On Reading
I have loved words all my life.
I grew up in a house with shelves of books inherited from grandparents, books that smelled of times and places I could visit only in my imagination.
At an early age I fell in love with being read to, and at ten years old I discovered Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which got me through a nasty week-long case of the mumps and introduced me to the idea of novels as dear friends.
I’m a committed if attention-challenged reader, and I have undying appreciation for writers who keep me engaged.
The first to do so was L’Engle, the most recent, Isabel Allende (A Long Petal of the Sea). It would be hard to list all those in between, but as I’ve only written one book, I have to look to others to convey my great love of the craft. Good books have the ability to transform, educate, and empower us. They tell our truths, and the truths of those we do not know.
The more I read, the more I understand my life and the lives of everyone else.
In a time of great turmoil and social divide, I find these connections soothing.
In no particular order, here are some of my favorites:
Old Classics
John Steinbeck (East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath)
Lousia May Alcott (Little Women, Jo’s Boys)
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman)
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
New Classics
Madeline L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels)
Isabel Allende (House of Spirits, The Japanese Lover, A Long Petal of the Sea)
Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things, Nineteen Minutes, Change of Heart)
Ursula Hegi (Stones from the River)
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven)
John Irving (Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, The Door in the Floor)
Lois Lowry (The Giver)
Exciting New Writers
Celeste Ng (Little Fires Everywhere, Everything I Never Told You)
Thrity Umrigard (Everybody’s Son)
Britt Bennet (Mothers, The Vanishing Half)
Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing, Transcendent Kingdom)
Tommy Orange (There There)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half a Yellow Sun, Americanah)
Chinelo Okparanta (Under the Udala Trees)
Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give)
I believe fiction has the ability to convey our deepest truths. A wise person once said there are two kinds of folks in this world, seekers and believers. I am unapologetically among the former. The world seems too big to me to ever believe I have a firm grasp on what it is, but a good book helps me to feel, for a moment, that I have a secure place in it all the same.
