Remarkable Reads
J. Peder Zane, Editor
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 W. W. Norton & Co.
ISBN: 0393325407

34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading.

This little volume poses the questions: can books be dangerous, elegant or sad? Can they be tempting or smokin', or double-daring? Can they compel you to hitchhike, fall in love, or ...?

Curious about what writers read & how books have influenced them, J. Peder Zane, book review editor for the Raleigh News & Observer, invited these writers to contribute essays launched by the request that they fill in the blank: “the most ______ book I ever read.”

J. Peder Zane's challenge elicited eye-opening responses by the likes of:
Bebe Moore Campbell: memorable
Jonathan Lethem: loneliest
Betty Adcock: enchanting
Denise Gess: important
Lee K. Abbott: daunting
Scott Weidensaul: resonant
Frederick Busch: dangerous
Robert Morgan: wisest
Eric Wright: classiest
Anthony Walton: eloquent
Joan Barfoot: maddest
Marianne Gingher: double-d-daring
Haven Kimmel: familiar
H. W. Brands: incomprehensible
Ben Marcus: devastating
Lydia Millet: apocalyptic
Bret Lott: fragile
Jill McCorkle: beautiful
Charles Frazier: tempting
Elizabeth Hay: fearless
Aimee Bender: intuitive
Margot Livesey: Scottish
Clyde Edgerton: technically elegant
Peter Cameron: queerest
Fred Chappell: exotic
Sven Birkets: smokin'
Peggy Payne: seductive
Howard Bahr: elegant
Peter Gray: surprising
Marvin Hunt: disappointing
Doris Betts: unpleasant
Lee Smith: luminous

& J. Peder Zane's own essay is about the hippest of books: Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.

I did enjoy discovering what these writers were doing at the time they read their selected books; how their lives changed; their ideas about writing; their epiphanies & peeves. Yes, writers do read & write about what they read, quite well too!
(09/12/04)

Rebecca