Book It!

Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella

Locations: Rural Pennsylvania and New York City

Reading spot: Our sofas

Scottoline, a best-selling novelist, and Serritella, her daughter, collaborate on a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Their new book, Best Friends, Occasional Enemies, comes out next month.

LS: I live on a horse farm outside Philadelphia. Francesca moved to New York City two years ago. But we love to read, and we're Italian, so when she comes home...

FS: ...we always pile into the same room.

LS: There's a big, soft couch in the family room. We just flop there with our iPads and Kindles and Nooks. I take the right end, Francesca takes the left, and the dogs are in the middle. We have three Cavalier spaniels, plus a golden retriever and a corgi.

FS: As a kid, I read all over the house. Now I'm more willing to be in the big puffy pile than when I was 16. I see the value in closeness.

LS: Every time I visit Francesca in New York, we sit on her couch and do the same damn thing. Wherever the couch is, we're on it, as are the dogs and the books.

Just read it and loved it:

Francesca Serritella:

Dog Years: A Memoir, by Mark Doty
"Doty's partner was dying, while his two golden retrievers were getting old. This book is a lovely meditation on grief and aging."

History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life, by Jill Bialosky
"This memoir of the author's sister, who took her own life, is a beautiful and moving literary adventure."

Lisa Scottoline:

The Brutal Telling, by Louise Penny
"Penny is a Canadian mystery author whose writing is lyrical and very attuned to place."

Life, by Keith Richards
"Keith's memoir is about the creative process. It's fantastic, and I learned that musicians and writers create in roughly the same way."