Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Nancy Pearl Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Nancy Pearl

Nancy Pearl

Nancy Pearl Biography

Nancy Pearl is known as "America's Librarian." She speaks about the pleasures of reading at library conferences, to literacy organizations and community groups throughout the world and comments on books regularly on KUOW FM in Seattle, as well as KWGS in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Born and raised in Detroit, she received her master's degree in library science in 1967 from the University of Michigan. She also received an MA in history from Oklahoma State University in 1977. Among her many honors and awards are the 2011 Librarian of the Year Award from Library Journal; and the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. She also hosts a monthly television show, Book Lust with Nancy Pearl. She lives in Seattle with her husband.

Nancy Pearl's website

This bio was last updated on 08/27/2017. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Nancy Pearl discusses her first novel, George & Lizzie

(contains plot spoilers)

Though you've written four works of nonfiction describing good books to read, including Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason, this is your first novel. Can you tell us something about your writing process? How did you decide on the plot?  Did you have to do any research? What was it like to tell Lizzie's story?

The characters of George and Lizzie appeared to me one night while I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep.  All I knew at that moment were their names and how they'd met.  Everything that follows, the specific events of their lives, their families, their friends, their marriage, all of that came much later, and very gradually.  For several years I kept it all in my head, adding details as I thought of them. Eventually I had so much in my head that I felt a need to start writing it down. I didn't, at first, think of what I was doing as "writing a novel."

I had no story arc in mind. I just had two characters that I felt drawn to and wanted to know more about. Writing about them was a way to accomplish it. The process of writing about them felt to me more like one of discovery than one of invention. I just wrote ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Nancy Pearl at BookBrowse
George and Lizzie jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Nancy Pearl but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Taffy Brodesser-Akner

    Taffy Brodesser-Akner

    Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is also the creator... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    George and Lizzie

    Try:
    Fleishman Is in Trouble
    by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

  • Jeffrey Eugenides

    Jeffrey Eugenides

    Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1960. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, and received an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University in 1986. His first ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    George and Lizzie

    Try:
    The Marriage Plot
    by Jeffrey Eugenides

We recommend 9 similar authors

View all 9 Read-Alikes

Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Harvard is the storehouse of knowledge because the freshmen bring so much in and the graduates take so little out.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.