Tom Hanks talks books

The actor, producer, director and author of a new story collection titled Uncommon Type has no desire to read novels of murder and conspiracy

WHAT BOOKS ARE ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND NOW?

Robinson; Baldwin’s

by Kim Stanley by Jay Winik; James

WHAT’S THE LAST GREAT BOOK YOU READ?

Yuval Noah Harari’s That fellow connected an awful lot of dots in that work. I thought the book would be a dense read, a slog, with a struggle for my brain on every page. I had a highlighter ready to mark the more pavement-thick paragraphs I’d have to go back and re-ponder. Instead, I flew through it like it was a non-fiction

Does that mean I’m getting smarter?

WHAT INFLUENCES YOUR

DECISIONS ABOUT WHICH BOOKS TO READ? WORD OF MOUTH, REVIEWS, A TRUSTED FRIEND? DO YOU HAVE FELLOW READERS IN HOLLYWOOD YOU REGULAR TRADE RECOMMENDATIONS WITH?

I only care about the subject. What do I know, and how little do I know, and is there more I want to know? That, and certain authors who never let me down: Sarah Vowell, Ada Calhoun, Bill Bryson, William Manchester, Dave Eggers. The great David McCullough.

I stack up the books, three columns six or eight books at a time, and just wear that pile down. And, when someone tells me they finally read a book they could never crack, I take a whack out of a sense of a challenge. That’s how I finally read

the book everyone pretends to know.

IF YOU COULD PLAY ONE FICTIONAL CHARACTER FROM A NOVEL ON STAGE OR SCREEN, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY? AND ONE REAL-LIFE FIGURE YOU FIRST ENCOUNTERED IN A WORK OF NON-FICTION? I still am young enough to play Dean Reed, the American who, starting in the 1960s, was considered to be a big American singing star, but only to the Communist world.

He was famous in the Soviet Union and East Germany and all over the Communist world. He was an actor, made movies, and was both beloved (by many) and dismissed (by many), was crazy-making goodlooking and travelled in the upper echelons of the red world. That life, and all that attention, made for an inevitable tragedy by the 1980s. But those who loved him as a friend loved him very much.

In the fiction world, I’d like a whack at James Ellroy’s Lloyd Hopkins character — a police who is such a genius the only work for him is police work. He is so smart and off-world in his abilities, the L.A.P.D. just sort of leaves him to poke around. A brilliant creation from the oh-socomplicated typing of Ellroy.

YOU’VE ALREADY STARRED IN MANY MOVIE ADAPTATIONS OF NOVELS. AMONG THOSE, WHICH SOURCE MATERIAL WAS YOUR FAVOURITE?

was a perfect adaptation from Stephen King. The screenplay

folded into the six novellas hand in glove. was a high-wire interpretation of Winston Groom’s book. And for me, reached the high country — so different in form and function from the Mitchell book, but exact in every detail nonetheless.

WHICH CLASSIC NOVEL DID YOU RECENTLY READ FOR THE FIRST TIME?

In 2011 I finally made it all the way from “Call me Ishmael” to “It was the deviouscruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.”

WHICH NOVELISTS DO YOU ESPECIALLY ENJOY READING? Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, Amor Towles, John Scalzi.

WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN A NOVEL?

Authenticity. I want to see the world accurately and history examined is search of the detail of truth. YOU JUST WROTE YOUR FIRST COLLECTION OF SHORT FICTION. WHICH SHORT STORY WRITERS DO YOU MOST ADMIRE? WHAT MAKES FOR A GREAT SHORT STORY?

The Cheever stories, the Vonnegut stories, the Salinger stories (especially those I had to find online, before he became THAT Salinger). Bukowski wrote short stories that were prose poems, yet I read them as the vignettes of life that, to me, rate as fullblown short stories.

WHICH GENRES DO YOU AVOID? Novels of murder and conspiracy. HOW DO YOU LIKE TO READ? PAPER OR ELECTRONIC? ONE BOOK AT A TIME OR SEVERAL SIMULTANEOUSLY? MORNING OR NIGHT?

Paper. One at a time. Any time of day.

WHAT BOOK MIGHT PEOPLE BE SURPRISED TO FIND ON YOUR SHELVES?

Maeve Binchy! I love her stories and have since

WHAT KIND OF READER WERE YOU AS A CHILD? WHICH CHILDHOOD BOOKS AND AUTHORS STICK WITH YOU MOST?

I was not a reader until junior high school when I read by Arthur Hailey.

IF YOU COULD REQUIRE THE PRESIDENT TO READ ONE BOOK, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Manchester.

by William

YOU’RE ORGANISING A LITERARY DINNER PARTY. WHICH THREE WRITERS, DEAD OR ALIVE, DO YOU INVITE?

David McCullough. Nora Ephron. Bill Bryson.