I've been thinking about books lately. I guess it's not surprising!

I've always had trouble picking a favorite movie, but I've never had trouble pinpointing which books are my favorites, and that's because there's a simple test: If I truly love a book, I re-read it. Many times.

In fact, I often re-read them every couple of years, or sometimes I'll even re-read favorite passages from them. (Yes, I was the girl in the corner in the library. Every weekend.)

Given the amazing response to thelinster's post What book got you hooked? last summer, I'm guessing that many of you might be just as bookish as I am. So I thought I'd share a few of the books that made deep, lifelong impressions on me. They shaped me as a human being and as a writer, and every time I read one of them, I feel like I've come home.

A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle
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L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time is more famous, but A Ring of Endless Light will always win out for me.

I sometimes think back to the summer before my freshman year of high school. My very Catholic school gave us a booklist to read, and as a result of the imposed summer homework (Oh, no! Would all of high school be like this?), I was introduced to the four sisters March. Yes, the booklist included Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy found their way into my heart that summer of ’65. As I sat out on Mastic Beach in Long Island at the home of one of my cousins, I was transported back to the Civil War and the lives of those four girls. Balmy winds and beach sand under my feet were no match for Southern hospitality, adventurous escapades, plays, balls and the tears shed at the many sad moments in the book. I immediately fell in love with Jo and wished she could hold me in her arms as she did her dear sister Beth. Little did I know that was a portent of my future!

As I grew up and enjoyed different shows on TV, I came to recognize a pattern. Certain shows resonated with me in a way that was so familiar. You know these shows: The Facts of Life, Golden Girls, Designing Women. What was it, I asked myself, that connects all of these shows? And then one day, it came to me. The characters on these shows reflect the attributes of the characters in Little Women. … continue reading

I don’t remember exactly how I came across it, but a while ago I stumbled upon an online list that an organization called the Publishing Triangle had made of the “100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels of all time." Since I was a literature major, and reading is still pretty much like breathing for me, it was an interesting list. There were the overtly gay-themed novels you might expect — E. M. Forster’s Maurice, for example, and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness — as well as books that I recognized as subtextually gay, even if it’s not quite made explicit: D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (which, somewhat counter-intuitively, is really about men in love with each other), and Henry James’s The Bostonians. One selection, at No. 43, came as a pretty big surprise, though: Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

I thought about this. Little Women? Really? I mean, yes, Jo March was a tomboy; yes, she had a propensity for dressing up in men’s clothes and swaggering about; yes, the handsome, wealthy, intelligent, kind boy next door was in love with her, and she just wanted to be friends. But it still seemed like a pretty big, and presumptuous, leap to me, to claim it as a lesbian novel. … continue reading