Minnesota author Leif Enger visits Austin this week.

Enger has been chosen as the featured author for the Austin Page Turners eighth annual city-wide reading event.

Enger will be in Austin Thursday and will give a presentation to the public at 7 p.m. at Austin Public Library among other public appearances throughout the day.

Enger’s two novels are both being read for the event. His debut novel, Peace Like a River, was published in 2001 and was a national bestseller. His second novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, came out in May 2008. Both books may be reserved from the library or purchased in Austin at Philomathian Religious Books & Gifts, 309 N. Main St.

If it is true “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” how, then, does one judge an author?

Answer: By asking him questions.

Enger’s favorite books are many.

“You know how it is — I have a roomful of favorites by people like Stevenson and London and Hemingway and Austen and Percy, as well as living writers such as McMurtry and Chabon, and they kind of rotate depending on my mood, but since you have to dance with one at a time, today I will say ‘True Grit,’ by Charles Portis, is my favorite novel,” Enger said. “I love it because the narrator, Mattie, has a voice so distinct, funny, opinionated and sly that she stands alone among the classics.”

“The story is full-on action revealing fascinating characters in the most vivid language available,” he said. “Heroic, hilarious, understated at just the right times — no one should miss True Grit, and now I hear the Coen brothers are going to remake the movie.”

“Incidentally the John Wayne picture is pretty good, but Mattie doesn’t hold up to the book by a long stretch; also, somebody tell me what Glen Campbell is doing in that story?” he said.

How did Enger and books connect? Answer: It happened in elementary school, where his first memories of visiting a library were made.

“That would’ve been the library at Osakis Public School, in second grade. I thought we had a lot of books at home, but the library seemed enormous, overpowering, and out-of-reach somehow.”

“People were reading quietly at tables and when the librarian said we could each pick two books and take them home with us I thought she was joking,” he said. “I chose a baseball novel and a book about dinosaurs.”

Obviously, Enger is a “book-lover,” as well as an author.

Today, books can be read on-line and readers are, literally, out of touch with the words on pages.

Does this bother him?

“I just read my first book on a computer screen — I liked the book, an unpublished memoir by a friend, but didn’t think much of the reading experience,” he admitted. “Back-lighting is hard on the human eyeball after the first couple hours,” Enger observed.

“That said, I’m confident electronic readers like the Kindle and Sony are here to stay and are improving all the time,” he added. “The ability to carry a few hundred books in that slender package is an attractive selling point. I’d hate to see paper volumes disappear and in fact I doubt they will, but the important thing is the literature and not the method of delivery.”

Enger’s visit will be an opportunity for his fans and others curious about the author to gain some insight about modern literature.

Just because someone has his/her name attached to a book, does that mean that person is an honest-go-goodness “writer” with skills and nuances beyond others? What’s the difference, if any, between a writer and someone who writes books?

“If someone is writing books then he or she is a writer,” Enger said. “The differences lie in the writer’s motives, talent, discipline.”

“I’ve read gripping stories by people with more discipline than talent and silly trash by people with oceans of talent, but a wrong-headed motive.”

“It might be tempting to believe in a kind of exclusive ‘writer’s mind’ that sets one apart, but that’s a long conversation leading to any number of subjective assets.”

“It’s probably closer to call a writer anyone with a stack of pages,” Enger said.

The Austin Page Turners audience with get closer to the truth about Enger and his books later this week.

Enger is prepared for those encounters, which, one experience, taught him well.

“An old friend of mine took enormous joy in calling me on his cell phone from a garage sale in Iowa where he’d just found a hardcover copy of Peace Like a River for 25 cents,” he recalled. “I felt like a proverb about the insignificance of man, or a song by Kansas about blowing dirt.”

“It made my day,” he said.

Enger will begin his whirlwind Thursday in Austin with lunch with 10 winners in a raffle drawing.

The public is invited to a book discussion, beginning 12:30 p.m. Thursday in the Riverland Community College library.

Then, he will lead a small group discussion in Christgau Hall at Austin High School, beginning 2 p.m. Thursday. The public is invited to attend.

A reception in the author’s honor will be held 5:30 p.m. at Austin Public Library hosted by the Austin Floral Club, Friends of the Public Library and Austin Public Library.

Finally, he will make a presentation to the public at 7 p.m. Thursday in the large meeting room at the library. A book signing will follow, and the public is admitted.