1) What book was most important to you in high school? Why?

I read constantly when I was in high school. I would devour books or entire series in a weekend, constantly visiting my local library for the next victim. It’s hard to decide which was most important, as at the time they all felt immensely important to me. If I had to decide, I think I might pick Cinder from Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles series. I loved the new take on a classic story, especially since I had always loved princess stories and felt like Cinderella got more flack than she deserved.

2) What book was most important to you when you were an undergraduate English major? Why?

When I was an undergraduate, I was constantly reading, but it wasn’t like high school. I was reading what I was assigned and hardly had time to complete those readings, let alone readings for entertainment. All of the sudden, my favorite thing to do became a chore. I think the book I found most important was Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I resisted reading it when it first came out in 2020, tired from what I felt was a trend of dragging on series that were perfectly fine without the extra sequels. However, when my student organization planned to rent a theatre to watch the movie in November of 2023, I decided I absolutely could not see the movie without reading the book. I was on a time crunch, so, just like when I was younger, I devoured that novel, listening to the audiobook as I drove and reading from the book at night. All of the sudden, I remembered why I loved to read in the first place. It felt like breathing fresh air again.

3) What book is most important to you now? Why?

I’m not that far removed from my undergraduate years, so the book that is most important to me at this moment is actually one I read during my summer history course on the Civil War. To preface, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be spending nice, summer days, sitting inside, reading about all the ways that people suffered and died in the 1800s. At the time, I felt that Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War was the biggest offender. While reading all about the culture of death and how the Civil War changed it was a bit of a summer bummer, the information I gained was more useful than I could have imagined. The Civil War changed so much about the culture of America at the time, especially in regards to how we view death and mourning. I just recently lost my grandfather, and while it is still incredibly devastating, I feel somewhat more prepared than I did when I lost both my grandmothers in 2016. Back then, I was so confused and almost scared of everything relating to death. Now, I better understand why we do things a certain way when someone passes. Sometimes, just having the information there to distract me is comforting.

4) What book have you reread the most often in your life? Why?

I wish I could sound more sophisticated in my answer, but the truth is that the book I have most often re-read is New Moon from the Twilight series. Really, any book I read during my pre-to-early teen era is often what I turn to when I need something familiar and easy. Bella might not be my role model in life, but the reason I have picked up New Moon over and over again in my life is because the depression that she feels in the beginning of the novel is something I have experienced before. I’ve never had a vampire boyfriend abandon me in the woods, but the first time I read the novel I had just lost both my maternal and paternal grandmothers to cancer. It was quick and unexpected to a fifteen-year-old me, and I fell into a very similar state of numbness and depression as Bella. It felt like the perfect description of what I was feeling. I got better, without any of the motorcycle or cliff jumping adventures Bella needed, but, even after I felt alive again. I would reread those moments in the book when life got to be too much or my head was too loud. It was like reminding myself, “Look where you’ve been, look where you are. You can get through this. You’ve been through worse.” Plus, I am a huge sucker for anything that mimics or retells Romeo and Juliet, so that is just like icing on the cake.