It is well established—at least, in my family—that Jessie Willcox Smith anticipated my existence 66 years before I was born. Whenever a relative came across a copy of her illustration of a girl reading by a window for the 1905 edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses, they’d remark on the resemblance—which, for the record, was uncanny in both aspect and activity. I still have the oversized postcard my grandma sent me on which she exclaims over her find. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my parents had already bought me a set of bookplates featuring the image.
Image: “Child Reading” by Jessie Willcox Smith/Wikimedia Commons
I got the chance to step into that little girl’s buckle shoes once more as we redesigned our books section, Biblio File. Word for word, I’m not sure there are two more labor-intensive pages to produce in the entire magazine. For each issue, we gather and evaluate about 75 books by Stanford authors to curate a set we think is likely to appeal to our broad audience of alumni. Not every book is going to be a hit with each reader, so we strive for the same outcome as we do throughout the magazine: providing something for everyone. In our redesigned Biblio File, you’ll find the staples—fiction and nonfiction—as well as deeper dives into a few subgenres that emerged as we sorted through this quarter’s books: memoir, biography, children’s, and self-help. Those genres will ebb and flow as the books do.
I loved being surrounded by piles of books. (I daresay my colleagues Georgia Allen, ’28, Sidney Suh, ’26, Summer Moore Batte, ’99, and Jill Patton, ’03, MA ’04, did too.) I experienced delight as I paged through advance review copies and frustration at the inability to flip back and forth or access visual memory while evaluating e-galleys. (I was reminded of the reasons our ancestors chose the codex over the papyrus scroll, and why some of us today—take history professor Tom Mullaney—remain fascinated by typewriters.) I threatened to retire so I could make the books section the centerpiece of my life. (Alas, the work of economics scholars Andrew Biggs and John Shoven suggests that it might be best to shore up Social Security first.)
While we had a great time making the new Biblio File, we could use some help selecting books. If you’ve been nodding your head while reading along—if books, to you, are second only to food—we invite you to express your interest in our pilot volunteer program. We anticipate having several local and a few virtual tasks available. And you don’t have to resemble the subject of a turn-of-the-20th-century illustration to raise your hand.
Kathy Zonana, ’93, JD ’96, is the editor of Stanford. Email her at kathyz@stanford.edu.
