Love 'Dickinson?' Here are 3 books you should not miss

I was a late arrival to the sublime pleasure that is Apple TV’s "Dickinson."

Led astray by my conviction that the book is always better than the made-for-TV or movie screen adaptation, I ignored the buzz about the stylish, soundtrack-rich, fabulous series about Emily Dickinson.

But with one half of one episode, I was hooked, especially when Death, played by Wiz Khalifa, showed up.

And I, like my fellow fans, began to wonder what I could read that would reveal more about this magnificent, frankly weird woman’s life.

Here are three books to devour if you love the streaming series "Dickinson" the way I do.

"The Diary of Emily Dickinson" by Jamie Fuller is a fictional treatment of Dickinson's life and writing in the span of a year. It gives you a sense of the poet’s day-to-day life in the mid-1800s and the experiences that inspired her vivid and exceptional poems.

"These Fevered Days" by Martha Ackmann reveals 10 pivotal experiences and decisions that reveal how Dickinson became the poet she was. And while the Apple TV series covers most of these, the detail that Ackmann brings to these moments is engaging and absorbing. She confides in the author’s note: “I spent hours writing this book in Dickinson’s bedroom (at her house in Amherst, Mass.) listening to the sound of footsteps on the stairs, looking out her windows, and feeling the warmth of afternoon sun.”

Finally, I’ve come back to a collection of Dickinson’s poems that I’ve had since college and knowing more about her life has enriched my experience of them. "The Complete Poems by Emily Dickinson" is a must-read.

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