Ann Leary's Reading List

"On my night stand, always, is a tattered volume of The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke and story collections by Raymond Carver and John Cheever because I like poems and short stories when falling asleep. I find Roethke's poems particularly soothing, all the darkness, light and beauty in the natural world."

"Maud Newton's wonderful new book, Ancestor Trouble."

"I proceeded to read the entire thing. It's a memoir of her time as a mother of young children when she and her husband lived in Bennington, Vt. One of the funniest memoirs of domestic life I've ever read."

"I recently reread Summer, by Edith Wharton and it made me cry. Again."

"There are novels I read and reread because they guarantee a good cry for me. These include Toni Morrison's A Mercy."

"There are novels I read and reread because they guarantee a good cry for me. These include The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, by Brian Moore."

"Muriel Sparks's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie breaks my heart."

"I recently read Fiona Hill's book, There Is Nothing for You Here, and I was all primed to be enraged on her behalf. Instead, I found it surprisingly optimistic, and I highly recommend it."

"I love 19th-century Gothic novels like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins."

"The Complete Stories of Dorothy Parker was the most fun to reread and the most informative because of those great short stories written almost entirely in dialogue."

"It's so archaic, clichéd and banal that crowds of people laugh helplessly in meetings where the book is sometimes read aloud. It's corny as hell; it has this mortifying Norman Rockwellian vibe throughout, and yet it's perfect somehow. It changed my life and the lives of millions like me."