7 Things We Learned at the Martha Stewart #BNAuthorEvent

Martha Stewart and Geoffrey Zakarian came to Barnes and Noble to drive excitement for Martha’s latest book Martha Stewart’s Appetizers. However, she ended up talking about lots of other things like reading in the tub and her hunt for a personal librarian. (Turns out she’s a huge book nerd.) Below, seven things we learned.
She never eats while she reads. “It’s a habit. And I think it’s a very good habit. I mean, reading is serious for me. I don’t even drink wine while I read. I have never poured myself a glass of wine by myself. I once took a swig out of an open wine bottle in the refrigerator just to see if it was still good. That’s it.
But she sometimes reads in the tub. “I’ve dropped the book!”
She rarely leaves a bookstore without buying a few books. “Books that I really love, I buy a hard copy of, even if I read it online.”
She has a whole house devoted to books. “It’s called the Summer House. I just went in there last night to check on my books. Some day it will be organized like a library. I’m working on it. I need to hire a real librarian. I have a large collection of antique and important garden books, and a very large collection of art books. My ex-husband was the president of Abrams Art Books, so I have all those books. And I have millions of cookbooks and other books that interest me—design books, decorating books, all of that stuff. So I do have a large library.”
She thinks you should buy kids all the books they want. “When Alexis was in school—like, high school—and she was a voracious reader, always has been since she was a little kid. I had said that she could—I gave her credit cards or accounts in all her favorite book stores. And she still has them. I still pay for all her Barnes & Noble books, everything. And it’s a great habit to instill in your kids, that they are free to buy whatever books they want. And her children, they’re three and four, they have—see this wall?—that’s filled with books. The girl and the boy have a similar kind of library, and they know where any book is. They really do. Spanish and English. And it’s part of the family—books.
She recommends books to people that she wishes she hadn’t read yet. “Those are the kinds of books that I would encourage people to read, because they were so good I couldn’t believe how good they were. I wish I hadn’t read—like 100 Years of Solitude. I just died when I read that. And My Ántonia. I mean, one of my favorite, favorite books. Willa Cather. Ivanhoe. I mean, you think it’s silly, but Ivanhoe is a fantastic book. I read a lot of American History novels. Upton Sinclair, I loved all his books. So much fun reading him. It’s kind of old-fashioned to say that, but it isn’t old-fashioned. Everybody should read those books if you can. I’m just worried that you tell a high school student now, and they’ll say they’ve never heard of Walter Scott. Or Willa Cather, no one’s ever heard of her.
She doesn’t re-read books. “I don’t read books over again because I have a photographic memory. I don’t want to read things a second time.”