Square Eyes



                                                "I need to use my most important investigative tool -- my library card."
                                                                                  Det. Robert Goren, Law & Order: Criminal Intent



My mother still predicts I'll develop square eyes someday. I've always been an avid and enthusiastic TV viewer.

From Fred Flintstone to Batman; That Girl to 30 Rock; Law & Order to Good Wife, the television has been a near constant companion. My father was horrified that, while on a family vacation, I refused to watch a gorgeous Key West sunset in order to sit, huddled, in front of a hotel TV, watching a Mod Squad episode. 

However, if television has been a good friend, books hold the title of best friend. Where would I be without John Steinbeck? Trixie Belden? Samuel Beckett? Anne Tyler?

I've enjoyed the best (and occasionally worst) of both worlds.

David Letterman has had me laughing late at night when I've been too restless or anxious to sleep. I've spent way too much time trying to figure out why Hyacinth Bucket (Keeping Up Appearances) is such a social-climber. After watching a few episodes, I decided I really didn't want to keep up with the Kardashians. And why are the Beverly Hills housewives so catty? My husband and I have gotten hooked on two intense dramas: The Following and The Killing. The gritty subject matter (especially in The Following) is the stuff of nightmares. But the writing and acting in each drama is top-notch. 

Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club whisked me from my armchair and introduced me to San Francisco. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn kept me up past midnight, trying to figure out exactly what had happened to Amy Dunne. I laughed my way through Jacob Tomsky's hotel-based memoir, Heads in Beds. There have a been a few books this past year or two that have me wondering why so many characters had to be remarkably unlikeable: Jean Thompson's The Year We Left Home; You are the Love of my Life by Susan Shreve; and You Came Back by Christopher Coake.

With both books and television shows, spirited discussions with friends and family have broken out, debating a plot's evolution or a character's behavior.

There are times when my television and book worlds overlap.
I had fun dreaming up book lists for these television characters, who have been seen reading in more than one episode. Are any reading lists close to your own?
                                                  
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*Robert Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio) Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Per Petterson - Out Stealing Horses
Brian Green - Fabric of the Cosmos
E.L. Doctorow - Homer & Langley
Daniel Woodrell - Winter's Bone
Haruki Murakami - Chronicle of the Wind-up Bird

*Debra Barone (Patricia Heaton) Everybody Loves Raymond.
Jodi Picoult - The Tenth Circle
Nancy Turner - These is my Words
Sandra Dallas - Tallgrass
Tatiana deRosnay - Sarah's Key
Lisa See - Shanghai Girls
Garth Stein - Art of Racing in the Rain

*Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammar) Frasier.
New England Journal of Medicine
Bill Bryson - House
Dennis Lehane (Boston connection) - Shutter Island
Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams
Jeff Eugenides - Middlesex
Ben Karlin - Things I've Learned From Women Who Dumped Me

*Brick Heck (Atticus Shaffer) The Middle.
Gary Paulsen - The Hatchet
Robert Cormier - I am the Cheese 
Robert Newton Peck - A Day No Pigs Would Die
JRR Tolkien - Lord of the Rings trilogy
Edward Bloor - Tangerine
Louis Sachar - Holes

*Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) Gilmore Girls
David Foster Wallace - Consider the Lobster
Joan Didion - Blue Nights
Ann Patchett - What Now
Rebecca Johns - Icebergs
Francine Prose - Reading Like a Writer
Dave Eggers - Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

*Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) Murder, She Wrote.
Agatha Christie - Body in the Library
Alexander McCall Smith - Sunday Philosphy Club
Catherine Gildiner - Too Close to the Falls
Arthur Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes series
Charles Dickens - Mystery of Edwin Drood
Camilla Lackberg - Stonecutter

*Blanche Deveraux (Rue McClanahan) Golden Girls
Debbie Macomber - Montana
Jude Deveraux - Scarlet Nights
Linda Howard - Kill and Tell
Amy Heath - Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

*Dorothy Zbornack (Bea Arthur) Golden Girls
Thomas Paine (actually mentioned in episode) -  Common Sense
T.C. Boyle - The Women
Shakespeare (quoted in at least one episode) - Midsummer's Night Dream
Barbara Kingsolver - Poisonwood Bible
Anne Kreamer - Going Gray
Sonia Sotomayor - My Beloved World