What do you plan to read next?“Deep River,” by Karl Marlantes.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?Martin Gilbert’s “The Holocaust.” It’s a history that can be read by anyone, and I would hope that the indelible descriptions combined with detailed documentation might — just might — make him register the suffering of others and the weight of history in a visceral way.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?I like my villains erudite. On the dark side, I’d say Lord Henry Wotton from Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” As for a hero, I’ve always had a soft spot for Robert E. Lee Prewitt from James Jones’s “From Here to Eternity.” Prew had no quit in him. None. And he had the gift of music.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?I like my villains erudite. On the dark side, I’d say Lord Henry Wotton from Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” As for a hero, I’ve always had a soft spot for Robert E. Lee Prewitt from James Jones’s “From Here to Eternity.” Prew had no quit in him. None. And he had the gift of music.

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?Sidney Blumenthal recently gave me the first two volumes of his “The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln.” That’s turning out to be a fine gift indeed.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?“Genius in the Shadows,” which recounts the life of Leo Szilard, one of the true geniuses of the 20th century. Szilard first conceived the nuclear chain reaction, enlisted Einstein in the effort to beat Hitler to the bomb, and yet was a humanist who later switched to biology and worked to save humanity from the technology he had helped to create. I have an extensive collection on genius and space exploration, and that lifelong interest will likely result in a major book effort at some point.

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?I’ll read anything that’s good. I have no artificial barriers based on genre. Anything might lead me to a particular book, and I do a lot of rereading. That’s the true test of quality. I’ve read the collected Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian at least four times, and I still discover nuances I missed on every previous reading. As psychological character studies, they’re tough to beat.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?From Tom Reiss’s biography “The Black Count,” I learned that the novelist Alexandre Dumas was the grandson of a French nobleman and an enslaved black woman. If all the American boys who loved “The Count of Monte Cristo” over the past century and a half had been taught that Dumas was a mixed-race author with a fascinating life, we might live in a different world today.

What’s the last great book you read?I reread “All the King’s Men” every few years, and I think it’s more relevant in this surreal historical moment than it was in the late 1940s, when it was written and Huey Long was still fresh in the American mind. Robert Penn Warren was a poet, so the language and insight are breathtaking, but it’s his portrayal of the fiery demagogue who embraces corruption and rules by intimidation that resonates today. The obvious difference between Willie Stark and today’s incarnation is that Stark at least began as a poor, idealistic and self-taught young lawyer.

Tangential to this, I’m also reading “Religion Without Revelation,” by Julian Huxley, the brother of Aldous Huxley. Julian was a problematic figure with some provocative ideas about humanity’s purpose in the universe.

“Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality,” by Manjit Kumar. Cosmology is a lifelong interest of mine, and quantum mechanics lies at the core of any true understanding of it.

“Black Boy,” by Richard Wright. Wright was born a few miles from Natchez, Miss., my hometown, and he died the year I was born. His work has brought me many chills of recognition.

What books are on your nightstand?“Dead Low Tide,” by John D. MacDonald. This was MacDonald finding his voice, one of the most natural in American prose. On the page it seems effortless, but all writers know it’s not.

Great song lyrics are as valid a part of American literature as any novel. Read this songbook and you'll understand why one U.S. poet laureate said of John Prine: "He did a better job of holding up the mirror of art to the '60s and '70s than any of our official literary poets."

No one has done first-person-present narration better. From the first line ("This is how I always start: I am the prosecutor") to the last ("Everlasting hope"), Turow guides us through the maze of a marriage on the rocks, all the while concealing the killer standing right in front of us.

This four-novella collection, which includes the stories adapted as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, ended debate over whether King was "a horror writer." His ability to reincarnate our childhood experiences remains unmatched, and without apparent effort he drops us into the shoes of an unjustly convicted prisoner. Like all great illusionists, King makes magic look easy; it's not.

Lambs proves "genre" authors can be every bit as observant and insightful as literary giants. Of a female hostage in a pit: "...in the absolute dark, she could hear the tiny clicks her eyes made when she blinked." Try it sometime. Harris knows of what he writes, at every level.

Written by a female journalist living in Red Army–occupied Berlin and rediscovered and republished anonymously years later, this diary remains one of history's most harrowing documents of human depravity. The author's frank description of all she did to survive will take your breath away — and make you understand how lucky you are if you've been untouched by war.

A political novel written by a poet whose pitiless insight into human fallibility penetrates MRI-deep. Inspired by the surreal saga of Louisiana politician Huey Long, All the King's Men is more relevant today than the year it was written. Some passages are as fine as any in American literature.