(CNN) Like many of us who loved her, I can't remember the exact moment I fell for the work of Joan Didion. I imagine I first found her as a 16-year-old, flipping through used books at Moe's, the legendary Berkeley bookshop. But it's possible that this isn't true, because it seems like she was already there — at friends' houses, in bookstores, on bookshelves and in magazines we loved to read.