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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	Contact: Todd Doughty
On-sale date: November 2, 2010	212-782-9796
	tdoughty@randomhouse.com

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"Truly affecting…From time's bookshelf, Conroy selects some arresting volumes. The bestselling author offers remembrances and ruminations about favorite books, writers, and inspirations."

-- Kirkus Reviews

"What a delightful little book . . . with a punch far sturdier than its compact size might suggest. . . . Try to resist rereading it!"

-- Booklist

"MY READING LIFE is Conroy's most personal and introspective offering yet…you are in the hands of a master craftsman who happens to be a great storyteller."

-- Atlanta Magazine

"The strengths of Conroy's novels – both his beguiling narrative voice and his emotional language – are present in this paean to the books and book people that have shaped his life. Conroy's legion of fans will doubtlessly bond with the author as he earnestly explores the role of books in providing him with inspiration and solace."

-- Publishers Weekly

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MY READING LIFE

Pat Conroy

Bestselling Author of Prince of Tides, The Great Santini and South of Broad

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In MY READING LIFE (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday; November 2, 2010; $25.00) celebrated author Pat Conroy takes readers on the journey of his life through the books that have inspired, influenced and guided him both as a person and an author. Conroy lovingly shares books he has read and absorbed, and how they shaped his world view as a child, and later as a student, author, teacher, and man.

Reading has long been Conroy's portal to the world. His interests range widely, from Milton to Tolkien, Philip Roth to Thucydides, encompassing poetry, history, philosophy, and any mesmerizing tale of his native South. In MY READING LIFE Conroy recounts an array of wonderful and often surprising anecdotes: sharing the pleasures of the local library's vast cache with his mother when he was a boy, recounting his decades-long relationship with the English teacher who guided him onto the path of letters, and describing a profoundly influential period he spent in Paris, as well as reflecting on other pivotal people, places, and experiences.

Conroy's passion for the written word began in childhood. His beloved mother was a voracious reader - "to my mother, a library was a palace of desire masquerading in a wilderness of books." Peg Conroy instilled in her impressionable son an adventurous spirit, a thirst for knowledge, and strong sense of curiosity during his often lonely childhood as a self confessed 'military brat.' His mother read as an escape and refuge, from both her shame of not having graduated college, and from a difficult marriage in the stifling South of the 1950's and 60's. Peg "used reading as a text of liberation, a way out of the sourceless labyrinth that devoured poor Southern girls like herself." Conroy learned that the secret world of books provided a passport to a better life. "My mother lit signal fires in the hills for her son to feel and follow… she hungered for art, for illumination, for some path to lead her to a shining way to call her own." At the age of five, Peg introduced Conroy to Gone with the Wind, which he credits as having "shaped the South I grew up in more than any other book." Conroy says the classic saga "demonstrates again and again that there is no passion more rewarding than reading itself, and that it remains the best way to dream and to feel the sheer carnal joy of being open and alive."

MY READING LIFE also touches on Conroy's tumultuous relationship with his Marine Pilot father, explored in his bestselling novel The Great Santini. "My father confused me about what it meant to become a man. From an early age, I knew I didn't want to be anything like the man he was." A teenaged Conroy found prickly encouragement and lifelong friendship in his high school English teacher and mentor, Gene Norris. He praises the tough but supportive Norris as the "grand irreplaceable lodestar of my boyhood." Through Norris's unwavering support, Conroy embraced the life of an intellectual. Norris "found a profoundly shy and battered young man and changed the course of his life." As a student himself, Conroy found refuge in his school library ("I was born to be in a library") as well as an uneasy friendship with the cantankerous and off-putting librarian. Later, when Conroy became a young elementary school teacher on a "remote backwater island in the coastal lowlands" off of South Carolina, Conroy once again found inspiration in an unlikely place. A Christmas Carol was performed, and at the last minute he stepped in to play the lead. "I could feel the moment when the power of literature took hold, when the city of London came alive on a Carolina sea island… Those children left me with an inviolate gift, a ghost of Christmas past that burns like a north star in remembrance," Conroy wrote.

A struggling young writer in Atlanta, Conroy delved into the literary scene and deepened his appreciation of literature. He struck up a friendship with the owner of a used book shop, declaring, "I found myself released among a wonderland of books that would utterly change my life." Conroy learned more about the book business and his identity as a writer through his lasting relationship with literary agent Norman Berg. The young Conroy received "invaluable advice about how I was to conduct myself as a young writer… Until I met Norman Berg, I had not yet developed a philosophy of writing, nor figured out the strategies of I would need to be a writer." Berg would ultimately become a mentor to Conroy, challenging him and offering unwavering, hard-earned support throughout his career.

Conroy recounts unsavory run-ins with fellow authors at a writers conference, and his days as a frequently displaced military brat looking for friends, stability and normalcy in books. MY READING LIFE brings us to Conroy's time in Paris; a fruitful period of writing for the author, confronted with real life drama as he found himself witness to a political bombing, and saved a man's life. The all-consuming beauty and culture of Paris deeply affected him - "I had discovered the duty and central mystery of creation on the rue de Seine on the Left Bank."

Peppered throughout MY READING LIFE are Conroy's favorite authors and books. Conroy lists the author Thomas Wolfe as a seminal influence. "I owe my life as an artist to him," he states, and after visiting Wolfe's home, he "learned that there is a relationship between life and art." The works of Tolstoy were recurring and welcome visitors in Conroy's life, as he explains his relationship to War and Peace, returning to it throughout his life. The author James Dickey's poetry taught Conroy that he "knew I must experience life lived on the edge, at its most dangerous extremes."

In the final chapters of MY READING LIFE, Conroy reveals that both reading and writing are vital to his sense of self, and to his very survival. "I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself," he says. Like his mother, Conroy turned into "an insatiable, fanatical reader" who found solace in books, and later found freedom and expression through writing.

Through sharing his rich and diverse reading life, Conroy offers an in depth view of how books and the love of reading shaped the dynamic storyteller he is today.

MY READING LIFE
Pat Conroy
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
On-sale date: November 2, 2010
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-53357-7