When we were children my mother would bring me and my sister to our local library every Saturday. We were allowed to take out two books of our own choosing (usually The Baby-sitters Club which my mother thought was cute, or one of the Sweet Valley High series, which she said was trash) and then the third book had to be what she deemed a classic: The Secret Garden, Tom’s Midnight Garden, A Little Princess and so on. When I turned 12 she took me down the steps from the children’s section of the library to the adult section and...