"Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, not the new one, the old one. The cartoon Alice in Wonderland is high on my list. Alice is my favorite. I grew up in Orlando, Florida, and my dad worked for Disney. So growing up, I actually had the Alice dress, and I had long blonde hair and blue eyes, and so I looked just like her."

"Growing up, we had a set of hardback classics my parents had probably sent away for. I picked this one up when I was about 14. It was the first “grown up” novel I ever read. I hadn’t expected to understand or even get to the end of it. I was so proud of myself. It was a bit like finishing an entire can of cola all by myself for the first time, but less gassy, obviously."

"Beside Knausgård, Harstad is perhaps the best Norwegian writer right now. It’s about a young boy moving with his family from Norway to the USA, growing up there in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and so it’s an outsider’s look at American society, written with clinical precision and desperate humor. If you like thick, epic books like DeLillos' “Underworld,” this is probably up your alley."

"My cousin from Kansas City gave me this book when I was a lonely teenager growing up on the farm. His message was that there is a bigger world out there, and that I didn’t need to conform to those around me. It was an important and enduring lesson."

"I love Miss Lewis’s intimate, evocative writing about growing up on a farm in Freetown, Virginia. The true—and generally uncredited— progenitor of farm-to-table eating in this country, Miss Lewis is a legend, and all American cooks should get to know her writing and her recipes."