The books we read as adolescents can have a huge influence on our lives. We talk about the ones that matter to us and the evolution of the young adult novel over the years with Essence senior editor Patrik Henry Bass and S.E. Hinton, legendary author of such young adult classics as "The Outsiders," "Tex," and "Rumble Fish."

And we're asking you, What was the first book that changed your life? What book do you remember most from your youth? Let us know.

What makes a film adaptation of a book work, and what makes it fail? The Takeaway talks with Patrik Henry Bass, senior editor of Essence magazine about why he believes some adaptations work better than others. We also chat with Ben Sherwood, author of "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud," about watching his novel make the transition from page to screen.

What do you think? Which books made better movies?

For decades, unpublished papers by the Jewish Czech writer, Franz Kafka, have been hidden away in safety deposit boxes in Zurich, Switzerland and Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel’s supreme court recently ordered that the boxes, which contain thousands of handwritten documents by one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century, be opened. Howevever, there is still an ongoing legal dispute about who owns the collection of private papers. It is not yet known whether the public will ever get to see them.

Eighty years ago this year, Laura Ingalls Wilder penned the first draft of what would eventually become her first book, “Little House in the Big Woods.” The semi-autobiographical young adult novel followed Wilder’s adventures with her sisters and parents in the Midwest during the late 1800s, and was soon followed by several more books - all of which make up the wildly popular “Little House” series. Since their original publication, none of the books have ever gone out of print.

But the popularity of Laura Ingalls Wilder goes well beyond her books. Laura Ingalls Wilder museums have been erected in many of the towns where Wilder once lived; there’s the musical that debuted last year, based on the books; this week begins the first ever “Laurapalooza Conference” in Mankato, Minnesota…and of course, there’s that iconic television series that ran from 1974 to 1984 and has run continually in syndication around the world ever since.

What is it about “Little House on the Prairie” that we love, and why does it seem to be more popular than ever?

No one ever expected best selling author Scott Turow to publish a sequel to his very first novel, the 1987 legal thriller “Presumed Innocent,” mostly because he said he’d never publish one.

For better or worse, the beach book is the Rodney Dangerfield of publishing. It gets no respect.

But Patrik Henry Bass says that, despite their bad rap, we shouldn’t be ashamed of diving into and savoring the fluffiest of literary concoctions. The senior editor for Essence magazine, and a lover of a wide variety of genres, Patrik says there are loads of delicious beach books hitting shelves right now – and that we don’t necessarily have to respect them to enjoy them.

Patrik's top five picks for the season (as well as two bonus suggesions) are after the jump.

Planning a summer vacation? We’re making a summer reading list to help you pick some really good books to delve into during your free time. Last week we spoke to Hilary Thayer Hamman, the author of "Anthropology of an American Girl." We also asked you about what’s on your reading list for this summer. Calypso, from Oklahoma, wrote in to our website with his suggestion: A romance/mystery novel called "Paper Towns" by John Greene. A good thriller always delivers, too, and author Justin Cronin’s new book "The Passage," is getting a lot of attention for its apocalyptic twist on the vampire theme.

Hilary Thayer Hamann earned a cult following after she self-published her debut novel, "Anthropology of an American Girl," in 2003. The book did so well that she submitted it to editors in the mainstream publishing world four years later. Speigel & Grau significantly edited and re-published the 600-page book this spring and the book has been getting rave reviews ever since.

It's been over ten years since The New Yorker published its "20 Under 40" list of promising writers. The last edition featured stories by David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri and 16 others, many of whom continue to write acclaimed fiction. After a long selection process, the new issue hits newsstands today, full of prose and promise.

Author Mark Twain once wrote, “It is no use to keep private information which you can't show off.”  Twain, whose given name was Samuel Clemens, will finally show off his most private information 100 years after his death, with the publication of his autobiography.

New Yorker writer John McPhee joins us for an interview about geology, recollections of his mother and his new collection of personal essays, entitled "Silk Parachute." Click through for an excerpt from the book and our extended interview!

J.D. Salinger, author of "The Catcher in the Rye," died yesterday at age 91. The critically acclaimed novel about teenage angst shocked and inspired the world of literature for decades, while its author refused interviews and eventually withdrew to a small town in New Hampshire.

Fifty years ago today, Truman Capote came across an article in The New York Times about an entire family murdered in their Kansas home. He immediately began to investigate the crime and write what became the first major piece of literary non-fiction: "In Cold Blood." Patricia Cornwell, best-selling crime writer, and true-crime television journalist Bill Kurtis talk with us about Capote's work, why it remains popular and how it helped launch our national obsession with true-crime journalism.

If you go to any national park or protected wilderness in the U.S. today, you will find the friendly, heroic figure of the forest ranger: a uniformed caretaker of natural splendor, and watcher for forest fires. Oftentimes, these forest heroes go unnoticed, but in his new book, Timothy Egan writes about how forest rangers banded together, along with President Theodore Roosevelt, to control a blazing inferno.

We talk with Pulizer Prize–winning author Timothy Egan about his new book, "The Big Burn," on the huge forest fire back in 1910 that blazed through forests in Washington, Idaho and Montana.

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian writer famous for her inventive and dark novels — including "Oryx and Crake," "The Handmaid's Tale" and "The Blind Assassin" — talks with us about science, devotion,and her new novel, "The Year of the Flood." Unlike her previous standalone works, this book is something of a companion piece to "Oryx and Crake," involving characters new and old. It also includes a separate "soundtrack" of hymns about God, the earth and animals.

I've never gravitated toward Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." I know, terrible. As a kid I thought the 338-word masterpiece was creepy, and imagined myself being punished by my mother much more severely, had I spazzed out like Max did in the book.  Curious then, that I have three copies of the Caldecott Medal award-winning story in my home - the embossed gold sticker on the edition I had as a kid, ironically, made the book a premium in my developing library.  Two other copies were given to my son a few years ago and are on a shelf in his room.

Anyway, Max was a bad kid, man. And he was rewarded by getting to hang out with big Muppets: exactly how I imagined the creatures then, and, in a cool coincidence, the way Spike Jonez had Jim Henson's Creature Shop make them in his new "Where the Wild Things Are" flick, being released today. (...continue reading)