5 Life-Changing Books

Jeremy Lynch of Crimespree Magazine recently asked me to list 5 books that changed my life. That made me wonder if indeed any book actually had.  In thinking back over the years, I realized that yes, several had.  So here is the list I sent him on November 16. If a book changed your life, come over to my Facebook page and share your story.

● Horton Hatches the Egg, by Dr. Seuss.  I have never forgotten the heart-stopping suspense, the appealing character and the surprising plot twist that led to a happy ending.  A children's librarian read it aloud when I was 3 and I was hooked on books for life.

● A red-leather diary with a lock that I received for my 10th birthday.  When my brother found it, picked the lock and read a passage aloud at breakfast one morning, I learned that words written down on a page can have unintended consequences.  A good lesson to learn at age 10.

● Collected Poems, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.  At 13, it made me want to write and it also taught me the value of specificity in pulling a reader into the writer's setting.  Not "herb garden" but "sweet basil, sage, etc."  Not a generic "bird" but "whip-poor-will" or "meadow lark."  Not "trees" but "tamaracks" or "pines."

● The Trial, by Franz Kafka -- At 20, I gained a deeply personal, life-changing insight with this book. (Plus, seeing it on my bookshelf led my husband to propose!)

● Roget's Thesauraus - Not the dictionary version, but the one where words are grouped by relationships. Finding the precise word with the exact nuance you want to convey is very liberating.

So what book changed your life?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Margaret-Maron/290105072569?ref=hl

While in New York . . .

Almost every time I'm in New York, there are two "must visit" sights on my list.  We usually take the ferry over to Staten Island, a free roundtrip ride that takes us quite close to the Statue of Liberty and gives us wonderful views of the lower tip of Manhattan.  The tall buildings gleam as the late afternoon sun goes down,  then become magical at twilight when the lights are coming on.

No matter what the time of day, I can never stand on the deck of the ferry without silently reciting, "We were very tired, we were very merry. / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry."

Which leads me to my second must-visit sight.  It's down in the Village, Number 75½ Bedford Avenue to be precise.  I go and stand in front of this ridiculously narrow house (less than 10 feet wide) because the poet who once lived there is the one who first made me want to write.  If I manage to convey a sense of place in my books, it's because I learned it from her.  The red oval plaque above the door reads:

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1892-1950

The irreverent poet who wrote

"my candle burns at both ends"

lived here in 1923-24 at the time she

wrote the "Ballad of the Harp Weaver,"

for which she won a Pulitzer prize.