Books Inside Alyssa's Tent
What did Alyssa read during her years of captivity? The books that people choose to read say a lot about them. Women who eat up romance novels are permanent believers in love, whether or not they have it in their own life.

Most people read to escape their world - and a look at many books Alyssa read during her 18 years in Philip Garrido's squalid compound shows that she's no different.

But there's one novel that doesn't provide an escape, and a photograph shows it on top of a dilapidated nightstand in the compound: Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost, a fantasy chronicle published last year. It's about a teenage girl traveling through an imaginary kingdom, and a "brothel" where customers go to drain the vitality of young children until the kids have no soul left. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the parallels with Alyssa's own horrifying situation.

Photos taken inside her tent showed that Alyssa was an avid reader. Jaycee's aunt, Tina Dugard, said that Jaycee told the family during their reunion that she loved to read. "She likes mysteries," Tina Dugard told the Orange County Register - an ironic preference, given that Jaycee's own disappearance was one of the most persistent mysteries of recent years.


From the bookshelves, another story can be told. Due to the numerous books by Dean Koontz, Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear, we can only interpret that Phillip Garrido spent a significant amount time in this tent. Those books are his books not hers. It was in this tent that he guided her intellectural curiosity. He conditioned her mind to believe that there was a love story between them.


In Riley in the Morning, Alyssa transported herself into the role of Brin Cassidy, the sensuous and strong-willed beauty and wife of Jon Riley. Temperamental, charismatic, and devastatingly blue-eyed, Riley was a man who knew what he wanted, and he wasn't leaving until he got it. But the sensuous and strong-willed beauty he still called his wife was every bit his match. From dusk until dawn the two will experience a second honeymoon of passion, seduction, and deep revelation that will determine if there is any future for Riley in the morning.


In The Rana Look, Alyssa became supermodel Rana Ramsey the exotic, one-of-a-kind allure supermodel. Ruggedly handsome, charming, and undeniably charismatic, Trent is the kind of man that Alyssa finds irresistible...the kind of man she is certain would never look twice at a woman as ordinary as the new Alyssa. Trent seems unfazed by her Plain Jane look. For he is drawn to a beauty that Alyssa can't hide. He is determined to learn the mystery behind the elusive, reclusive boarder with the secret past. Then an unexpected tragedy strikes, and the stakes seem higher than ever. Now they must look deep into each other's heart to determine if their relationship is just an impossibly erotic dream--or a dream of love come true.


In the A Whole New Light Alyssa is Cynthia a widow who took on a lover Worth Lansing. The two close friends took a short vacation together. Worth always knew what to say and Alyssa could always open up to him. They were each other's rock and Worth would always be there for his best friend's widow.

Worth was a lady's man; he had many women around but never found one that fit his lifestyle. Alyssa teased Worth about his wild ways and Worth let Alyssa know that her ways weren't as perfect. If they were, she would be happy. The beauty of their friendship allowed them to discuss everything, just as best friends would. All of that would change in Acapulco as they entered their suite. "...Worth and Alyssa stood like statues in the middle of the room, staring down at the bed-the one king-size bed."

In Do With Me What You Will, Alyssa fills the role of Elena. It is a love story that concentrates upon the tension between two American 'pathways' : the way of tradition, or Law; and the way of spontaneous emotion-in this case, Love. In the synthesis of these two apparently contradictory forces lies the inevitable transformation of our culture.

"Romantic love is one of our Western religions and must be respected as such; it must be acknowledged as the violent, unstoppable, rather beautiful force it is. But the West is also a culture of Law : American society will never be transformed by stray acts of violence in the streets-it will be transformed only through the courts. And they, in turn, will not be transformed until the men who run them are changed, individual by individual. Ours is still a time of romantic love; the time of a more communal, transcendental love is not yet come. DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL suggests such a transformation.

"If what is available to an individual is romantic love, then it must be-it will be-this kind of love that liberates." In the "freeing" from the enchantment of her "self," Elena lives a drama in which, by a continual process, she is raised to a higher aspect of her own being through involvement with a man-a drama of marriage and adultery that constructs an hour-by-hour, thought-by-thought experience both shattering and redemptive."

Another critic Rose Marie Burwell states: "Certain that the law will not save her, that the very concepts of innocence and guilt depend on the human propensities of those who define and dispense justice, Elena recognizes the truth that "Necessity Makes Law." Assuming moral self-responsibility in the final chapter, Elena Howe enters an unspoken plea of nolo contendre, the vulgate of which is the title of the novel, Do With Me What You Will ( 1973 ). The plea, in English common law and in most states, requires the court to proceed on an assumption of the defendant's innocence--even though he refuses to defend himself. Here the reader is the court and Elena Howe is both Everyman and many women. The dilemma she has been chosen to exemplify, the struggle to create and retain a tenable sense of self, is a universal one in which every individual who achieves emotional and moral maturity participates. For Elena a belated and violent sexual awakening sounds a warning signal, forcing upon her the realization that she must synthesize her personality or accede to her own disintegration. Elena's resistance and the Jungian stages of her individuation provide the narrative structure of novel. "



Books
Shadow Bridge - Gregory Frost
Game of Throne - George R R Martin

The Cat Who Went to Paris - Peter Gethers
Do Cats Think?
Catlore - Desmond Morris
The Cat On My Shoulder - Lisa Angowski Rogak


Dealing With Dragons - Patricia Wrede
Psychomech - Brian Lumley
Psychosphere - Brian Lumley
Foundation (1951) - Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation (1953) - Isaac Asimov
Foundation's Edge (1982) - Isaac Asimov
Point of Origin - Patricia Cornwell Story of a female murderer
The Vision - Dean Koontz
Velocity - Dean Koontz
Intensity - Dean Koontz
Midnight - Dean Koontz
Forever Odd - Dean Koontz
The Demon Seed - Dean Koontz
Intensity - Dean Koontz
Pop Goes The Weasel - James Patterson Story about murder of prostitutes
Darwin's Radio - Greg Bear Underlying story is acceptance of paranoia
Angels and Demons (2000) - Dan Brown
Hearts of The Sea (2007) - Nora Roberts Romance with a touch of Irish mysticism and two star-crossed ghosts
To Love Again (1989) - Danielle Steel Romance story with theme of a new beginning for a young woman with her child
Star (1990) - Danielle Steel Romance story of a young girl pregnant with her lover's child
Riley in the Morning (2001) - Sandra Brown Sensual novel about one night in the life of a man and a woman that will change their future forever
The Rana Look (2003) - Sandra Brown Sensual novel about a man and a woman drawn together in a sensual idyll unlike anything either of them has ever known
A Whole New Light (1992) - Sandra Brown Sensual novel about forbidden love between a man and a woman
Lightpaths (1997) - Howard V Hendrix Science Fiction
Nimisha's Ship (1998) - Anne McCaffrey Science Fiction Escapism
Do With Me What You Will (1973) - Joyce Carol Oates Explore the issues of violent sexual awakening
Angels, God's Secret Agents - Billy Graham
The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Portrait of A Killer - Patricia Cornwell (An Investigation into Jack the Ripper)
Roger Zelazny
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Eddings
Robert Jordan