The Book That Changed My Life
Interviews with National Book Award Winners and Finalists
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Every reader can name at least one book that changed his or her life—and many more beloved titles will surely come to mind as well. In The Book That Changed My Life, fifteen of America’s most influential authors discuss their own special literary choices. These unique interviews with National Book Award winners and finalists offer new insights into the many ways in which the experience of reading shapes the act of writing. Robert Stone on Joseph Conrad’s Victory, Cynthia Ozick on Henry James’s Washington Square, Charles Johnson on Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf—each approaches the question of literary influence, while offering rich and wonderful revelations about his or her own writing career. James Carroll, Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow, Diane Johnson, Philip Levine, David Levering Lewis, Barry Lopez, David McCullough, Alice McDermott, Grace Paley, Linda Pastan, and Katherine Paterson are the other distinguished contributors to this collection of informed, insightful interviews.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grace Paley describes her first encounter with the stories of Isaac Babel; Charles Johnson recalls being moved by Black Boy and a volume about yoga he found on his mother's bookshelf; and Don DeLillo explains that he spent his childhood not reading at all, but playing games-"street games, card games, alley games, rooftop games, fire escape games, punchball, stickball, handball, stoop ball"-in The Book That Changed My Life: Interviews with National Book Award Winners and Finalists. Freelance writer and editor Diane Osen talks to 15 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets and children's authors-including E.L. Doctorow, Alice McDermott, Philip Levine and Katherine Paterson-about formative influences as well as their recent works.
