Katie Couric's favorite books

Katie Couric debuts as the anchor of the CBS Evening News on September 5th.

In 2003 Couric shared some of her favorite books with Oprah's magazine.

Here are two of her choices:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Maybe it's my Southern origins that put this classic at the top of my list—or maybe it's a combination of the book's humor, pathos and sense of adventure. Twain was a gutsy, brilliant writer who understood not only the way different people from different walks of life spoke but, more important, how they behaved and felt. Although his language was plain and his writing simple, he dealt with a number of complex issues. Slavery, for example. He allowed readers—with his gentle guidance—to draw their own moral conclusions based on the nuances of the relationship between the characters. Huck's dilemma of whether to turn in his friend Jim may have been one of my first literary lessons on "doing the right thing."

The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel

This play won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Its story of a widow and her two awkward daughters is both painful and poignant. The family is living in poverty; one daughter suffers from convulsions and the other is a social outcast. Yet the traumas endured are accompanied by a sense of hope that had an enormous impact on me, and enabled me to grasp that out of some of the most brutal circumstances, real optimism and strength of character can emerge.

Click here to read about Couric's other favorites.

--Marshal Zeringue