CRP's Blog

This week we asked our staff what books they try to read every year. Check out the responses below!

For a while, I was trying to read The Catcher in the Rye as often as possible, just about every other year. One of the great things about rereading that book so many times is that at a certain point in my twenties, I suddenly realized what a tool Holden is! He stopped being this character that I’d identified with as a teenager obsessed with my own navel, and I saw all the ways that Salinger was subtly making fun of what a moron he is (affectionately, of course!). But, if I’d just relied on my memories of the book and the character after only having read it for the first time in high school, I never would have gained that perspective. Even so, sometimes I still have difficulty discerning if certain memories I have of New York are from the actual trips I’ve taken there or if they’re my memories of Salinger’s vision of the city. —Allison Felus, production manager

I’ve mentioned it here before, but my annual read would definitely be David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. I find something new to like or ponder every time I open it back up. I’ve also described it as my desert-island book, and a friend of mine once replied, “I can understand why. Damn thing’s its own little universe.”  —Geoff George, publicist

I used to read Caleb Carr’s The Alienist at least once a year—I think I was on a streak of at least thirteen years, but it’d been a handful of years since I’d last picked it up. I reread it last year and was reminded how much I loved the book, and I realized it was the book that kicked off my fondness for historical crime fiction. —Mary Kravenas, marketing manager

Throughout high school and college I would try to read Anne of Green Gables every year. It still makes me laugh, cry, and dream about living on Prince Edward Island. —Emily Lewis, editorial & marketing assistant

Every year in the winter I reread Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. I discovered it my freshman year in college in a small seminar class called “Intimations of God in Literature.” The God in this book is Nature. It’s one of the saddest, most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I liken it to long poem or Buddhist meditation. It’s Kawabata’s masterpiece about wasted love and beauty set at a hot spring in the snowiest, most beautifully desolate region of western Japan. I find it the perfect book to read on a dark winter’s night.  —Cynthia Sherry, publisher

Being a somewhat observant Jew, I read the Book of Jonah every year on Yom Kippur and the Book of Lamentations every year on Tisha b’Av. These are Jewish fast days, days of mourning and repentance. Jonah usually has something new to say to me, and the third lamentation is always very moving. —Yuval Taylor, senior editor

-compiled by Emily Lewis