Celebrities list their favorite reads

Actors, authors, politicians, a Supreme Court justice and a Harvard astrophysicist were among the people who responded this year to Glenna Nowell’s queries for her annual “Who Reads What?” list in time for National Library Week, which begins Sunday.

Their responses ranged from the nice -- Rosalynn Carter’s favorite is the Bible -- to the naughty: dirty joke books favored by writer Piers Anthony.

Nowell, a silver-haired retired librarian in Gardiner, Maine, started writing to celebrities in 1988 for her annual list. She searches the Internet for her eclectic collections of names, based on suggestions from friends and people who e-mail her.

This year, she got responses from two Hollywood veterans: Jane Russell and Eva Marie Saint.

Russell, who played opposite Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 movie “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” looks to the heavens these days for her literary inspiration, citing “Hearing God” by Lory Basham Jones. Saint, who won an Academy Award for her 1954 film debut in “On the Waterfront,” lists “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion and “Elia Kazan: A Biography” by Richard Schickel, about the director of “On the Waterfront.”

Nowell’s full list is at www.gpl.lib.me.us.