From a New York Times By the Book column headlined “Alice Elliott Dark Ruins Books by Reading in the Bathtub”:

What books are on your night stand?

I keep “Upstream,” by Mary Oliver, and “Me & Other Writing,” by Marguerite Duras, by my bed and dip into them regularly. Both those books return me to my deeper purpose as a human and as a writer. I am reading “Crossroads,” by Jonathan Franzen, “Trust,” by Hernan Diaz, “Swann’s Way,” by Marcel Proust, “Ancestor Trouble,” by Maud Newton, and forthcoming books by Eliza Minot, Laila Halaby and Laura Spence-Ash. I listen to “The Lonely City,” by Olivia Laing, read by Susan Lyons, to go to sleep. I know it by heart!