TOP TEN
The Bible
(Catholic school nuns were the first storytellers in my life, and The Bible was the dark well from which their stories were drawn. Full of sacrifice and betrayal, sex and violence, love and murder, those nuns taught me very early which themes make for gripping fiction!)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(My favorite author. Someone once said that all of Dostoyevsky’s books are Crime and Punishment, and I agree. I love going inside the twisted minds of his characters, and learning their motivations, and watching the long-term psychological effects of discrete actions play out over time. Like the rest of the authors on this top ten list, I feel like F.D. loves me as a reader, and is looking out for me, and letting me see everything I need to see, so I can make decisions for myself, if I choose to. Also -like the rest of the authors on this list- he does not burden his characters with his own judgment, he is empathetic to them, good or bad, and empathetic to you, the reader.)
Ulysses by James Joyce
(I started-and-stopped this book many times, over a course of years, before I finally dug in. I deeply related to Joyce’s earlier work and trusted him, so when I finally had the time and will to figure out the damn thing, I used every resource I could find, and moved slowly through it. On my second read, the Ghost of James Joyce literally appeared before me, and I gazed upon his hat-shadowed face and skinny, brown-suited frame. [Okay, I was a little messed-up, but it happened!] That was the first time I ever felt the imprint of an author’s mind on a book, like a spore stamp from a mushroom. I can imagine some future technology being able to recreate Joyce’s consciousness, using only his novels. Up next: Finnegans Wake.)
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
(This book is part of my “family cannon” because my own Dad professed love for Steinbeck, and particularly this book, and so it was available to me at an early age. I’ve read it several times, once or twice a decade, and each time I relate to it in a new way.)
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
(I chanced upon this book, and fell in love with the intelligence and empathy that carries its author’s voice through all of the characters and perspectives. When I finished the book (in 2013) I immediately looked up the writer, Dave Wallace, anxious to contact him. Of course he was dead by then, but I didn’t know. When I learned that, I felt saddened, as if I’d lost a friend.)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
(I love the narrative voice -how it magically fades into omniscient- and then reappears again as fist-person. I love the poetry in the prose. But mostly I love the character Ahab in some, deep, wordless way.)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(I think every writer owes it to themselves to read this book. It is an amazing gift from the Muse. It is easy to read and understand. And, despite its length, it’s a quick read, except for certain parts.)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
(Twain is so conscious of, and kind, to his reader. He loves telling you his story, and he loves the people it in, and his enthusiasm for the whole affair shines through, and is contagious. I think Twain would be a fun guy to get drunk with -which I can’t say about any other author on this list.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabe Marquez
(I love latin america, and I love this contribution from one of its greatest authors. I love the magic realism. The writing is so hot and vivid sometimes it hurst my eyes a little, like squinting into the sun in Mexico. Also, this book will teach you more about the philosophical underpinnings of family culture and individualism in latin america than anything; other than living there.)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
(The writing, the narrative, and the sentences are outstanding. The book suffers from a lack of clarity. I sought and found help from the internet the first time I read it. It is another one of those books that everybody says you must read, then you pick it up and can’t believe that anyone has actually read the damn thing, but then, -if you take the time to figure it out- you realize why those people told you should read it in the first place, and then one day you find you yourself telling some poor schmuck that they should read it. It’s that kind of book.)
ALSO
CLASSICS
by Charles Dickens
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
(The sentences are outstanding. The story is outstanding. The metaphors are outstanding. I would let Conrad take me anywhere -I totally trust him.)
Candide by Voltaire
(I consider Voltaire to be one of the greatest thinkers ever, and he wrote so much that he is like an iceberg, and if you accept that analogy, Candide is the tip. I love how he abuses his poor protagonist. I believe there is a lesson there for any writer: Be empathetic, but not NICE, to your protagonist. In fact, make your protagonist suffer!)
Lolita by Nabokov
Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo
(First-person narrator is unreliable, and the reader quickly picks up on that. Ultimately, over the course of the novel, you grow to kind of accept Zeno, with his faults, because you are familiar with him, and ultimately, he has a good heart. It is an wild narrative journey.)
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
DYSTOPIAN
The Trial by Franz Kafka
(I love all of Kafka books, but this one the most. I find myself thinking of this one a lot, anytime I am dealing with bureaucracy, like at the DMV.)
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Huxley
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Rabbit Series by John Updike
(John Updike and I come from wildly different backgrounds, and his work helped me to understand how upper-middle class people lived and thought. There are no country clubs in Gary, Indiana, just steel mills and bars. Initially, I was reading these books as a sort of a field guide, to help me understand the animals in my new habitat as a lawyer, but ultimately, I grew to love Rabbit, and the reason these books are on the list is because the dialogue is exemplary -something I am striving for.)
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
(Clearly, Sinclair took a cue from Candide when developing this story. No protagonist since Job or Candide has suffered more than Sinclair’s poor protagonist, Jurgis. The wage slavery he describes has been the story of family in the U.S., until me.)
Babbit by Sinclair Lewis
(This might as well be in the nonfiction section. It’s amazing how relevant this book is right now.)
MISC. FICTION
Atonement by McEwan
Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes
Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
(Many people think Midnight’s Children is his best, but I disagree
Siddharta by Herman Hesse
(Part of the family cannon. Beautiful writing, beautiful story, and my introduction to The Buddha, although I would not meet him again until I was 35.)
Don Quixote by Cervantes
(It is impossible that this book is 500-years-old. It is a beautiful example of how being a human being has stayed pretty much the same over time. It is just as funny, and clever, and poignant as it has ever been. So much of what we think of, when we think of stories, comes from here.)
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
(Magic realism from Japan. I’m a Nipponophile, and my love extends to their poetry and fiction. I love the character Nakata, who can talk to cats. I love how he invokes the philosophy of Hegel in this book, and also, the religion Shintoism. Murakami always brings Western philosophy -particularly of the German enlightenment- into his stories, and puts its against Eastern philosophy, but without judgment, and deepening the story without hurting the characters or the plot. I strive to do the same.)
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
(I don’t like any of this other books, but here I love the stripped-down style and the perfect metaphors. Like when he describes the boot laying in the mud as “something dead.”)
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
(A fellow Hoosier, and a kindred spirit. I was exposed to him early, and I think that he may be the source of why I so enjoy magic realism.)
Watership Down by Richard Adams
(I read this book in elementary school, and it was my first big book. I think it is why big books don’t scare me.)
The Odyssey by Homer
(Kind of like a secular version of The Bible, a book I was exposed to early in its abridged form, and then later in its unabridged form -it holds a lot of energy.)
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
(Part of the family cannon, I always wanted to be one of those boys on the island, and I still do.)
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol
(I like this one better than Wonderland, and it was available to me in early childhood. The copy I owned was an oversized hardcover that had both books, printed back to back, so that Wonderland was on one side, and if you flipped it over, Looking Glass was on the other. It was illustrated, and read it before I could read, and it became kind of a friendlier Bible because is was kind of the same size.)
NONFICTION
The Power Broker by Robert Caro
Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt
Confessions by Jean-Jaques Rousseau
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
The Rise and Fall of the Third-Reich by William Shirer
One Summer by Bill Bryson
Ethics by Benedict Spinoza
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
MUSIC
Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens
A Love Supreme by John Coltrane
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by Flaming Lips