Her name may not ring a bell, but once you know that Ann Goldstein translated Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, you’ll see why her talk at the 92nd Street Y today sold out quickly. Many wonder whether Goldstein, an editor at The New Yorker, dealt directly with the pseudonymous Ferrante, whom an Italian reporter recently unmasked as a rather unknown Italian translator. She and Goldstein corresponded only through their publisher. “Her decision to be anonymous didn’t strike me as strange,” says Goldstein. “I’ve translated a lot of dead writers, so I was used to not dealing with the author directly.” Of the four Naples books, Goldstein’s favorites are the first and the last.

Here are four other books in her library:

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

It’s actually several volumes — the story of three or four generations of an English family. I like epics! This starts in 1886, with eight brothers and sisters, and [details] the rise of the bourgeoisie. I just translated a novel that had all this Roman slang in it, and this has lots of slangy [British] expressions I don’t know, so I found that interesting.

The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick

Gornick is the “odd woman” who walks around New York — turns out, we live two blocks apart! This is a mix of autobiography, literary criticism and history. I like how she puts it all together: how she’ll run into someone and it will lead to some writer who has a tenuous connection to what she’s talking about. Or not.

A Pelican at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse

As soon as I picked up one of Wodehouse’s books, I laughed out loud — the writing is so easy and funny. Dotty Lord Emsworth lives with his pig and his controlling sister, Constance. There are bright young women who want to marry unsuitable young men, and Lady Constance is always trying to find them more suitable husbands.

Something Written by Emanuele Trevi

This is a translation of mine. I think it’s really good, and it has an unsolved crime in it: the death of the filmmaker, novelist and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini. Someone went to jail for it, but no one believes it was the real killer. It’s also about Pasolini’s last movie, “Salo,” which is famously disgusting. I’ve never seen it.