Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
Cathleen Schine wanted to be a graduate student when she grew up (though she started her academic career wanting to be a poet) but higher education’s loss was literature’s gain when she ditched medieval history at the University of Chicago to write. A dozen novels later (including 2 that were made into movies, The Love Letter and Rameau’s Niece), one of them is now coming out in paperback, Künstlers in Paradise (Holt Paperbacks).
The Connecticut-born and -raised, L.A.-based, NYT-bestselling Schine has contributed to many essay collections and publications (The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review among them, and she began her journalism career at The Village Voice, was a copy editor at Newsweek, and once reviewed TV for Vogue); studied paleography in Italy; works in bed and once confused Gay Talese for Tom Wolfe; and has a dog named Ruthie.
Likes: jasmine in her garden and reading memoirs, copyeditors and doing research, opera and horses, Jack Daniel’s; Margie’s Merry Go Round Szechuan restaurant in Lone Pine, CA, shoes. Go tos: Papa & Barkley 1:1 Releaf Tincture, Australian Dream cream. Good at: Napping. Bad at: Spelling and taking tests and recalling names/dates/abstract ideas. The books she found memorable, below.
The book that...
…helped me through a breakup:
Well, let’s turn that around: a breakup introduced me to Dickens. My boyfriend moved out and left Our Mutual Friend on the floor of the closet.
… kept me up way too late:
Cynthia Ozick’s The Puttermesser Papers. I was breathless reading it – each sentence has its own propulsion and suspense. I read it straight through till dawn.
…made me weep uncontrollably:
When I read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, I stopped after each chapter and wept. Not because it was sad but because it was full of aching truth and beauty.
…I recommend over and over again:
...shaped my worldview:
Colette and Barbara Pym—not an obvious twinning, but Colette made me aware of so much sensual (and sensuous) beauty in the world, and Pym made me notice the glory and tragedy of dailiness everywhere in life.
...made me rethink a long-held belief:
I recently read My Promised Land by Ari Shavit, and it led me to so many different, and contradictory, and always painful ways to look at Israel and Palestine.
…I swear I’ll finish one day:
I’m sure Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne is one of my favorite and foundational books, or will be if I ever finish it.
...I read in one sitting, it was that good:
The Puttermesser Papers. See above!
…currently sits on my nightstand:
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk.
…I’d pass on to all kids:
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. It changed my life when our fourth-grade teacher read it to us.
…I’d give to a new graduate:
The Power Broker by Robert Caro. Welcome to the real world.
…made me laugh out loud:
P.G. Wodehouse always.
...I last bought:
Alive, Alive Oh! by Diana Athill.
...has the best opening line:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, of course. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
...has the greatest ending:
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki.
…features a character I love to hate:
Mrs. Proudie in Trollope’s Barchester Towers.
…helped me become a better writer:
Pictures From an Institution by Randall Jarrell showed me, in the most amusing and thrilling way, how sentences can be characters. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, which I read when I was writing my third book and which is so different from anything I do, or can do, was a great blast of inspiration for how wild and free language can be.
…grew on me:
I will tell you, instead, who shrank on me: Henry James. A great love I can no longer bear to read.
…is a master class on dialogue:
P.G. Wodehouse. Always.
…describes a place I’d want to visit:
Sicily in The Leopard by Lampedusa.
…should be on every college syllabus:
The works of Alice Munro.
...I brought on my honeymoon:
A Field Guide to Mexican Birds by Edward L. Chalif, edited by Roger Tory Peterson. The Yucatán was full of birds!
...I’ve re-read the most:
Trollope and Barbara Pym.
...I consider literary comfort food:
Margery Sharp novels, Moomin comic strips, and mysteries by Edmund Crispin.
…I never returned to the library (mea culpa):
A little red volume of Catullus in Latin and English. I treasure it.
...everyone should read:
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H. W. Fowler.
...surprised me:
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I took it off the library shelf in 7th grade thinking it was a comic novel about a stupid person.
...I’d want signed by the author:
Any volume by Billy Collins.
Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:
The literary organization/charity I support:
The Authors Guild. They protect an endangered species: authors.
Read Schine’s Picks:
Midnight's Children
The Leopard
Pictures from an Institution
Alive, Alive Oh!
Our Mutual Friend
The Idiot
Barchester Towers
Tristram Shandy
