Reading Lists of Literary Set Bette Midler Shares Her Reading List at Literacy Partners Fundraiser
By MARSHALL HEYMAN
June 18, 2014 9:04 p.m. ET
Most nights we’d probably rather curl up with a book than put on a tuxedo and go to a gala.
This is especially the case on a night in mid-June, when a) it’s way hot to put on a tuxedo, b) there are several YouTube videos to watch from Idina Menzel’s concert the night before at Radio City Music Hall, c) we just started the second season of “Orange Is the New Black” and d) we’re in the middle of two books we’re enjoying.
Since you asked, those books are “My Brilliant Friend” by the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante and “Grasshopper Jungle,” a young-adult title by a writer named Andrew Smith.
But if you’re going to go out on a night like this, it might as well involve the possibility of getting even more book recommendations, as if our summer reading list wasn’t long enough already. A partial excerpt from the docket: the three parts of “My Struggle,” otherwise known as 1,400-plus pages of translated Norwegian by Karl Ove Knausgaard, which we hope to have read by the end of August.
A lot of publishing people gathered at Cipriani on 42nd Street for the annual fundraiser for Literacy Partners, an organization devoted to helping adults in New York City learn to read. The publishing crowd was there, in part, because of the cause, and in part because the evening honored Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Penguin Random House.
This evening typically starts out with readings. This year’s were by Gary Shteyngart, who read from his recent memoir “Little Failure,” and by Bette Midler, whose 1980 book, “A View From a Broad” was reprinted this spring by Simon & Schuster.
Ms. Midler is a friend of Liz Smith, who co-founded Literacy Partners in 1973 with Arnold Scaasi and Parker Ladd. Ms. Midler also happens to be a voracious reader. “Reading books is truly magical,” she said.
So, not that we needed any suggestions, but we asked her what books she’s recommending these days. They included “Here Comes the Night,” about the songwriter Bert Berns ; “The Last Magazine” by Michael Hastings ; and “The Luminaries” by Eleanor Catton.
Really, we asked her? She’d tell her friends to read a Homeric poem on the beach?
“Actually, it’s like a movie,” Ms. Midler responded. “It’s an action-adventure. Nothing but blood and gore.”
Most of the other notables didn’t have lists as long as the Divine Miss M’s.
“I’m telling people to go back and read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Either that or ‘The Goldfinch,’ but that’s kind of obvious,” said Jane Friedman, the CEO of Open Road Integrated Media. “My plan is to reread all of Leon Uris. ”
“It’s about good breeding gone AWOL,” Mr. Demsey said. “Everyone likes to read about that.”
The novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford said she’d recently gotten a lot out of “Thrive” by Arianna Huffington and stumbled upon a paperback copy of “The Silver Star” by Jeannette Walls on a recent excursion to Duane Reade with her husband. He had wanted to enjoy the drugstore’s air-conditioning.
“I said, ‘We can’t just stand in here, I have to buy a book,’ ” Ms. Taylor Bradford said. “So I’m telling people I loved the book and to go to Duane Reade and buy it.”
“Unfortunately, I buy a lot of books and they end up sitting there,” said Peter Brown, a sometime publicist for Andrew Lloyd Webber and a longtime friend of Ms. Smith’s. He was receiving the evening’s Lizzie Award, given to recognize his commitment to the organization’s literacy efforts.
If there was one elephant in the room, it was the electronic tablets on each table that allowed guests to bid on silent auction items. Even though David Eun of Samsung 005930.SE -1.97% is a member of the Literacy Partners board, these tablets were made by Amazon, which due to its recent practices with Hachette, hasn’t been making that many friends in the publishing industry. But, as long as people are reading, right?
Liz Smith is so old. What a pity… She has always been nice to Miss M…
Well we’re all hopefully going to get there