Doris Hiatt, at 83; saw the value of paperbacks for teens

It's fair to say that Doris Hiatt probably gave away more books than most people will ever own - books she had read, books she had reviewed, books that found a place in her homes simply because they were books.

With their children grown and work no longer requiring a sprawling dwelling, she and her husband scaled back 22 years ago, trading their Brookline house for an apartment off Harvard Square.

"In advance of moving we gave away hundreds and perhaps thousands of books," Dr. Howard Hiatt said.

"When I was a kid, if I asked to buy something, she always wanted to know if I needed it - unless it was a book. A book was the only thing that wasn't a sinful expense," said their daughter, Deborah, of Newton. "It was just a given that learning was what life was for, and reading was one of the great pleasures in life."

Mrs. Hiatt, who cofounded Kliatt, a bimonthly review magazine that helps high school librarians across the country choose paperbacks for teenagers, died at home in Cambridge on Tuesday of lymphoma. She was 83.

Family members said she was so accomplished at becoming a confidante to those she met that people of all ages considered her their best friend.

"She had this huge network of friends that covered every phase of her life and her peers, but also friends she made through her children - even through her grandchildren and her parents," said her son Jonathan of Chevy Chase, Md. "So there was this wonderful and eclectic group of people who had a lot to do with what she was."

A friendship could span decades, or flower in the time it took Mrs. Hiatt to meet the maintenance worker who cleaned her hospital room. Conversations ran deep and meaningful, even in a chance encounter.

"She was really so totally devoted to other people and so thoughtful," said her son Frederick, also of Chevy Chase. "Even in the last years, in the midst of fighting this illness, which tends to make anybody more inwardly focused, she was just constantly thinking of her friends, and her friends' children, and her friends' parents, and what she could do for people."

Doris Bieringer grew up in Brookline, an only child. Like her mother, she graduated from Wellesley College, and until the end of her life she was a member of a book club to which her mother had belonged.

"And like her mother, she did The New York Times crossword on Sundays in ink," Deborah Hiatt said. "Very annoying."

While attending Wellesley, Doris Bieringer met Howard Hiatt, a medical student at Harvard. Their fathers were friends and thought they might hit it off.

"Her politics were mine; she was very liberal," he said. "Her concern for people, particularly people who were not as fortunate as we, was manifest. And she was, I thought, quite beautiful; that didn't hurt. And she was a lot more indulgent of my frailties than I think most other people might have been."

They married not quite 60 years ago, a year after their first dinner together.

While the couple and their children lived for a time in places such as Bethesda, Md., and Paris, they resided mostly in Brookline. She was the family's anchor as her husband's career escalated - he became chairman of medicine at Beth Israel Hospital and dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.

"In another era, she would have embarked on a career when she graduated," Frederick said. "Growing up when she did, that was not the course she took. She never regretted it, but when I was in fourth grade, she said, 'It's time to start something new.' "

Returning to school, Mrs. Hiatt received a master's in library science from Simmons College. With a classmate, Celeste Klein, she started Kliatt, a reference publication for high school libraries that offered reviews of paperbacks at a time when librarians looked askance at anything that wasn't hardcover. Mrs. Hiatt and her partner combined their last names to create a title for the magazine, which they launched 41 years ago.

"She was absolutely dedicated to the idea of getting more books to teenagers," said Claire Rosser, a co-editor who joined Kliatt a decade after it started. "Literature was a very familiar space for her, and she wanted to share that with teenagers."

Her husband said, "It seems strange in 2007 to think of paperbacks as a new part of our culture, but at that time they weren't a part of our educational process for young people in libraries and schools."

Mrs. Hiatt had no such prejudice against the hardcover's lowly stepsibling, and occasionally reviewed paperbacks for the Globe.

"One of life's great satisfactions is picking the right book for the right person," she wrote in a December 1980 review. "Picking one at the right price is something else again. Perhaps I can help the process by suggesting paperbacks."

After retiring from Kliatt in the 1990s, Mrs. Hiatt served on the state's foster care review boards. And she began auditing courses at Harvard. She had a weakness for sampling music classes, and for indulging in a hotdog on the trip to the university or the way home.

Diagnosed about nine years ago with lymphoma, Mrs. Hiatt persevered through the illness. "I think her willpower had something to do with it," Jonathan said.

"When she felt that she had really had enough treatment and decided to come home to die, it was in no small measure because she wanted the opportunity to be in her home to say goodbye to the people who meant the most to her. And at the top of that list, of course, were her children and grandchildren," her husband said. "Her quiet pride in their achievements was really extraordinary."

In addition to her husband and three children, Mrs. Hiatt leaves four granddaughters and four grandsons.

A memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow in the Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center at Wellesley College. Burial will be private.