Book Roots is A/B’s special section on an author’s top 5 most influential reads and why. Click on the titles to learn more about the books at Amazon.

Jenny Gardiner, author of Sleeping With Ward Cleaver

IN GOD WE TRUST: ALL OTHERS PAY CASH by Gene Shepherd. My Latin teacher took a break from teaching Latin each year the week before Christmas break and read aloud to us from this wonderful memoir of Shepherd’s growing up in the midwest in the 1940′s. This book’s humor and evocative prose taught me so much about how a writer can immerse a reader in the subject to the point that the reader feels a part of it. Lovely, heartwarming book.

CATCHER IN THE RYE by JD Salinger. Fabulously scandalous. The first-person POV called to me. Loved how honest and out-there protagonist Holden Caulfield is–he’s got such contrasting emotions throughout the book, you can’t help but feel for him. This book made me really love first person POV.

DUBLINERS; PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce. Can’t remember why since it’s been so long since I read these books, but I remember being so drawn into Joyce’s writing, his books stuck with me in a vague sort of way. 

ANGELA’S ASHES by Frank McCourt. Heart-wrenching memoir, told in such vivid detail, it again showed how evocative good prose can be.

LYSISTRATA by Aristophanes. Down and dirty subversive literature by Greeks. Who knew? Women sick and tired of the Peloponnesian war go to extremes and cut off their husbands from sex until they agree to stop fighting. I really understood the universality of themes in literature through this. Sure Shakespeare wrote about sex, but all the way back to Grecian times? 

For more about author Jenny Gardiner, visit her at www.jennygardiner.net.