Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been more interested in the face a person keeps for the world than in the one they show me, and in the moment the two separate. These five books are where I learned to look for that moment: a physicist who opened locked safes by understanding the people who locked them, an astronomer's kit for noticing when you are being fooled, a woman watching her own life give way, a play built from what goes unsaid, and a marriage where both people lie because they know each other too well. My own novel is about a woman whose surface no one thought to look beneath.


I wrote...

Within the Walls

By V. S. Maxon ,

Book cover of Within the Walls

What is my book about?

A perfect smile no one looked past. Then a quiet stranger comes for the door. He holds the key of…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”

V. S. Maxon Why I love this book

I love Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! because Feynman treats every locked thing as an invitation, and the people guarding it as part of the puzzle.

I laughed through the safe-cracking at Los Alamos, but what stayed with me was how he worked: the combinations were left at the factory setting, and the secrets were guarded mostly by people's belief that they were. Then the last chapter, on cargo cult science, turned the joke on me.

I still use its first rule: you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

By Richard P. Feynman ,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Richard P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. In this lively work that "can shatter the stereotype of the stuffy scientist" (Detroit Free Press), Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets-and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his stories, Feynman's life shines through in all its eccentric glory-a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.

Included for this edition is a new introduction by Bill Gates.


Book cover of The Days of Abandonment

V. S. Maxon Why I love this book

I read The Days of Abandonment in one sitting, which I almost never do, because I could not leave Olga alone in that apartment.

Ferrante writes a mind at the exact moment its walls give way, and I have not found anyone who does it better. What stays with me is how ordinary the collapse is: a door that will not open, a phone line gone dead, a sick child in the next room.

I came out of it shaken and strangely grateful, as if someone had finally described a room I had been standing in.

By Elena Ferrante , Ann Goldstein (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Days of Abandonment as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times–bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, this novel of a deserted wife’s descent into despair―and rage―is “a masterpiece” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

The Days of Abandonment is the gripping story of an Italian woman’s experiences after being suddenly left by her husband after fifteen years of marriage. With two young children to care for, Olga finds it more and more difficult to do the things she used to: keep a spotless house, cook meals with creativity and passion, refrain from using obscenities. After running into her husband with his much-younger new lover in public, she cannot even…


Book cover of Letters from Brazil

Letters from Brazil by Ruth Zelig,

When the author's family migrates from Brazil to North America in 1964, she and her best friend are forced to separate. They decide to keep in touch via written correspondence—an exchange that ultimately persists for twenty years.

From São Paulo, the one who stays writes candidly with warmth, dedication, and…

Book cover of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

V. S. Maxon Why I love this book

I keep The Demon-Haunted World close because it gave me a toolkit I use far outside science.

Sagan's dragon in the garage, invisible, silent, undetectable, is the best lesson I know in noticing when a claim has been built so that nothing can ever test it.

I first read it for the skepticism and returned to it for the tenderness: he is never contemptuous of the people who believe, only patient with them. It taught me that seeing clearly is a kind of kindness, not a weapon.

By Carl Sagan ,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Demon-Haunted World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A prescient warning of a future we now inhabit, where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected American populace

“A glorious book . . . A spirited defense of science . . . From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought.”—Los Angeles Times

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the…


Book cover of Betrayal

V. S. Maxon Why I love this book

This is the play I reread most.

Pinter runs an affair backward, from the cold ending to the first touch, and I find the last scene almost too painful to read because I already know everything those two people don't. Almost nothing is said directly, and everything is understood.

It taught me more about what two people do with silence than any novel I know, and it is short enough to read in an evening and think about for a year.

By Harold Pinter ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Betrayal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Part of a collection of Harold Pinter's works, this is a comedy of sexual manners in which Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with sardonic forgiveness.


Book cover of Memory's Eyes: A New York Oedipus Novel

Memory's Eyes: A New York Oedipus Novel by Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau,

Memory's Eyes is a contemporary New York Oedipus novel. It is written for readers who enjoy playing with concepts and storylines, here namely the classical Oedipus myth, Sophocles' three Theban plays, the psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipus complex, and its pop-cultural adaptations in movies, cartoons, and jokes.

Tragic and funny,…

Scenes from a Marriage

By Ingmar Bergman,

Book cover of Scenes from a Marriage

V. S. Maxon Why I love this book

I read Scenes from a Marriage as a chamber novel, not a screenplay, and I think it is one.

Two people who know each other too well to lie to each other, and who do it anyway, across six conversations. I love how Bergman lets them be cruel and tender in the same breath, and how I could never decide whose side I was on.

Every time I read it, I find a different person in the wrong.

Scenes from a Marriage

By Ingmar Bergman,

What is this book about?

"In Emily Mann's highly theatrical adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's popular 1974 film Scenes from a marriage, audiences are invited into an intimate stage space to collectively experience the human politics of a relationship, through all the stages of life--from youth to middle age to maturity"--Page [4] of cover.


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Explore my book 😀

Within the Walls

By V. S. Maxon ,

Book cover of Within the Walls

What is my book about?

A perfect smile no one looked past. Then a quiet stranger comes for the door. He holds the key of his own craft—yet he wants her to be the one to turn it. One flawless surface. The walls she built herself—they look like they cost her nothing, and cost her the most. She crafts what others are allowed to see, so no one thinks to look beneath.

He is exact, unhurried. She should be afraid of his method. She is. But that is not what frightens her most. A chamber tragedy of capture and recognition—a dark romance with the nerve of literary fiction, for adult readers: obsession, power, surrender. Contains explicit content; see the content note inside.

Book cover of “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
Book cover of The Days of Abandonment
Book cover of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

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