How Reading Changed My Life

The Reading Lists from Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life:\ 10 Big Thick Wonderful Books that Could Take You a Whole Summer to Read (But Aren't Beach Books)\ Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell\ Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray\ East of Eden by John Steinbeck\ The Forstyte Saga by John Galsworthy\ Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann\ Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope\ Sophie's Choice by William Styron\ Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon\ Underworld by Don DeLillo\ Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry\ 10 Non Fiction Books That Help Us Understand the World\ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons\ The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam\ Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick\ Lincoln by David Herbert Douglas\ Silent Spring by Rachel Carson\ In Cold Blood by Truman Capote\ How We Die by Sherwin Nuland\ The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos\ The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir\ The Power Broker by Robert Caro\ 10 Books that will Help a Teenager Feel More Human\ Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger\ A Separate Peace by John Knowles\ Lost In Place by Mark Salzman\ What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges\ The World According to Garp by John Irving\ Bloodbrothers by Richard Price\ A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith\ To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee\ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers\ The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers\ The 10 Books I Would Save in a Fire (If I Could Only Save 10)\ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen\ Bleak House by Charles Dickens\ Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy\ The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner\ The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing\ Middlemarch by George Eliot\ Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence\ The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats\ The Collected Plays of William Shakespeare\ The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton\ Ten Books for a Girl Who is Full of Beans (Or Ought to Be)\ Little Women by Louisa May Alcott\ Julius the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes\ Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace\ Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery\ The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank\ The BFG by Ronald Dahl\ A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle\ Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans\ Catherine Known As Birdy by Katherine Paterson\ The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi\ Ten Mystery Novels I'd Most Like to Find in a Summer Rental\ An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P. D. James\ Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers\ The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie King\ Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier\ Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard\ Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham\ The Way Through the Woods by Colin Dexter\ The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle\ Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey\ The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre\ 10 Books Recommended by a Really Good Elementary School Librarian\ The View From Saturday by E.L. Koningsburg\ Frindle by Andrew Clements\ My Daniel by Pan Conrad\ The Houdini Box by Brian Selznick\ Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian\ No Flying in the House by Betty Brock\ My Father's Dragon by Ruth Gannett Stiles\ Habibi by Naomi Nye\ Mudpies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls by Marjorie Winslow\ The Story of May by Mordecai Gerstein\ 10 Good Book Club Selections\ Fraud by Anita Brookner\ Charming Billy by Alice McDermott\ The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton\ The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells\ The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields\ Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf\ The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett\ Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser\ Paris Trout by Pete Dexter\ Eden Close by Anita Shreve\ 10 Modern Novels that Made Me Proud to be a Writer\ The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks\ White Noise by Don DeLillo\ Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser\ True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne\ The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen\ The French Lieutennant's Woman by John Fowles\ Falconer by John Cheever\ The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison\ The Information by Martin Amis\ Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth\ 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 a 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? )\ Books I Just Love to Read, And Always Will\ Main Street by Sinclair Lewis\ My Antonia by Willa Cather\ The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis\ Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte\ Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte\ The Group by Mary McCarthy\ The Blue Swallows by Howard Nemerov (poetry)\ The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster\ A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens\ Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

\ From Barnes & NobleThe Barnes & Noble Review\ Since she was a child, Anna Quindlen has been discovering the world and herself through reading: 'Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion.'" From a lesser writer, such a tribute might be hyperbolic, but Quindlen has given as good as she's got. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for her New York Times column 'Public and Private,' Quindlen's three novels have been bestsellers, and her collection of 'Life in the 30's' columns, Living Out Loud, gave her a reputation as a voice for her generation, for her gender, and for thinking people everywhere. \ In the short, entertaining book How Reading Changed My Life — part of Ballantine's Library of Contemporary Thought series — Quindlen uses her sharp observations and gentle humor to describe her inner life as a reader, a life that other confirmed bibliophiles will recognize with delight and not a few rueful smiles. Quindlen tells of her game attempts to be 'a normal child, who lived, raucous, in the world,' playing outdoors with the other children in the creek or laying pennies on the trolley track: 'But at base it was never any good. There was always a part of me, the best part of me, back at home, within some book, laid flat on the table to mark my place, its imaginary people waiting for me to return and bring them back to life.' In describing her childhood, adolescence, and adult years, Quindlen marks the passages of time with the self-awareness she gained reading different novels, from A Wrinkle in Time to Middlemarch\ For those of us who, like Quindlen,couldgive up almost anything before we gave up reading, her book will feel like a party...to which the host has invited some of our oldest friends.\ —Derek Baker\ \ \ \ \ \ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ In this pithy celebration of the power and joys of reading, Quindlen emphasizes that books are not simply a means of imparting knowledge, but also a way to strengthen emotional connectedness, to lessen isolation, to explore alternate realities and to challenge the established order. To these ends much of the book forms a plea for intellectual freedom as well as a personal paean to reading. Quindlen (One True Thing) recalls her own early love affair with reading; writes with unabashed fervor of books that shaped her psychosexual maturation (John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga, Mary McCarthy's The Group); and discusses the books that made her a liberal committed to fighting social injustice (Dickens, the Bible). She compares reading books to intimate friendship--both activities enable us to deconstruct the underpinnings of interpersonal problems and relationships. Her analysis of the limitations of the computer screen is another rebuttal of those who predict the imminent demise of the book. In order to further inspire potential readers, she includes her own admittedly "arbitrary and capricious" reading lists -- "The 10 books I would save in a fire," "10 modern novels that made me proud to be a writer," "10 books that will help a teenager feel more human" and various other categories. But most of all, like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, this essay is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary and a pleasure to read.\ \ \ Library JournalReaders who miss best-selling novelist Quindlen's newspaper column will welcome the return of her engaging voice in this latest addition to Ballantine's "Library of Contemporary Thought," a series of short, inexpensive trade paperback originals. Never stodgy or academic, Quindlen ties her own experience to reading habits in general and the ways they have changed over the last 100 years, including the recent influence of Oprah. She concludes with a series of arbitrary and capricious reading lists that could give librarians ideas: "10 Books That Will Help a Teenager Feel More Human," "10 Mystery Novels I'd Most Like To Find in a Summer Rental," "10 Modern Novels That Made Me Proud To Be a Writer," etc. This little book for book lovers, an excellent choice for reading groups, is recommended for all libraries.--Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., Lafayette, CO\ \