Curtis Sittenfeld - By the Book - NYTimes.com The author of "Prep" and "Sisterland" compares her interest in books about time management and decluttering to "a person who weighs 700 pounds being fascinated by diet books." What kinds of books do you like to read during the summer? Any favorite summertime recommendations? A couple summers ago, I read "Father of the Rain," by Lily King, a novel that starts out during the summer of Nixon's resignation. This isn't exactly a romp in the sand - it's about a daughter and her cruel, charismatic alcoholic father - but it's very well written and absorbing. Who is your favorite overlooked or underappreciated writer? I started graduate school at Iowa in the fall of 1999, on my 24th birthday, and in my first workshop, there was only one other woman. Her name was Susanna Daniel, and we quickly became close friends - she was fun to gossip with, and she could write amazing sentences. Susanna's second novel, "Sea Creatures," is out this month, and it's an intelligent page-turner (that is, the dream combination) about, among other things, South Florida, art, insomnia and -marriage. Ironically enough, given the topic of my first novel, I'm wary of books about boarding school. If the author gets the details wrong and caricaturizes the milieu ("My daddy says any family without a Rolls-Royce is living in poverty!") it's tedious. But if the author gets the details right, it's uncomfortably evocative and makes me squirm. All that said, I loved Tobias Wolff's "Old School"; I loved "Oh the Glory of It All," by Sean Wilsey (in which Wilsey gets kicked out of one boarding school after another); and I can't wait to read "& Sons," a forthcoming novel by David Gilbert about an author like J. D. Salinger who writes a book like "The Catcher in the Rye." I also am wary of fiction about writers, but again I guess more in theory than in practice. Do you like to read memoir? I'm currently in the middle of "Are You My Mother?" by the cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It's much more meta and nonlinear than I had expected, and totally engrossing. I want to discuss it with someone who knows more about -psychology than I do. Do you ever read self-help? Anything you recommend? I'm fascinated by books about time management and decluttering, which is akin to a person who weighs 700 pounds being fascinated by diet books. But the book I've truly been helped the most by is actually a parenting book called "Sleeping Through the Night: How Infants, Toddlers, and Their Parents Can Get a Good Night's Sleep." It's by Jodi Mindell, a sleep researcher and psychology professor who's also a mom, and I swear by this book. It's clear, realistic, and neither excessively harsh nor ineffectively gentle. What's the best book you've ever received as a gift? I'm not currently teaching, but it's a wonderful feeling when a former student gets a book published and sends me a copy. This happened last year with a woman named Bianca Zander, whose terrific first novel is called "The Girl Below." It's about a young woman who returns to London after a decade in New Zealand and confronts strange events from her past. What book has had the greatest impact on you? "Far From the Tree," which I finished recently, is the most amazing book I've ever read - in fact, I continue to talk about it so much that my husband suggested I get a "Far From the Tree" tattoo. The book is about children whose identities greatly differ from those of their parents for various reasons - deafness, autism, transgenderism - and it's also about how we as a society define disability and react to differences. Andrew Solomon is very compassionate but also very honest; for some families, their challenges cause them to tap reservoirs of strength and patience they didn't know they had, and for others, the challenges ruin their lives. I came away with huge admiration for many of the parents and kids and for Solomon himself; he's so smart and sympathetic, and he left no stone unturned in terms of reporting and researching. The book is definitely not just for parents, by the way, and it's not a how-to on child-rearing; some of the "children" featured are now adults looking back. It's really a book for everyone. I will, however, offer a word of warning: It's 700 pages not counting footnotes, and it took me months to finish (I don't have an e-reader, and the print version is too big to comfortably carry on planes or even read in bed). My sister once texted me asking, "How far from the tree are you?" This would be a great book club pick and lead to really interesting conversations, but I'd recommend breaking it into three chunks to discuss at three meetings. Because of how the chapters are divided, this would be easy to do. Any idea whether Laura Bush read your first-lady fictionalization, "American Wife"? When asked in an interview, she said she hadn't, and I trust that this is true. People have said to me, "Of course she read it - she's an avid reader, and it's about her!" But I suspect that having been in the public eye for so long, and being part of a family that has received so much exposure, she's developed mechanisms for ignoring certain kinds of attention. If I were her, I definitely wouldn't read it, and if I did read it, I wouldn't like it, even though the character based on her is positive. I believe I had legitimate reasons for writing the book, but I understand why novels based on real people, especially living people, make some readers queasy. Do you have a favorite childhood literary character or hero? I've always strongly identified with Toad from "Frog and Toad." Especially in the story in which he won't get out of the river because he doesn't want anyone to see him looking funny in his bathing suit - and thereby attracts the attention of the nearby lizards, dragonflies, field mouse, etc. - he's so completely the ridiculous instigator of his own problems. Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing? I find "The Little Engine That Could" almost unreadable - repetitive, wordy, heavy-handed - though I live with two children who don't share my opinion. What do you plan to read next? Months ago, I heard a writer named Attica Locke interviewed on NPR about her novel "The Cutting Season" - a murder mystery set on a former slave plantation turned tourist attraction. I was very intrigued.