Are any books guilty pleasures for you?

There is nothing about pleasure that makes me feel guilty.

What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?

Myriam Gurba’s memoir, “Mean.” Like most truly great books, it made me laugh, cry and think. She’s a scorchingly good writer. I also recently reread Courtenay Hameister’s wonderful memoir about anxiety, “Okay Fine Whatever,” and laughed (and cried) even harder than I did the first time around.

The last book you read that made you cry?

Alex Tizon’s “Invisible People.” Alex died unexpectedly in 2017 and this book is a collection of his essays and reportage. In addition to being an extraordinary writer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he was a friend of mine and a longtime close friend of my husband’s — they worked together in the salmon canneries in Cordova, Alaska, in the 1980s, when they were both putting themselves through college. The last time I saw Alex we had a long conversation about the memoir he was writing about his relationship with Eudocia Pulido — whom he called Lola. She’d worked for Alex’s family for most of his life, having immigrated with them from the Philippines. Alex loved her like a mother, though he eventually came to realize she was essentially enslaved by his parents. A portion of his book was published as an essay called “My Family’s Slave” in The Atlantic. He died a few months before it came out, never knowing that the editors at the magazine had decided to put his essay on the cover, and probably never imagining the attention it would receive. “Invisible People” is a powerful reminder of what we lost when Alex died.

The last book you read that made you furious?

Paul Tough’s “The Years That Matter Most.” I’ve been practically begging everyone I know to read this book ever since I finished it. It’s an utterly absorbing, utterly enlightening, utterly important book about classism in American higher education and the myth of meritocracy. Another book that had a tremendous impact on me is Rachel Louise Snyder’s “No Visible Bruises,” about all we don’t know — and it seems sometimes don’t want to know — about domestic violence. It’s essential, devastating reading.

Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?

About 20 years ago my husband, Brian, and I were in Antigua, Guatemala, when I became desperately ill with a stomach parasite. For days, I could do nothing but lie in bed in the cheap hotel where we had a room. Brian found an English-language lending library nearby that would allow you to check out two books at a time for a small fee. He brought back the first two installments of Stephen King’s serialized novel, “The Green Mile,” and read them out loud to me. When we were done, he returned them and checked out the next two and so on until we’d gotten through all six. Brian and I have a long history of reading books out loud to each other, but that one was especially bonding. His steady voice guided me back to life.