Thursday, December 21, 2006

Susan Cheever's favorite books

Susan Cheever, author of American Bloomsbury: The Lives of Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts from 1840 to 1868 and My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, lists her 20 favorite books at her website.

Here are the first four titles:
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
A book suffused with longing for the lost world of adulthood.

Father and Son by Edmund Gosse
A model for writing about a parent.

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
A book suffused with longing for the lost world of childhood.

In Pharoah's Army by Tobias Wolff
Elegant and electrifying book about the war in Vietnam and the war in our hearts.
Click here to read the rest of the list and read an early review of Cheever's new book, American Bloomsbury.

--Marshal Zeringue