Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help. She is the author of “The Winters” and “Roberta’s Woods. If that doesnt work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see whats preventing the page from loading. Cotter teaches at the University of Rhode Island and Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, Connecticut. They may also want to consider for themselves: What books have mattered most? Readers everywhere will be inspired by Hood's sensitive and perceptive examination of the enduring resonance of books in our lives. Not all of her selections are high literature - such as the poems of Rod McKuen or Erich Segal's “Love Story.” The point is not literary criticism, but influence, and as she notes, each book came into her life at the moment she most needed it. Reexamining the 10 books that influenced her years later, Hood brings the perspective of distance and time. Thus she could identify with protagonists as dissimilar as the Jewish hero of “A Stone for Danny Fisher” and the tragic Russian lovers in “Doctor Zhivago.” Like many girls, she wanted to be one of the March sisters in “Little Women.” As she grew older, books taught the budding writer about a world far different from her insular Italian-American neighborhood. So she devoured magazines and newspapers and treasured the books that crossed her path. Her parents were not readers, her school had only a few shelves of books in each classroom, and she was 10 before West Warwick got its own library. Hood's predisposition to the literary life was not assured. “Morningstar” examines her coming of age as a writer through the lens of her reading, and the result is both eloquent and poignant. She has bravely tackled such difficult subjects as the death of her older brother, Skip, in 1982, the loss of her father to cancer, and the death of her daughter, Grace, at age 5.

Hood has written before, in memoirs and short pieces, about growing up in West Warwick in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her new memoir, “Morningstar,” aims to answer that question. $22.95.Īnn Hood's last novel, “The Book That Matters Most,” inevitably raised the question: What novels have mattered most to her?

“Morningstar: Growing Up with Books,” by Ann Hood.

The book that matters most by ann hood