20 Books You'll Devour in Your Downtime

Sally Mann, whose best-known images are of her naked children, of black models posing as slaves, and of eerie, Spanish moss–draped Southern vistas, has written an exquisite memoir, Hold Still, in which she ruthlessly examines her own life and creative process: At what point, she wonders, should she stop taking pictures of her terminally ill father? In retrospect, should she have considered whether those photos of her children put them in harm's way? How can her subjects be "so willing: is it fearlessness or naïveté?" Though Hold Still uses photos here and there to illustrate a memory or a technique, it is foremost a literary achievement, showing Mann to be as ingenious with words as she is with a camera.