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Miriam Parker lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., has worked in book publishing for more than 20 years and is the author of the novel The Shortest Way Home. Her second novel, Room and Board (Dutton, August 16, 2022), is a charming and redemptive story of unexpected second chances.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
An escapist read about a celebrity publicist who returns to her high school alma mater, a boarding school in California, as a dorm mom.
On your nightstand now:
Just digging into Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett. It's a great ripped-from-the-headlines thriller/sister story.
Favorite book when you were a child:
My favorite was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I think I liked the optics of carrying around a giant book with me, but I have to admit that the book I think about most and am most excited to read to my daughter is From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg. That book just captured my imagination as a kid. I still kind of want to run away to the Met with just my French horn's case as a suitcase.
Your top five authors:
This is a truly impossible question for me to answer, but I think the authors that influenced my brain the most are Isabel Allende, Aimee Bender, Kevin Wilson, Donna Tartt and Elizabeth McCracken.
Book you've faked reading:
Sort of a loaded question when every day of your life is a book club, but I will admit to reading in high school the CliffsNotes for Billy Budd by Herman Melville. I just did not even remotely understand that book, and reading the CliffsNotes felt like a very good use of my time. I still think it was the right call. Why on earth were they making us read that book?
Book you're an evangelist for:
I know I'm not the first to read The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, but it is one of those books that does it all. It is rich with characters that you will miss when you're finished reading, will teach you something about American history that you need to know and also explains why our country is the way it is now. In my opinion, it should be required reading for every American.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I'm currently obsessed with the cover for Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou.
Book you hid from your parents:
My only real memory of this is that I really wanted to watch the movie Cocktail and it was rated R, so I was not allowed to see it. But they had a mass-market novelization of the movie at the local library that had Tom Cruise on the cover. I don't know if I hid that book from my parents, but I really felt excited to find a loophole that allowed me to find out what that movie was about without actually watching it.
Book that changed your life:
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender was a book that did things with storytelling that I had never seen before. It was probably the book that sent me on my writing journey. And then probably The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand, which was my entry into a love of escapist fiction.
Favorite line from a book:
"Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls." --from Ulysses by James Joyce
Five books you'll never part with:
Ulysses by James Joyce: annotated by me during the course I took in college.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: annotated in different colors during multiple college readings.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: my original copy that I read as a kid.
Martin Sloane by Michael Redhill: the first book I worked on in publishing that I felt really passionate about.
The Ex by Alafair Burke: signed to me by the author, who is a dear friend.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I have such a visceral memory of reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I read it over a Thanksgiving weekend, and it just was the most immersive, joyous weekend of reading. I loved the epic story so much and the way you just fall into it and how it carries you along.
An audiobook you have loved recently:
I recently listened to Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, and I was so glad I listened to it as an audiobook. Her descriptions specifically about nature and trees were things that I might have skimmed over as a reader, but the way she narrates them just makes the trees come alive--like, she tells a story about how willow trees learn from one another and fight off disease. How cool is that?