February 3, 2010
Washington, DC

“Yankee ranger, you’re cleared for takeoff” by tigerplish from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigerplish/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A featured speaker at the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s New Orleans Big Read of The Maltese Falcon, Dennis Lehane is the author of such noteworthy books as Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and The Given Day. Lehane had this to say about the pleasures of reading:

I read to travel—time travel, country travel, consciousness travel. This year, I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan (The Forever War), the Dust Bowl during the Depression (The Worst Hard Time), Sweden in the 1970s (The Terrorists), and North Carolina, again during the Depression (Serena.) So I’ve gotten around, met some people, lived some lives. And I didn’t have to pay for checked baggage. A great book is dangerous—it makes everything else in your life vanish.

People are talking about . . . The Big Read somewhere near you! Check The Big Read calendar to find out where you can join the discussion.