On My Bookshelf: Senior Lecturer Joe Blatt, Ed.M.'77

Currently reading: I always have at least three books underway, usually a novel, a work of history, and a wild card. Right now the lineup is Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory, in translation (please don't tell my high school French teacher); Christopher Grey, Decoding Organization (an analysis of Bletchley Park, where the British broke the WWII German codes); and Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (historical fiction, so it fits neatly in between).

Last great read: Let me sneak in two! Amy Waldman's The Submission, a novel in which a Muslim American architect wins the commission for a 9/11 memorial, and Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening, a wonderfully dense, almost day-to-day portrait of America coming apart.

Favorite book from childhood: There are two books I must have checked out 25 times each — so much that the librarian insisted my parents buy them for me: Visibility Unlimited, the memoirs of a barnstorming stunt pilot, and Mathematics in Everyday Things, a motley collection of questions and answers about numbers, statistics, physics, and more. You'd be hard pressed to spot anything in my grown-up life that's like stunt piloting, but the fun of pursuing random intriguing questions has clearly influenced my work as a documentary producer. I am ashamed to admit, I have never read…anything about economics. I know it's a vitally important subject, and lots of very smart people go into it, but I can't muster the discipline.

How you find the time: I can't wait in line, ride a bus, or eat a solitary meal without a serious book in hand.