See Elvis Costello at LIVE from the NYPL Friday October 16, at 7 p.m. Below Elvis answers some questions about himself as a reader.

What are the three books you can't live without, and why?

The Pat Hobby Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald - A cautionary tale

Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall by Spike Milligan - A cautionary tale

My Last Sigh by Luis Buñuel - A cautionary tale



What was the last book you recommended to someone?



A Free State by Tom Piazza

This compassionate novel describes two men blackening their faces with cork: one because a minstrel troupe provides an escape into hollow fantasy from drudgery, and the other because he is an escaped slave who must hide in disguise, in plain sight, with a bounty on his head.



Informed by the history of a reviled and forgotten idiom, loving scholarship about the banjo, and the very passport to freedom of body and spirit, this beautiful writing finds echoes in conflicts that persist—envy, imitation, injustice, brutality, inequality—and ultimately offers hope. I urge you to read it for yourself.