Q. What are you reading?

A. "The Human Comedy" by William Saroyan. And I just finished (John) Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."

Q. How did you discover them?

A. I read Steinbeck in school and wanted to revisit his work. Saroyan wrote about generally the same area in California, though a few decades later. My husband suggested I read him next since the books have geography and, to some extent, a kind of morality in common.

Q. What's their shared morality?

A. Particularly in "Grapes of Wrath," just the idea of the blessed nature of work. The family wants to work to support themselves, and no work is beneath them. ... They take responsibility for their well-being — they think they can work their way out of every situation. Some of that comes out in "The Human Comedy" as well. It focuses on a 12-year-old boy who delivers telegrams, and he takes that so seriously because some are from the war department telling families that their sons have been killed. He's this little kid on a bicycle, but he has a solemn path. But the reason he takes this job is not just a lark, it's to help his family. ...

Q. Does looking back at these times spark column ideas related to our current hard economic times?

A. I think a lot of times in our current economic situation we reference the Great Depression. We're a country just starting to measure ourselves against history — are we worse off than we were then, are we going to get that bad? For me I just wanted to read a book about that time — it is fiction, but to get that perspective. But in terms of writing columns, no I don't get ideas from reading fiction. I get it from everywhere. ...