not be so timid. Just go ahead and raise your hand and ill bring you a microphone. Ill ask a question. Tell me the value of any prize, nobel prizes, National Book awards, pulitzer prizes. James i reviewed all the list of Prize Winners to make sure i wasnt overlooking something. But the award itself except by giving the book easy access to the book in the list of prizes didnt mean all that much. Guest i would like to ask you what are you reading now except that youre probably not reading now. If you arent reading now because youre so business whats the last book you read . James twopart answer. The last book i read that i want to recommend to everyone is a book called these truths by jill lupore, which is the history of the United States from the discovery of the north American Continent up until two years ago that is remarkable in being 800 pages long but still readable. It reveals things that we are grappling with as a country now that ive been present from 1776 and before. And so its kind of instructive. So i recommend that to everyone. The book im reading now is by an author who is appearing at another strand event tonight at the China Institute called the three body problem. And im not quite sure how to pronounce his name. Its a marvelous book, Science Fiction book recommended to me, quite passionately by a reader whose taste i trust so im in the middle of that. Well probably have signed copies leftover too. James oh, good. Guest could you speak a little bit about the challenges and the interesting aspects of reading something thats in translation . James thats a great question. I tried to be as international as possible given the fact that i was writing for an American Market and so predominantly works in english. And but theres more than 200 works in translation. I think were having a fire drill. And so with translation theres a couple of issues. One is for the older works because if youre talking about homer or the greek tragedies or any latedden literature there are many translations. How do you pick the best ones which i was careful to try to do to recommend to people because 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 bo