My Life in MiddlemarchMy Life in Middlemarch

In this memoir, journalist and New Yorker staff writer Rebecca Mead, draws out the intricate ways in which the themes of George Eliot's Middlemarch -- "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people, " according to Virginia Woolf -- have run through her own life. Mead also draws an uncanny portrait of the ways in which Eliots's life resonates with her own through a fascinating reading of Eliot's biography. For those who wonder about the power of literature to shape our lives, this book is a must-read.