Do you really need anything other than the title of this book to recommend it? A collection of stories by Corrigan, who's a book reviewer for NPR's Fresh Air and who writes a mystery column for The Washington Post, it's a book about reading.
And about having your life changed by books. About having worlds open up, spiraling you into experiences that are far beyond anything you'll discover in "real" life. It's a foray into how the books we read shape who we become, from relationships (aren't we all awaiting our own great love stories?) to career choices to religion.
Just read the chapter titles in this book and you'll be pulled right in. After all, there's bound to be something interesting in Chapter 4: "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition: What Catholic Martyr Stories Taught Me About Getting to Heaven and Getting Even."
I'd be curious to know what a non-reader would think of this book. But for those of us who've spent our childhoods hiding on the top bunk with a stack of books, Corrigan has managed to put many of our feelings into words. And of course, she's also introduced some new ideas to add to those skimming around our heads. I particularly loved the chapter about love life and what all those heroines taught us (me!) about marriage and love. This is a must-read for all you book lovers.
As book reviewer for NPRβs Fresh Air and contributor to many
publications, Maureen Corrigan literally reads for a living.
For as long as she can remember, books have been at the
center of her life, a never-failing source of astonishment,
hard truths, new horizons, and welcome companionship. Now
Corrigan has added a volume of her own to the shelf of
classics, by reading her life of reading with all the
attention to complexity, wit, and intelligence that any good
bookβor lifeβdeserves.
Part memoir, part coming-of-age story, and part reflection
on favorite and influential books, Leave Me Alone, Iβm
Reading views the world through an open book. From her
unpretentious girlhood in the working-class neighborhood of
Sunnyside, Queens, to her bemused years in an Ivy League
Ph.D. program, from the whirl of falling in love and
marrying (a fellow bookworm, of course), to the ordeal of
adopting a baby overseas, Corrigan has always had a book at
her side.
We read this life in reverse as Corrigan begins the book as
a βprofessional readerβ always conscious of the many people,
like her own mother, who donβt βgetβ the power of reading,
and we end up as a fly on the wall of this only child in
Queens, transported to exciting yet threatening worlds
beyond her small apartment, a block from the #7 subway.
Corriganβs references range from Richard Wright to Philip
Roth to Chekhov, but certain themes emerge. Corrigan
subverts the classic βman conquers mountain or ocean or
battlefieldβ genre by juxtaposing it with what she calls
βfemale extreme adventure novelsββbooks such as Charlotte
BrontΓ«βs Jane Eyre, the Collected Poems of Stevie Smith, and
Anna Quindlenβs Black and Blue, which feature women quietly
fighting for their lives.
Hard-boiled detective stories that cloak social criticisms
of work and family beneath their protagonistβs trench
coatβ-Dashiell Hammettβs The Maltese Falcon, Gaudy Night by
Dorothy L. Sayers, Sara Paretskyβs mysteriesβare another
abiding passion. More surprising, and perhaps more
revealing, is her taste for tales of Catholic martyrs and
secular saints, a holdover from her days in parochial school
that left an indelible impression.
Moving from page to life and back again, Corrigan writes
ultimately of fashioning a complicated, sometimes
contradictory self out of her class background, her
classroom teaching, and her own classics of literature; a
list of favorite books is also included. In Leave Me Alone,
Iβm Reading, Maureen Corrigan invites us to accompany her on
the journey of a lifetime.
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