Editor’s note: After a 30-plus-year career in publishing, "Constant Reader" Ann La Farge now works as a freelance editor and syndicated book-review columnist. She lives in Dutchess County, NY.

It’s a good idea to have at least two books going – the one you’re reading, and the one that sits on the bedside table. I usually have more than one of those "reading in" books in progress – a collection of poems (Billy Collins, Auden, Millay) or a fat biography (at the moment – fat indeed – it’s Cheever).

The book I’m actually reading today is a real treat, long-awaited and enormously enjoyable – Adriana Trigiani’s first in a new trilogy, Very Valentine: A Novel.

You’ll never look at a pair of beautiful shoes the same way again after reading the story of the Roncalli family of Greenwich Village by way of Italy, creators of custom-made wedding shoes since 1903. Valentine Roncalli (“I’m not the pretty sister. I’m not the smart sister, either. I’m the funny one”) is her grandmother’s protégée and assistant at the exclusive Angelini Shoe Co., but times are tough. Will the shoe company be forced to mass-produce, or will the building have to be sold? Will Valentine remain the only unmarried woman in the Roncalli clan, and can she save the family business? (“My mother says I’m the keeper of the flame. A flame is a very fragile thing.”)

When Gram and her protégée travel to Italy to buy shoe supplies for the “dream shoe” they’re entering in a contest, long-buried secrets come to light and the flame … flickers. Valentine, Trigiani’s feistiest and cleverest heroine (so far) learns a lot on a magical, problematic trip to Capri. “This is one Cinderella,” she vows, “who’s going to make her own slippers.”

At once glitzy, sexy, warm-hearted and transformative, this is a novel to love and to revisit. It’s what I like to call a real old-fashioned "novel novel" – rare these days, and a true delight.

And there’s a new book on my bedside table, too — Variety’s “The Movie That Changed My Life”: 120 Celebrities Pick the Films That Made a Difference (for Better or Worse), by Robert Hofler. This book, which includes wonderful photos throughout, is a collection of profiles of 120 high-profile people answering that question about life-changing movies. “We all watch the same movies,” the book’s editor says in the introduction. “None of us sees the same movie.” Click here to view a slideshow showcasing 17 movies from the book.

“Herewith,” Hofler goes on, “are not the greatest films ever unspooled [love that word] but rather the most influential … depending on your point of view.” The book is divided into sections defining the celebs queried: “The Romantics” (Reese Witherspoon’s fave, for instance, is "Splendor in the Grass"), "The Activists"; "The Fashionistas" and so on.

Danielle Steel, mother of nine, loves "The Philadelphia Story," and hates movies that “hold big families up to ridicule and make it look like chaos.” Gloria Allred cites "To Kill a Mockingbird" as the inspiration to become a feminist and a civil-rights lawyer. For Joan Rivers, favorite movies are “all about family” – Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce – but her favorite? "La Strada."

And what does Dr. Phil like best? Well, he loves "The Devil Wears Prada," a movie “about how we define ourselves,” but he hates (“I’d rather have a root canal”) "Kramer v. Kramer" and "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

My own favorite, should you ask – seen first at the age of 13, and most recently, on DVD, at the age of (oh, never mind) is "The Red Shoes." What’s yours? 

And speaking of books, tell us below: What’s on your bedside table?