Author Interviews

How do I even begin to introduce this video? (You'll notice I'm not in it, which is due to the technical and logistical difficulties of filming in a five-star hotel suite. The added benefit is that the focus is on the wonderful authors.)

I got to meet and interview Dame Julie Andrews with her daughter and co-author Emma Walton Hamilton for their new book, "Julie Andrews' Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies."

!!!!!

Even months after conducting this interview, I can scarcely believe it. I met Julie Andrews. Somebody, pinch me...

However, if you watch the interview, I hope you'll notice not just Dame Andrews and Ms. Hamilton as fascinating and impassioned advocates for reading, but that you'll also see the warm and loving mother-daughter relationship that they share. 

When you see him on television, Howie Mandel is about as friendly as can be -- and many of us have seen him giving a contestant on "Deal or No Deal" his trademark fist bump. 

Turns out that that fist bump is Mandel's way of coping with a serious case of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He doesn't shake hands, and he'd prefer never to make physical contact with strangers if he could help it. In his memoir "Here's the Deal: Don't Touch Me," Mandel tells the story of growing up with OCD and coming to terms with the illness as an adult.

Sarah Blake's new novel "The Postmistress" has a blurb on it from another author at Blake's imprint, Amy Einhorn Books. That wouldn't be surprising or remarkable if it weren't for the fact that that author is Kathryn Stockett: "The Help" is still sweeping bestseller lists nearly a year after its release. Einhorn knows how to choose strong women's fiction, and while Blake's book couldn't be more different than Stockett's, the two novels do share complicated, complex female characters and their take on events around them.

While "The Help" centered on civil rights-era Mississippi, "The Postmistress" is about the early days of World War II, before the United States had entered the fight. In our interview, Blake talks about why she wanted to set her story right at that moment, as well as why she wanted it to take place on two continents. She also discusses why she wanted to have letters play such an important role in her novel.

Are you happier now than you were four years ago?

Hee, hee. Sometimes the oldies are goodies. 

However, for author and blogger Gretchen Rubin, the answer would be an unequivocal "Yes!" Rubin's own path to being happier is detailed in her book "The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun" and on her blog The Happiness Project.