By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Put most authors in front of 1,000 booksellers, librarians and other book professionals, and they're likely to talk about their latest book. Not Charlaine Harris, whose vampire series narrated by the telepathic Sookie Stackhouse has become a fixture on USA TODAY's list and inspired HBO's True Blood. (The 11th book, Dead Reckoning, is No. 10 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.)
Last week at BookExpo America, the annual trade convention in New York, Harris used her coveted spot on a panel that included Diane Keaton and Jeffrey Eugenides (who discussed their new books) to tout three books that influenced her as a child: Edgar Allan Poe's Collected Stories ("never read Poe at night"), Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre ("a heroine who was plain, but never too plain in the movies") and Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers ("unlike any of the Hollywood versions").
