Books can have a lot to say about their readers

Each Sunday, I begin reading the New York Times with a column called “By the Book.”

Found on Page 2 of the Times’ Book Review, it features a series of questions answered by a person of note, most frequently an author, usually about books.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, for example, was recently asked, “What books would people be surprised to find on your shelves?”

Her answer was, “Stacks and stacks of mystery and detective stories. As W.H. Auden wrote, ‘The reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol.’ ”

My answer to that question is (on my Kindle) “Pickleball for Dummies” by Mo Nard, “The Art of Pickleball” by Gale Leach and “Pickleball for Beginners” by Ben Jilson.

But lets move on.

For example, “What books are now on your nightstand?”

“To Our Graves” by Paul Nicholas Mason, a super mystery by an (almost) local author, “By the Ghost Light” by actor R.H. Thomson and “A Rage in Harlem” by Chester Himes.

Another frequently asked question is, “What book has had the greatest impact on you?”

I suppose I should please my pastor and say the Bible, but assuming that’s a given, my answer is “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I first read it when I was 15 or 16 and have read it at least once in each of the seven decades since.

It speaks to me differently depending on where I am in life’s journey. It invariably brings wisdom, insight, and peace — always providing welcome solitude regardless of complexities in my own life or in the world around me.

I have given it to countless young women, including my daughter and goddaughter, in the hope it helps them as it did me over the years.

Interview subjects are sometimes asked what kind of reader they were as a child and if any childhood books stick with them.

I was a voracious reader and haunted the Penetanguishene library for, among other treasures, the latest Nancy Drew mystery. If there was no new Nancy Drew, I grabbed a Hardy Boys story.

When I was in high school, the town’s librarian, Mrs. Grimshaw, hosted a monthly book club for young women in her downtown apartment, thereby expanding my literary horizons considerably.

I thank her still.

The first book I remember loving was “Black Beauty,” by Anna Sewell, published in 1877. It was apparently intended for adults but became one of the bestselling children’s novels of all time.

“How do you organize your books?”

Organize? Well, I suppose I do organize some of them. I have all the signed editions together. As are all my books about Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson, two signed.

After that, there is the thrill of the search.

It’s sometimes amazing what I find on my shelves, Kindle and Audible.

One question that is often asked and always intrigues me is, “You’re organizing a dinner party. Which three people, dead or alive, do you invite?”

Right now, I think it would be rather fun to have Queen Elizabeth, Wallis Simpson (a.k.a. the Duchess of Windsor) and Meghan Markle (a.k.a. the Duchess of Sussex).

I think I might have to serve a couple of martinis prior to dinner to loosen things up a bit, but the conversation could prove fascinating. Perhaps between them, the Queen and her Aunt Wallis could persuade Meghan not to write her memoirs. We all seek small mercies.