"I sometimes think I was born reading," comments Vivian Gornick in this New York Times Editors' Choice, a celebration of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays spanning literary criticism and biography, Gornick finds herself mirrored in contradictory characters within D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, assesses womanhood in Colette's The Vagabond, and considers the veracity of memory in Marguerite Duras's The Lover. She praises Pat Barker and Natalia Ginzburg, and after adopting two troublesome cats, discovers Doris Lessing's shrewd assays of feline behavior.