Carie

Hi, everybody.

I live in Los Angeles, but don't judge me I'm cool I used to live in Brooklyn (please like me).

I'm an actress and I also work for an art dealer. I work in the backyard of a Beverly Hills house in a very swanky garage full of beautiful art books that I never look at because I am the digital janitor and I take my job pretty seriously for someone who tidies a database for a living. What's cool, though, is that I get to leave the swanky garage whenever I want, to go on auditions or to do plays out of town, so I will keep doing this job for as long as I can stand it.

So basically, I spend a lot of time in front of a screen or in a car going to and from auditions. The screen time is crippling my attention span. I have become a moron. I am applying the 50 books as an aggressive assault on my moronification. Look, I'm inventing words. It's already working, you guys!

Okay, enough about me.

Books I have loved that made me me.

1. Amy's Eyes by Richard Kennedy
A children's fantasy novel. I read it when I was a kid, and I don't remember the details, but it made some deep impression on me. Rich and strange. Two-in-one entry here, because, a similarly strange YA book: Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy. Both of these books have magic, living dolls, and orphan girls. Both these books gave me the enchanted feeling that I had discovered something written just for me, written by someone who understood my alien mind. If you know these books, come whisper to me. We are kin.

2. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
I love coming-of-age stories. Penny. Stop. I'm going to cry again.

3. Mating in Captivity, Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel
I read a lot of self-help and spiritual stuff by the kinds of people who do Ted talks. I find it illuminating. This book asks interesting questions and offers amazing insight, with none of the banal "solutions" you might think of when you hear "self-help".

4. anything by George Saunders
Short stories, you guys. I love them.

5. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The memoir from the writer of A Little Prince. Here's another two-in-one, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, another memoir from an adventurer with a wanderlusty heart.