Susan Cheever is the best-selling author of 11 books. Her latest, My Name Is Bill, is a new biography of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson.
The King James Bible (Oxford, $19). This religious and literary masterpiece serves as a template for all English and American literature. It has the greatest collection of stories imaginable: stories about sex and childraising, about power and deviousness, about love and money. It’s also the ultimate self-help book, detailing ways to resist temptation, become a powerful leader, let go of your children, and find true love. And it includes the most beautiful language ever written.
Alcoholics Anonymous edited by the men and women who founded Alcoholics Anonymous and primarily written by AA’s co-founder Bill Wilson (Alcoholics Anonymous, $12). This is the best book ever written about alcoholism. It defines alcoholism in great detail, through general diagnosis and personal stories, and it makes specific suggestions about how to deal with alcoholism, both for the drinker and for the family and friends drawn into the drinker’s decline.
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The Short Stories of John Cheever (Vintage, $17). Brilliant, soaring, heart-stopping stories by an American master, who happens to be my father.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Penguin, $6). A novel about the trial and tribulations of a single mother struggling to raise her daughter and deal with a deadbeat dad and a vengeful ex.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau (Modern Library, $11). At 27, Thoreau finally got his own place when he built a 1BR w/vu on land he borrowed from his friend Emerson. There he wrote one of the first American memoirs, and still the best.
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