Of the interviews start with me asking, “Were your parents readers? How did you We didn’t go intoĪny of these interviews with a list of questions that we wanted to cover. Interviewee’s house, so that was an intimate setting as well. It feels so much more intimate than a more conventionalįirst of all, most of the interviews took place in the Have the opportunity to in any other kind of conversation. You really get to know these authors in a way that you wouldn’t The other one that I just love is Jennifer Eagan reading Rebecca,Īnd her mother saying that she was “in such a state.” The picture of JenniferĮagan at eleven reading Rebecca “in a state” was just so much fun to Morningstar when she was eleven years old, but it was way up on her parents’īookshelves.

How Louise Erdrich talking about how much she wanted to read Marjorie I have a big smile on my face now, because I’m remembering Up and what their relationships were with those formative books. It was so fun to learn about what people had read growing They’re doing to see how it’s been handled, and I think that’s really

Laurie Frankel and Russell Banks, who both talked about when they’re working onĪ piece of writing, they go back and read or reread authors who’ve done what

Writers, that their reading informing their writing, eitherĭirectly or indirectly, was very interesting. Interesting way of thinking about reading and humanity. Mandelstam, the Russian poet, said that if people want to know about hisīiography they should look at the books he’s read. How reading informs the person that you are. I guess what was even more intriguing than that, in a way, was What was intriguing about that topic for you? Publisher’s Weekly stated, “Readers of this delightful compendium will relish the chance to find many of those shared loves, as well as discover new ones,” and Booklist hailed it as a zestfully elucidating and inspiring portal onto the lives and thoughts of truly exceptional writers. From Susan Choi on The Borrowers to Amor Towles on The Honorable Schoolboy, the result is a series of illuminating conversations that reveal your favorite writers in surprising and intimate ways. She and her collaborator, playwright Jeff Schwager, interviewed a wide-ranging group of twenty-three American authors about the books that made them who they are today. With The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives, Pearl has taken it one step further. Whether it’s through her beloved Book Lust series, her frequent appearances on NPR’s Morning Edition, or her own critically acclaimed novel, George and Lizzie, Nancy Pearl has been providing readers with impeccable reading options for many years.

In a mirror mary stolz