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John Allemang, has been writing his Book A Day column since Nov. 28. In tomorrow's paper, he writes his 100th review, along with an essay on the pains and pleasures of his daily routine.

Mr. Allemang was on-line for an hour to take your questions on books, authors and the remarkable pace he's set for himself. Your questions appear below, along with John's responses.

Now, you may be thinking, "Hey! There are more than 100 days between Nov. 28 and June 2. What are these guys trying to pull?"

You're right, of course. There are 186 days. But as John describes in tomorrow's column, "... my editors persuaded me that if I am reading more books in a year than Vernon Wells plays baseball games, then we can get away with describing it as daily."

Regardless, John's routine is a monumental feat. He picks up a new book, reads from prologue to denouement, takes notes — sometimes well into the night — and then writes a review. Four a week. No doubt if you count the hours, he puts in more than your regular work-week. Sometimes he reads two a day.

John's reviews appear Monday to Thursday. His most recent ones include George Bowering's Baseball Love (No. 97), Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany (No. 98) and Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness (No. 99). Saturday, John reviews Bill Buford's Heat.

Oh, and he's not quitting. You'll find review 101 in Monday's Globe.

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Michael Snider, globeandmail.com: Hello John, it's great to have you with us today. And welcome readers. So, c'mon John, you can tell us. Do you skim? Actually, that's a serious question from someone who takes a good week or two of dedicated page turning to reach the final chapter. Is there a trick? Or is it just a matter of finding the time? Come to think of it, how many hours a day do you read and does it ever get boring?

John Allemang: Do I skim? Where's the fun in that? No I refuse to cut corners, partly because I was raised in the somewhat stern Lutheran faith and can't handle guilt, but mostly because that would be turning something I've designed as a pleasure into 9-to-5 Hackery. I'll admit that I might have skipped a few of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and I didn't commit to memory every list on the Book of Lists, but anthologies and collections apart, it ain't over till it's over.

I don't think there's a trick to it other than that because it's my job, I get to do it all day while the rest of you are slaving away at your performance reviews and 3-martini lunches and workplace Pilates classes. It helps, stating the obvious, to have a quiet place with no distractions, which rules out most offices, and to read a book you want to be reading. So I guess I pick and choose a bit, avoiding books that look awfully boring, experimental fiction that's supposed to be good for me, most business books etc.

I probably read eight hours a day, but that varies hugely. If I have something else going on in my life that has to be squeezed in, I'm reading at 7 in the morning or at midnight with complete indifference to my union contract.

No it's not at all boring, but I hate to admit this: very tiring. Today my voice seems to be disappearing from fatigue.

S. Spencer from Milton writes: A pair of questions: Among the books you have read so far for Book A Day, which is your favourite? What book are you most looking forward to reading, and why?

John Allemang: Hi Spencer. Before I sat down to chat today, I looked at the list of what I've read and was amazed at the warm and fuzzy feelings I had for so many of the first 100. We've been through the wars together, something like that, even if a few of them were on the wrong side. I even have a soft spot for Bonnie Fuller's The Joys of Much Too Much, although her mother condemned me in a few phone messages around the Globe and Bonnie herself (a lowly Torontonian turned Manhattan magazine editor) found the time to assail me in a letter to the editor.

But that wasn't your question. I really enjoyed Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting, one of my first books, which described the search (more like a hunt, or a chase) for a 17th-century masterpiece by a notorious brawler and artistic genius that unaccountably disappeared from the face of the Earth — or did it. Harr wrote A Civil Action (later a movie) and has a gift for non-fiction dialogue that makes you feel like you are hanging out with the students in a Rome caffe.

Among novels, I enjoyed Allegra Goodman's Intuition, about a cancer research lab in Cambridge, Mass., and the distorting effect of ambition on research. That sounds a bit dry, but Goodman does what a good novelist should do and writes vividly about people we don't usually encounter in fiction. In the same vein, Vincent Lam, a young doctor, came out with a satisfying book of stories about young doctors titled Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures.

As for looking forward: I don't seem to be doing much of that. I live week-to-week a bit too much, which is an honourable journalistic tradition, but I wish I had more time to look ahead and salivate over what's coming. When I finish here, I'll open up the 30 parcels of books on my desk and see what's there.

Sara Kay from Ottawa and Montreal writes: Dear John, Have you read A Million Little Pieces and what are your thoughts in relation to the fact that while the book is a best seller, it was discovered that many parts of the book were not fact but made-up? I personally enjoyed the book regardless, but do you think it's acceptable even though some people felt dooped?

John Allemang: Sara, are you a lawyer? In that case I'd give a legalistic response, which is mostly how the discussion over James Frey's sometimes fictional memoirs has been framed. And in that case, he screwed up. But that doesn't feel very satisfying to me because most if not all memoirs have some sense of make-believe, even if the author is convinced it's all true. I find I'm choosing to read a lot of memoirs in my Book a Day gig, and if I'm typical in my choices, then publishers must realize there's a market for from-the-heart depictions of inner lives. Unfortunately that's where writers of fiction have chosen to dwell, so you end up with these compromising situations ( I think Frey might be implicated here) where books originally presented as novels are rewritten as autobiography.

I know the boundary isn't all that great, but when Frey bares his soul on Oprah, and the big bucks flow in, I guess that's where I'm more disturbed — seems a funny place for my morality to reside ("You're OK as long as you just make a pittance") but there it is. "Don't self-promote a fake version of yourself" would be my motto. Only problem is that every memoir by a CEO or a movie star or an athlete or a politician is in some way a fake (to the degree that the celebrity is a fake), and we don't get nearly so concerned.

It's interesting to me that two of the books I've reviewed have been self-described untrustworthy memoirs: Molly O'Neill's Mostly True and Miles Kington's Someone Like Me. Memoirists know too well that autobiography is creative writing. The Kington book (he's English, and therefore immune from the Truth witch-hunts) is particularly funny about satirizing the earnest versions of one's sad childhood.

In this same vein, what about Kaavya Viswanathan's novel about getting in Harvard? Novel instead of autobiography, but the book was sold as coming from her life (wealthy but nerdish Indo-American teen will do anything for the Ivy League),and the uproar when it was discovered she'd plagiarized was immensely shaming. So it works both ways. For some reason, I was happier she got caught than Frey, but maybe that's because I don't think most 17-year-olds should be getting a $500,000 contract to write about their lives.

Kate Carey-Rowland from Gray Creek, BC writes: Hi John, In current and upcoming releases, what is the most popular genre (memoir, fiction, self-help, biography, history)? Are our reading tastes, generally, changing? I enjoy your reviews — it's fun to wonder what you've read, and to see whether or not I agree.

John Allemang: Hi Kate. I'm impressed you're in a position to agree or disagree — you're not one of these Book A Day hobbyists I hear about, are you?

I think fiction is on the decline, but don't tell that to the guy writing the next Da Vinci Code. What I mean is, if you're a young writer and want to stay poor, write a novel and see if anyone pays attention. A lot of the novels I do see (and not many of them are mass-market, which still thrives) seem to be searching for a niche that will make them stand out from all the other novels out there — so intelligent historical fiction seems to be a growing sub-genre, epitomized by Sarah Dunant's last two books about rebellious women in Renaissance Italy.

I see so many books from almost all genres that I'm a bad guide to trends — I'm too close to the ground, and some days almost buried in it. I don't see as many of the thoughtful and personal travel books that were so popular a decade ago. The X [insert food ingredient or terchnological innovation or minor historical event here] That Changed the World genre is still steaming along, mainly because it is such a focused way to tell a story that people would avoid if they saw it as political history or something else out of a university course. But I think it might ebb a bit. Mark Kurlansky (who wrote about the world-changing powers of Cod and Salt) has recently taken to writing about a year and about New York oysters, which suggests enough has become enough.

I wish self-help books would go away, but they continue to crowd my desk, although unlike makeup and moisturizers, they haven't crossed the gender divide. You'll find very few metrosexuals in the self-help section.

Geoff Arseneau from NB writes: Hello, do you worry that in plowing through some many books so quickly that you're unable to fully appreciate the books? I guess it would be like gulping fine wine rather than savouring it. Secondly, when will we see a Charles Bukowski review? There are many books of his poems still being published to this day.

John Allemang: I'm not sure, Geoff, what fully appreciating a book really means. When you've paid $35 for a book, I guess you want to spread the pleasure out, and I remember reading The Lost Painting (praised elsewhere in this chat) and actually putting it down for an hour in the hope that it would never end. So I know what you're saying. But we don't go to movies and leave after 15 minutes and come back later in the evening to pick up where we left off. I find reading the book in one sitting gives me a bit of that suspension-of-time feeling you get in a dark theatre for the duration of a performance, and I rather like that — it's almost physical. So I think I get a more intense pleasure from reading in one go, and given the turnaround time, it doesn't hurt to have the book so fresh in my addled brain.

It's been a while since I read Bukowski, but my son's bookshelves are full of him (odd: my son is married and lives elsewhere, but his Bukowski still lives with me) so maybe I'll take a look. Tell me when the next one comes out, if you would, since his publicity machine isn't the strongest.

That's one of my self-lacerating issues, to be honest. I'm a bit passive in reading what they send me rather than searching out books buried in the deepest far-off catalogues.

Peg Fong from Vancouver writes: Hi John, Were there any books you really resented reading and are you looking for an assistant?

John Allemang: Hey Peg. Yes, I'm looking for a personal slave who'll organize my life for no money (but you can carry home some of the books about U.S. colonial history and all the chick-lit novels you can stand). Only danger is getting crushed by piles of celebrity bios. You may also have to remind me what day it is occasionally — I seem to be forgetting that sort of thing more often.

It's hard to resent the books that I myself have chosen to read. I suppose there's a pre-selection that keeps the worst of the industry at a safe distance, and so far my editors have refrained from telling me what to review — if they do, I'll have many candidates. But maybe I should be reviewing more resentful books — bad reading, but good reviewing.

I think the two I disliked most were The Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour, because it was so laboured and hoser-ish and unfunny (I mentioned some honourable exceptions in the review) and a book called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, because the whole history of books and reading seemed to have been taken over by unfeeling supercilious academics who'd decided that a must-read had to pass all kinds of political and cultural tests before being admitted into the category of books worth dying for.

Also, they left out almost everything written in Greek and Latin, which deeply disturbs me as a guy who gave years of his life to the ancient greats.

David Gledhill from Cumberland writes: John, as someone who use to enjoy almost a book a day in a former life but now enjoys a software-problem-a day or a personal-relationship-crisis-a-day is there a short novel / novella or book of short stories you could recommend from your list for the time-challenged not-quite-willing-yet-to-go-the-way-of-audio-books type of person.

John Allemang: Do I pity you or envy you — so hard to say. But just because I'm reading a book a day doesn't mean I can't have relationship crises. Well crisis, anyway. My wife's the only person who ever sees me, and she thinks she should have a bit more of my attention that's now going to Random House.

Some easy books? Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries if you like dipping into food (he's as caught up in food as I am in books, but he gets a pretty cookbook/diary out of it), Vincent Lam's Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (medical-student short stories), Tony Harrison's Selected Poems (bit too much Yorkshire dialect for some, but I'm devoted), Stairway to Heaven (rockers' graves — saved me one day when I didn't have time for a long book). Oops, you said fiction. Havana Best Friends (Cuban detective novel), but it's too long.

Hmm, that's not much help. Maybe I should set aside one day a week for the time-challenged reader?

Michael Snider, globeandmail.com: John, thanks very much for coming on today. Excellent answers. And readers, thank for joining us as well. Please add your thoughts on the discussion or the topic by clicking on the "comment" link below.

If you would like to see a particular reporter/columnist invited on or a particular subject covered, let us know. You can email your suggestions to msnider@globeandmail.com

John Allemang: Thanks, everyone, for finding the time at the end of the week to talk about book, reading and having no time. Now I have to go and finish the review for Monday that I should have done this morning.

Talk to you again. John