How Reading Changed My Life (9 page)

10 of the Books My Exceptionally Well
Read Friend Ben Says He’s Taken the
Most From

Herzog
by Saul Bellow
Coming Up for Air
by George Orwell
Something of an Achievement
by Gwyn Griffin
Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
Walden
by Henry David Thoreau
The Moon and Sixpence
by Somerset Maugham
Riders of the Purple Sage
by Zane Grey
Heretics
by G. K. Chesterton
The Wapshot Chronicles
by John Cheever

(With addendum: “Now I can’t believe I settled for that list. What about William Maxwell’s
The Folded Leaf
, or Elizabeth Bowen’s
The House in Paris? ”
)

10 Books I Just Love to Read, and
Always Will

Main Street
by Sinclair Lewis
My Antonia
by Willa Cather
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
by C. S. Lewis
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
The Group
by Mary McCarthy
The Blue Swallows
by Howard Nemerov (poetry)
The Phantom Tollbooth
by Norton Juster
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh

M
OST OF THE
books used as source material are acknowledged within the body of this extended essay. But I would like to especially thank Alberto Manguel for his marvelous
A History of Reading
. Edward de Grazia’s
Girls Lean Back Everywhere
provides an invaluable education on the issues of literary censorship. I’m also grateful for two reference books,
Writing Changes Everything
, edited by Deborah Brodie, and
The Columbia Book of Quotations
, edited by Robert Andrews.

Many dedicated readers helped me think about the issues raised in this book. I would like to thank Eden Ross Lipson, Eugene Kennedy, Una Cadegan,
Eden Stewart Eisman at St. Luke’s School in New York City, Carol Miles at the American Booksellers Association, Joyce Meskis of the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, and the members of the St. David’s book club, who invited me in for coffee and conversation one winter night: M. Karen Redmond, Maud Walker, Joyce Guyer, Sylvia Severance, Patricia Graham, Jeanne McGuigan, Diane O’Hara, Jean Welz, Ann Crapo, Linda Edie, Margaret Murphy, Phyllis Hughes.

As always, Kate Medina and Amanda Urban make everything possible for me professionally. And personally there are Janet Maslin and Ben Cheever, Quin, Christopher, Maria, and Gerry Krovatin.

A special thank-you to teachers and librarians. If not you, not me.

A
NNA
Q
UINDLEN
is the author of the national bestseller,
A Short Guide to a Happy Life
, and three bestselling novels. Her
New York Times
column “Public and Private” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and a selection of these columns was published as
Thinking Out Loud
. She is also the author of a collection of her “Life in the 30’s” columns,
Living Out Loud
, and two children’s books,
The Tree That Came to Stay
and
Happily Ever After
. She is currently a columnist for
Newsweek
and lives with her husband and children in New York City.