ON ASSIGNMENTS

"Once upon a time, there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith..."

*** the first line of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein

HANK: On the way to work this morning, I said to my husband--what books did you read in college? What books did you love?

You know Jonathan. He gave me that droll look. And he said: In college, I didn't read books for pleasure.

That's no doubt why he powered through law school, and my college career was spotty. At best.

I practically majored in a field the college did not know it was offering: listening to records and reading the books I wanted to.

Yes, I did devour some of the books that were assigned. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Dickens. Austen. Tolkien's Ring books and CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet Trilogy were part of one course I took in my oh-so-liberal college. I think the class was called "Exploring Allegory." I also took the invitation-only "Seminar in Alice in Wonderland" which my mother still can't believe was an actual college course.

I was still devoted to Sherlock Holmes, of course. And all the Agatha Christie novels. But they weren't cool for school. So I was a closet mystery reader.

Was Catcher in the Rye college? I started talking and thinking like Holden the moment I met him--although my own language was carefully censored, I remember. (And I still think about him, every time I'm on the subway. Carrying the fencing equipment.) I forget who told me recently--the intial copies ofcatcher came out with the famously shy Salinger's photo on the back. He apparently freaked, and demanded all the copies be destroyed.

Stranger in a Strange Land. I just read something about that, how in revisionist criticism it's almost reviled as a screed against women, a pedantic rant. I don't remember that part. I remember "groking" and how that was one of them most evocative and descriptive made up words I'd ever heard. I still say--sometimes--yes, I grok that. And sometimes, people understand me.

I think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was just after college. That has stuck with me, profoundly. As a writer, the search for the understanding of quality haunts me every day. I found this copy in Amazon, as you can tell by the 'look inside' gizmos, which won't work here. But I really think my copy was pink.

I was so taken with Hallie's topic on our favorite books as kids--now I wonder, what books did you love in college?

ROBERTA: Okay, I'm drawing a blank on this one. I was busy making trouble I guess. And after wandering through biochemistry and art history, I finally settled on Romance language and literature as my major. So I was plugging through light reading such as The Stranger--in French!

HALLIE: I confess, I'm with Jonathan. College was a black hole for me as far as reading for pleasure goes. I’d read all the time through high school, but in college it was as if I’d undergone aversive conditioning… all those dense history and political science texts I ploughed through made reading painful. In four years I might have made it through “Exodus” and “Hawaii” and “Dr. Zhivago” but that’s about it.

When I finished school and could read just for the fun of it, I ploughed through all of Agatha Christie’s and Dorothy Sayers’ novels and short stories. Graduated to P. D. James’ “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman” with the delightful Cordelia Grey, and read everything else James wrote the minute it came out. Re-read all of Sherlock Holmes. Then I wallowed in the library mystery stacks and indiscriminately grabbed books, some of which I made it through.

When I got back to ‘real’ literature it was to discover Amy Tan (“The Joy Luck Club”) and Dorothy Allison (“Bastard Out of Carolina”) and Barbara Kingsolver (“The Bean Trees”) and Carolyn Chute (“The Beans of Egypt Maine”) and John Irving (“A Song for Owen Meany”). And to re-read Alice in Wonderland and my favorite Sci-Fi novels (“Stranger in a Strange Land”, “A Wrinkle in Time”). And to rediscover the poems of e. e. cummings.

It should come as no surprise that I also got hooked on food writers—Calvin Trillin (“Alice, Let’s Eat) and Laurie Colwin (“Home Cooking”) and Ruth Reichel (“Tender at the Bone”), just for example.

JAN: During college, I think I was busy validating myself as a wild thing by reading books like: The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, On The Road by Jack Kerouac, The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, One Flew Over the Cuckoos by Ken Kesey, and Kurt Vonnegut's short story collections.

I shifted out of my hippy theme years into a literary phase. This involved reading everything by Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky,Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy and Somerset Maugham.

Then for a while there, I got into reading every single book by Barbara Pym. Her novels were always set around some sort of English vicarage. There was no real theme here, I just really enjoyed her books.

RO: I was about to say that I was with Roberta...having too much..uh, fun..in college to remember what I read. Then Jan reminded me of all the hippie-type books I read. Vonnegut must be like Disney. Every generation gets to discover - and claim - him.

The cobwebs have cleared a bit and I'm probably getting the decades confused (all that sangria, I guess..)but I remember loving Small Changes by Marge Piercy, Something Happened by Joseph Heller..everything by Richard Yates.

I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night and say something like..Birdy! I loved that!! And wisely, my husband will sleep through the outburst.

HANK: I'm going to ask my interns--all attending colleges across New England--what they're reading now. After you tell us what you read during those four (okay, or so) years, or if you read at all, care to predict what the students will say?

AND COMING UP LATER THIS WEEK! A visit from current double New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris, whose darkly hilarious novels are getting even more fans after the HBO blockbuster True Blood made Sookie Stackhouse a household name.

And that's not all--we'll chat with the new owners of Murder by the Book, the beloved bookstore--and how they stood up to Hurricane Ike.

But wait, there's more. Come chat with Lori Andrews, whose newest mystery Immunity is just out. Her real life? Is just as exciting than any fiction.