Book Culture Blog

Last night we hosted a reading with writer and journalist Michael Paul Mason, author of Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and its Aftermath. Mason shared moving tales, including audio clips of interviews from his visit to Balad Air Base in Iraq, where he had a first hand look at the harsh realities facing brain injury victims.

After the presentation, we had a few moments to ask him some questions:

What books are you currently reading?

Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, and just yesterday I bought Maps and Legends.

Is there anything that you are particularly looking forward to the publication of?

I have a galley copy of Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, which comes out next month. Also, Cringe: Teenage Diaries, Journals, Notes, Letters, Poems, and Abandoned Rock Operas, by Sarah Brown (forthcoming by Crown in August 2008.)

Do you have standard titles or writers you like to recommend?

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman.

Have you ever been to Book Culture before?

No, this is my first visit. Thanks for hosting me.

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Mason will also appear at this weekend’s New York Roundtable Writer’s Conference and be on Leonard Lopate this coming Monday, April 14th. A review of Head Cases appears in this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review. An earlier NYT review appears here and you can learn more about the author and his work here.