Books That Changed Your Life 5

©2007 by Julius Lester

Today's Books That Changed Your Life comes from Emily Lisker, the Urban Mermaid, Woonsocket, Rhode Island:

"I am very narrow or selective in my book loves. I love memoirs some poetry and what I call true fiction which are often really just memoirs with fictitious names. I search for truth and honest storytelling. I try to keep all the books I've loved as evidence (to myself) that I really can and do read. I am a person who needs to find truths in a book. As a grade school kid I saved up my allowance to send away for the boys and girls book about divorce. I read bits from the encyclopedia and dictionaries.

the dream watcher by barbara wersba: grade school favorite (i wrote her fan letter recently and we traded books)

be here now ram dass (high school) I remember the day VIVIDLY, my head blew open. my parents were gone for the weekend. I was home alone. I read this book and was never the same.

think on these things krishnamurti (college) this was great oxygen and first aid for my soul

all of alice miller's books ( I broke the code on reading-turned me into a "reader") post college

a woman speaks (college) anais nin's lectures I reread it often

the fire eaters a novel by william cobb I have read it three times. I woke in the night vowing to write the author-and to write my own book. now we have become pen pals).

journal of a solitude may sarton ( this book is oxygen to me i have paperback copies all over the house)

bird by bird anne lamott this book kept me from suicide

a place to stand by jimmy santiago baca this book made me believe in miracles and that i could write too. i have become pen pals with the author.

amy bloom come to me-short stories

jane shore- all of her books of poems

Jimmy santiago baca all of his books of poems

MFK fisher the art of eating

Oliver Sacks -anthropologist on mars-made me realize I could be loved with my quirks

iron John by Robert Bly

a little book on the human shadow - by bly- i reread it often

The unquiet mind by kay jameson - i reread it every spring."

TODAY’S QUOTE

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours, and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

J.D. Salinger

TODAY’S WORD

Bosom bottle – A small flask, tucked into a stomacher, to hold flowers. (A stomacher was a V-shaped piece of decorative cloth, worn over the chest and stomach by men and women in the 16th century, later only by women).

TODAY'S PHOTOGRAPH

Bust of Shakespeare, Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, Amherst, Mass.