Growing up, Steph Clemence didn't live in any one place for long because her mother was always on the move. By the time she was a senior in high school, Steph had lived in 25 places. Still, she had good grades and thought she would be going to college. But when her father died in a car accident, leaving her mother to support three daughters, paying for college was out of the question.

Steph found a job and tried to work out what to do with a life that had deviated(偏离) from the plan she'd carefully laid out.

The answer came one afternoon when she was cleaning her drawer (抽屉) and found a handout titled "Mrs. Clark's Book List." It was from the English teacher she'd had in her junior year at McKenzie High School in Vida, Oregon. One afternoon, Mrs. Clark walked into the classroom carrying a pile (摞) of handouts. She asked each student to take one. It could be a road map, she said. "Some of you mightn't go on to higher education," Mrs. Clark said, "but you can continue to learn." She'd spent months creating a list of 153 books from the United States and abroad.

Steph studied the list. And so it began. "I was hopeful and decided to improve myself," Steph says. "I would read every book in the order they appeared."

Over the years, the reading list was a constant (不变的事物) in her life, traveling with her even on vacations. When the original (原先的) list wore out, she typed up a new copy. And then another.

Now Steph is 70, and she never did get to college. But she has only four books left to read from the list. She expects to finish them sometime in 2023. "Each of the books has added something to who I am and how I see the world," she says. "They've opened so many doors for me about the environment, history, etc. I'm no expert, but I now have the background to see why things happened and what they might mean."