Author: Julie Buxbaum (Check out her novels: The Opposite of Love, After You, & Tell Me Three Things. Read more about Julie in our interview HERE!)
Julie Buxbaum’s 3 Favorite Books
I have few distinct memories from childhood, but I do remember sitting on my mother’s lap and her reading The Secret Garden to me. I found my copy again just before I left for college (only a couple years after my mom died) and I re-read it only to discover that it’s a story filled with healing and magic and a little orphaned girl who grows strong even in the face of grief. I’ve now re-read the book maybe fifty times since then, in part as tribute and in part as therapy, and each time it leaves me soothed. I can’t wait to read it to my own daughter one day soon.
I loved every page of this exuberant novel and it is one of those books that made me want to be a writer. Not because I ever thought I could write anything like Zadie Smith—no one can write like Zadie Smith—but it was so inspiring to me to see a young woman writing with such clarity and zeal and wisdom while still in college and getting recognition for it from the literary establishment. I haven’t re-read the book in a while, but I still read everything Smith writes, and every single time she takes me by surprise and astounds me with her prose.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
This is one those slow, quiet books that has more in common with poetry than your typical novel. It is lyrical and beautiful and deserves to be carefully read. It’s a meditation on…well, everything and it is one of the most considered and thoughtful and thought provoking piece of fiction I’ve ever encountered.
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