What was the last truly great book you read? 

Ben Fountain’s Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.  Mind-blowing. 

Are you a fiction or nonfiction person? What’s your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures? 

I’m a fiction person but I don’t have loyalty to any one genre.  Graphic Novels are my guilty pleasures, although I feel no guilt while I’m enjoying them, just pleasure.  I particularly loved Joe Hill’s Locke & Key Series, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, and Jason Aaron’s Scalped.

What book had the greatest impact on you? 

Um.  It’s odd.  I’d been reading nothing but horror and sociology for years – mostly Stephen King and Native American studies – when a friend of mine gave me Kij Johnson’s Fox Woman.  No doubt it’s a solid fantasy book, but it’s not a game-changer.  Still, at the time it found me in my reading life, it broke my choices wide open.  I realized there was a whole world of books out there I’d been neglecting.

What is your ideal reading experience? Your reading habits? 

I always have a book, everywhere I go.  My favorite read is curled up with a cup of coffee, next to my wife.

Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or cry? One that teaches you something or distracts you? 

Yes to all of that, but it’s all about the correct rotation.  You can’t read Great Gatsby, Catch 22, and Slaughterhouse Five one right after the other.  You’ve got to laugh with Tina Fey, cry with Heidi W. Durrow, groove with Joe Hill, learn with Randy Pausch, be undone by David Mitchell, then start the cycle over again by laughing with Jenny Lawson.

What were your favorite books as a child? 

Tikki Tikki Tembo, Snowy Day, Peter and the Wolf, 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Owl at Home, and Where the Wild Things Are.

Who are your favorite heroes and heroines of fiction? 

Dashiell “Dash” Badhorse.  Hermione Granger.  Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch.  Any anti-heroine Gillian Flynn creates.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t?

I’ve tried to read Life of Pi twice now.  With the movie coming out, I might make another attempt.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? 

Stephen King.  He’s the first author I ever read for pleasure, beginning with Christine when I was in third grade.  I’d want to thank him for sparking the book love.