On My Bookshelf: Senior Lecturer Katherine Boles

Currently reading: David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. It's incredibly long, and it'll take me months to finish it, but I am totally in love with the way McCullough writes.

The thing that drew you to it: I got hooked on McCullough after a historian friend told me to read The Great Bridge years ago. I was fascinated by the story of the building of the [Brooklyn] bridge and the back story of the lives of the workers who built it. They were poor Brooklyn Irishmen, and the book gave me a sense of my own ancestry. As I read the book, I kept thinking of a story my father told me about my grandmother, who, as a little girl, before the building of the bridge, hid in a barrel that her laborer father was transporting across the East River. She hid in the barrel to save the nickel it would have cost had she been a passenger. It was a favorite story in my family.

Favorite book from childhood: Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey was my favorite. I remember my mother reading it to my younger sister, and then I read the book myself a million times to my own children. Now it's the gift I give to every new mother and father I know.

Favorite books you were asked to read for school: I loved A Tale of Two Cities in high school. I remember the feel of the black cover, the characters, and the setting in Paris. Then in college, I loved Germinal by Emile Zola. In grad school I hung on every word of The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change by Seymour Sarason. Seymour was my husband's mentor at Yale, and when I started writing about teaching and teachers, he became a staunch supporter of my work. I was so proud. I loved The Culture of the School, and I adored Seymour.

Favorite spot to curl up with a good book: On a small couch in the living room, feet up.