A woman investigator solving her own problems and still having a delightful romance with a substantial man opened a world of possibility to me as a reader.

Joyce was the first writer I read who took me beyond story into language, memory, and subtext. The laying bare of the human heart that happens behind the narratives in Dubliners is skillful and powerful. I recently reread Dubliners, and they still carry all of the power that they did when I first read them fifty years ago. What I can’t stand, was that Joyce was 26 at the time.

This history of women in the civil rights movement is just one of thousands of efforts to restore women’s voices to the historical record. Suffice it to say that among the many heroic figures covered in this book are Jo Anne Robinson and Mary Fair Burkes, who organized the Montgomery bus boycott and persuaded a young and nervous Martin Luther King Jr. to open the Dexter Street baptist church for public meetings on the future of the boycott. They died in obscurity, and Dr. King himself never mentioned their pivotal role in the civil rights movement.

I love this album. I still love it. Of all the albums that helped fuel the Woodstock generation’s sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll parties, this, along with The Doors’ debut album, most evoke in me both the energy and the parties of my youth.

This movie didn’t change my life, but I do think it’s my all-time favorite movie. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are so perfect in drag, and the final scene in the boat with Joe E. Brown always makes me laugh. And, of course, Marilyn Monroe as sugar, even though supposedly she was so drunk on set she could barely say her lines – but the same is also true for Burton and O’Toole in Beckett, which I also like.

Sara Paretsky is the author of sixteen books, including her renowned V. I. Warshawski novels. Her many awards include the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers’ Association. She lives in Chicago. Follow her on Twitter and like her on Facebook.