The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them - Hardcover

Coady, Roxanne J.; Johannessen, Joy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592402100 ISBN 13: 9781592402106

Publisher: Gotham, 2006

Synopsis

Sixty-five concise and lively essays by some of today's most successful writers identify the books that proved pivotal to the shaping of their careers, in a volume that includes Harold Bloom on Little, Big, Nelson DeMille on Atlas Shrugged, and Sebastian Junger on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

About this title

About the Author

Roxanne Coady, founder of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut, won the Publishers Weekly Bookseller of the Year Award in 1995. In 1996, Coady founded the Read to Grow Foundation, which, in partnership with urban hospitals throughout Connecticut, has provided books and literacy information to tens of thousands of children and families.

Joy Johannessen has been an editor/executive editor at Grove Press, Oxford University Press, HarperCollins, and Delphinium Books. Among the writers she has worked with are Dorothy Allison, Harold Bloom, Michael Cunningham, Nien Cheng, and Arthur Miller.

Reviews

As a teenager in a Parisian expatriate's bookstore, James Atlas found Gwendolyn Brooks's Selected Poems and realized that "poetry could emerge out of the geography of your own experience." Jacquelyn Mitchard named a baby after the struggling heroine of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged "jarred" Nelson Demille into "thinking outside the box"; Michael Stern was transported to unknown worlds by the Sears catalogue; while Sen. Joe Lieberman, an observant Jew, was molded by the Bible. In this uneven collection of often predictable musings about their favorite books by a catchall of writers (including PW's editor, Sara Nelson), one of the few standouts is by Frank McCourt, who tastes a line from Shakespeare's Henry VIII when he's a 10-year-old typhoid patient and remembers "it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words." Unfortunately, by stuffing 71 writers into a slim volume, bookseller Coady and editor Johannessen all but ensure prosaic snippets of random thoughts rather than developed essays. The format also allows for repetition (J.D. Salinger; Harper Lee) and self-promotion (Carol Higgins Clark's inspiration was her famous mother; Anita Diamant showboats about her own novel The Red Tent in a piece about Virginia Woolf). (Oct.)
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For-the-love-of-books anthologies work like catnip on ardent readers and those who advise them, and what fun it is to discover which books writers love. Connecticut bookseller Coady, who believes so deeply in the power of books that she established the nonprofit Read to Grow Foundation (which book proceeds will support) to promote literacy and "the joy of reading," takes a refreshingly populist approach in this collection of 71 lively favorite-book essays. Children's book creator Tomie dePaola reveals his passion for Kristin Lavransdatter. Literary scholar Harold Bloom confesses his delight in the fantasy novel Little, Big. Elizabeth Berg and Alice Hoffman describe revelations sparked by Catcher in the Rye. Crime writer Patricia Cornwell discloses her fascination with Uncle Tom's Cabin, and her familial connection to Harriet Beecher Stowe, while Carol Higgins Clark names an early book by her mother, Mary Higgins Clark. Here, too, are historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and David -Halberstam, all testifying to the transformative power of books and adding fresh titles to readers' to-read lists. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Gotham
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1592402100
• ISBN 13: 9781592402106
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224