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Leah Hager Cohen's Reading List

The author of “No Book but the World” says the last book that made her furious was “The Da Vinci Code” — “At the end of every chapter, I’d glance up and announce in increasingly disgusted tones: ‘What schlock!’ ”

By the Book: Leah Hager Cohen (2014)

NYT By the Book column (2014-05-22).

Source: www.nytimes.com

An Everlasting Meal

Tamar Adler · Buy on Amazon

"It's spare and quietly glorious, a bit like evening prayer. The way she writes about boiling vegetables! The way she writes about salting an egg!"

The Gift

Lewis Hyde · Buy on Amazon

"It's such a generous, unsettling, chimerical work that the word "book" almost feels inadequate... I read it again last year and was stirred by connections I'd missed the first time around."

Things Invisible to See

Nancy Willard · Buy on Amazon

"Why, oh why, is Nancy Willard's "Things Invisible to See" out of print?... manages to be about life, death, love, hate, innocence, experience and baseball."

This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Díaz · Buy on Amazon

""This Is How You Lose Her." Junot Díaz, you slay. (On so many levels.)"

A Lesson Before Dying

Ernest J. Gaines · Buy on Amazon

"I stayed up until dawn to finish it in one ragged gulp, and toward the end my face was streaming so messily it was literally a struggle to see the words on the page."

Home

Marilynne Robinson · Buy on Amazon

"Slow-rolling, aquifer tears: Marilynne Robinson's "Home.""

Ballet Shoes

Noel Streatfeild · Buy on Amazon

"Noel Streatfeild's "Ballet Shoes" (which, come to think of it, contained surprising amounts of math). At the time I couldn't get enough."

The Outsiders

S. E. Hinton · Buy on Amazon

"S. E. Hinton's "The Outsiders," which completely altered my sense of what sorts of territory fiction could illuminate, and of my own appetite to be illuminated."

Reading Claudius

Caroline Heller · Buy on Amazon

"I was lucky enough to read an early draft, and can't wait for it to reach the hands of many more people."

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