Liz Smith

Nationally syndicated gossip columnist and author Liz Smith chooses six of her favorite books. Her memoir, Natural Blonde (Hyperion, $20.76), was published last year.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Simon & Schuster, $20.40). This is an almost perfect novel, with great events and great characters. What would we have done without it?

The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum (W.W. Norton & Company). And what would childhood have been like without this wonderful series, which also includes Tik-Tok of Oz and Rinkitink in Oz.

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Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley (out of print). Back in 1936, this book opened a world to me, a world where a woman could be independent and successful in her “white collar” dress. The male author put himself into the body and soul of a young Irish girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She falls for a scion of the Mainline. Disaster—but she goes on to success in New York. This inspired me to get my act together and leave Texas.

A World Lit Only by Fire by William Raymond Manchester (Little Brown & Co., $12.80). This author, who also wrote The Death of a President (JFK) and a wonderful biography of Winston Churchill, never misses. His story of Vasco de Gamo in A World is just wonderful.

Act One by Moss Hart (St. Martin’s Press, $13.56). Hart’s theater autobiography was a model for all aspiring talents for the stage. And now Stephen Bach’s biography of Moss Hart, Dazzler (Knopf, $23.96), provides more lore. I love both Moss’ version of himself and Bach’s version of Moss.

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman (Ballantine, $12.80). All of Tuchman’s histories are just wonderful, but this is a favorite—the story of life in the Middle Ages and during the Black Death. It makes you very glad to be alive in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Patricia Cornwell, Jeffrey Deaver, Kathy Reichs. Any book by these writers and their imitators. I love serial-killer, forensic-science stories and find them now my most relaxing and favorite reading.