Leave Me Alone I'm Reading

In this delightful memoir the book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air reflects on her life as a professional reader. Maureen Corrigan takes us from her unpretentious girlhood in working-class 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 always with a book at her side. Along the way she reveals which books and authors have shaped her own life—from classic works of English literature to hard-boiled detective novels and everything in between. And in her explorations of the heroes and heroines throughout literary history Corrigan’s love for a good story shines.