28 Books You Should Read If You Want To

Lists Notable Articles
February 18, 2014 | 46 3 min read

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Earlier this month Amazon released a list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime. It joins Esquire’s 80 Books Every Man Should Read, The Telegraph’s 100 Novels Everyone Should Read, Huffington Post’s more manageable 30 Books You Should Read Before You’re 30, and The Guardian’s ambitious and inflexible 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read.

These lists serve a purpose if you’re Jay Gatsby furnishing a library or if you’ve, say, just arrived from Mars and have no knowledge of Earth books. What they miss is that one of the greatest rewards of a reading life is discovery. In my 10 years working at bookstores, no one ever came in and asked me what they should read before their death — they would ask me what my favorite book was, or if there were any great new books no one was talking about, or they would just want me to leave them alone so they could explore on their own.

I discovered one of my favorite books because the author called our store and charmed the living daylights out of me. I found another in a box of old books that my Russian literature professor left outside his office to give away. So while I do think that you should read the canon if it interests you, I think it’s more important that you read the books that find their own way into your hands.

With that in mind, here is my list of books you should read (if you want to):

You should read the book that you hear two booksellers arguing about at the registers while you’re browsing in a bookstore.

You should read the book that you see someone on the train reading and trying to hide that they’re laughing.

You should read the book that you see someone on the train reading and trying to hide that they’re crying.

You should read the book that you find left behind in the airplane seat pocket, on a park bench, on the bus, at a restaurant, or in a hotel room.

You should read the book that you see someone reading for hours in a coffee shop — there when you got there and still there when you left — that made you envious because you were working instead of absorbed in a book.

You should read the book you find in your grandparents’ house that’s inscribed “To Ray, all my love, Christmas 1949.”

You should read the book that you didn’t read when it was assigned in your high school English class. You’d probably like it better now anyway.

You should read the book whose author happened to mention on Charlie Rose that their favorite band is your favorite band.

You should read the book that your favorite band references in their lyrics.

You should read the book that your history professor mentions and then says, “which, by the way, is a great book,” offhandedly.

You should read the book that you loved in high school. Read it again.

You should read the book that you find on the library’s free cart whose cover makes you laugh.

You should read the book whose main character has your first name.

You should read the book whose author gets into funny Twitter exchanges with Colson Whitehead.

You should read the book about your hometown’s history that was published by someone who grew up there.

You should read the book your parents give you for your high school graduation.

You should read the book you’ve started a few times and keep meaning to finish once and for all.

You should read books with characters you don’t like.

You should read books about countries you’re about to visit.

You should read books about historical events you don’t know anything about.

You should read books about things you already know a little about.

You should read books you can’t stop hearing about and books you’ve never heard of.

You should read books mentioned in other books.

You should read prize-winners, bestsellers, beach reads, book club picks, and classics, when you want to.

You should just keep reading.

Image via Abee5/Flickr

is a staff writer for The Millions. Janet is a freelance writer and semi-professional baker living in Chicago. Her writing has appeared in The Awl, The AV Club, the Chicago Reader, and Chicago Magazine. She is the co-host of YouTube's The Book Report and blogs about presidential biographies at At Times Dull. Follow her @sojanetpotter.

Lists

Celebrity Book Club: A List to End All Lists

Lists
September 7, 2010 | 41 10 min read
1.  The Dream Several years ago, while going through a box of books at my job, I came across Wake of the Perdido Star, a work of fiction authored by actor Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan.  Intrigued, I peeped inside and read the following: 'The cook has told me there be salted cod and bits of cheese for supper,' he said. 'If you like, I'll fetch you some.' 'Speak to me not of food, for I am soon to die.' I was so charmed by this discovery that I immediately founded a celebrity book club and emailed everyone I knew [actual excerpt]:  "I have decided to start a celebrity book club.  There is another celebrity book club, where celebrities read books.  In this club we will read celebrities' books, but only if they are novels and full of magic and imagination." Like many enterprises I have undertaken with great verve and style, this club foundered due to my own delinquency; some loyal friends in fact read Wake of the Perdido Star (one of them really liked it), but we never met to discuss, act out dialogues, and drink beer like I promised in my invitation.  And today, a thwarted virgin, I've still yet to read a single celebrity novel in its entirety. I was reminded of this abandoned book club because the other night I had a dream where I met James Franco and we forged a very deep sort of friendship and he started writing me long letters on a typewriter.  "If James Franco writes you long letters on a typewriter," I wondered in the dream, "Is it cheating?" Then I woke up with a visceral desire to read his fiction (this also feels like cheating). 2.  Feeling Frisky Garth, in a humorous post last year, riffed off the news of Michael Cera's appearance in McSweeney's and alerted us to the trend of celebrity fiction in the pages of high-faluting publications.  But I think this phenomenon has been with us for decades (maybe even centuries). There is something about celebrity novels that seems intrinsically against nature, like cats playing the piano.  Celebrities are perfect the way they are. They don't need to be great writers in addition to being great thespians or singers (or shatteringly attractive, or whatever it is that made them famous).  More importantly, the appearance of their books signifies a great injustice; celebrities, by virtue of their fame, get the opportunity to publish, an opportunity out of reach for most of us here in the great unwashed. I'm not being fair, of course.  Celebrities are people too, not vessels for our pleasure, and they should do what they please with their lives.  If you're an artist, you're an artist, and your art will out.  Also, writing fiction is hard, and many of us have tried to do it with excruciating results, which we keep quietly to ourselves. But all celebrity novels are not created equal.  Some celebrities demonstrate (appear to, rather, since I can't say for sure) an admirable flexibility of medium and a great deal of facility with the written word.  Furthermore, they seem to actually want to express themselves, and not simply to diversify their media portfolios. On the other hand, many celebrity-cum-authors seem to lack even passing familiarity with books, any books at all, and the habitual contents thereof; many enlist aides just to get the woeful sentences onto the page.  When Lauren Conrad (she played "Lauren" on The Hills) writes a novel (three novels, in fact), it rouses my inner Marx.  Or maybe Robespierre. With this in mind, inspired by the afterglow of my James Franco reverie, and remembering my foundered book club, I've started this bibliography of celebrity fiction.  The trend pieces about actor-writers (and Franco, always Franco) on sites like, for example, the ominously named Frisky, identify a paltry ten titles and call it a day. I think we can do better. 3.  The List It turns out that tracking down celebrity novels is not all that easy.  Some of the books, unsurprisingly, seem to have slunk off in shame.  For now I'm not counting children's books, because most celebrities seem to have dabbled in children's fiction (and pacifism) at some point in their careers.   I'm also not counting novels based on movies.  "Celebrities" is defined here as famous people famous for things other than writing novels--I'm casting the net wide. So who am I missing?  And what did I get wrong? Pedro Almodovar.  Fuego en las Entranas (1981), El Sueno de la Raison (1980).  I would love find these, also to be able to read Spanish.  One synopsis I found says that Fuego, a novella, is about a vengeful maxi pad magnate. Pamela Anderson.  Star (2005), Star Struck (2005).  Scantily clad autobiographical fiction. Lionel Barrymore.  Mr. Cantonwine, A Moral Tale (1953).  Sounds decidedly unsalacious. Glenn Beck.  The Overton Window (2010).  Basically this book is about David Plouffe or somebody being awakened from his shallow existence to the grim realities of PEOPLE WHO HATE FREEDOM.  Glenn Beck apparently calls this a "faction," i.e., fiction+fact.  But the thing about neologisms is, is that you can't make one out of something that is already actually a word with its own meaning.  Like, I might want to call this book a "diction" (you do the math), but I can't because it WOULDN'T MAKE SENSE. Barbara Boxer and Mary-Rose Hayes. A Time to Run (2005).  B.B. novelizes the liberal agenda. Marlo Brando, Donald Cammell, David Thomson.  Fan Tan (2005).  I think this counts--Brando came up with the scenes and some of the premise, Cammell wrote the treatment, and then Thomson, after Brando's death, filled in the blanks for publication.  The result had Louis Bayard asking, "Why does a novel written in the early 1980s feel like something that had lain at the bottom of the sea for half a century prior?" Jimmy Buffett.  Where is Joe Merchant? (2003), A Salty Piece of Land (2006).  Adventure, beaches, sea planes, presumably margaritas. Ed Burns, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Siju Thomas.  The Dock Walloper (first in the series is 2008).  Like the other celebrity comic book impresarios on this list, it's hard to tell exactly what the celebrity's role is in the process. Tim Burton.  The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories (1997).  Gruesome yet whimsical vignettes and illustrations (Gorey-esque?). Bruce Campbell.  Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way (2006).  This doesn't sound like a novel, but it is. Naomi Campbell.  Swan (1996).  Famous supermodel gets blackmailed, has adventures.  Yawn. Johnny Cash.  Man in White (1986).  I am learning so much compiling this list. Like that Johnny Cash wrote Biblical fiction about the Apostle Paul. Michael Cera. "Pinecone" in McSweeney's 30 (2009).  I found what I think was an excerpt online and I was unmoved. Lynne Cheney.  Sisters (1981).  Holy crap.  Before Lynne Cheney was busy penning epics like America: A Patriotic Primer (J is for Jefferson, E is for Extraordinary rendition), she wrote a sexy lesbian sex book. Lauren Conrad.  L.A. Candy (2010), Sweet Little Lies (2010), and there's another one coming out in October.  These purported fictions are about a girl who goes to Los Angeles to be in a reality show.  The woman has published three books in one year!  This is the shit of which rebellions are fomented. Wes Craven. The Fountain Society (1999).  Cloning, secret military societies. Macauley Culkin.  Junior (2007).  Autobiographical fiction featuring stream-of-consciousness rants, quizzes, doodles, dad issues.  Sounds awfully post-modern. Tony Curtis.  Kid Andrew Cody and Julie Sparrow (1977).  I can't find out what this was about, but it ended with a lawsuit against Curtis, brought by Doubleday. Bob Dylan.  Tarantula (1965).  Bob Dylan wrote an experimental novel, which was apparently so bad that he claimed he was coerced into writing it. Frederico Fellini and Milo Manara.  Viaje a Tulum (1990).  I really don't know if this counts, but it sounds cool.  It's a script that Fellini abandoned, which was taken up by Manara and turned into a graphic novel, and I think Fellini added some of the art.  There was a translated edition also, Trip to Tulum (1990). Carrie Fisher.  Postcards from the Edge (1987), The Best Awful (2004).  Hollywood, full of crazy characters and mad-cap adventures! James Franco.  First there was "Just Before the Black" in the March 24, 2010, issue of Esquire.  Not to jeopardize our budding relationship in my mind, but I did read this, and I'm not really sure I understand what Franco was going for here.  Disturbed young tough, first-person narrative, ruminations like "I wish I was Mexican, or Hebrew, I mean Jewish, I mean Israeli, or Mexican Jewish, or Mexican Jewish gay."  It's bizarre.  Palo Alto, his collection of short stories, is coming this October.  More restless youth in California.  It got some good blurbs.  This I will maybe pre-order.  James Franco, would you like to be in my book club?  Please email me to discuss. Newt Gingrich, William Fortschen, Albert Hanser.  Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War (2003), Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8 (2007), Days of Infamy (2008), Grant Comes East: A Novel of the Civil War (2004), To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington (2009), Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant, the Final Victory (2005),  and 1945 (1995).  Revisionist history with Newt!  Sounds like a blast. Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan.  Wake of the Perdido Star (1999).  Adventures on the high seas.  Hackman also appears to have a thing for historical fiction; he also wrote Escape from Andersonville (2008), a civil war novel, and Justice for None (2006), a 20th century noir (all with Lenihan). Ethan Hawke.  The Hottest State (1996).  Aspiring authors trying to make it in New York, have sex, talk about life.  Ash Wednesdsay (2003).  Young man goes AWOL, leaves pregnant girlfriend.  Reunites with pregnant girlfriend, embarks on roadtrip. Elia Kazan.  The Arrangement (1967).  The Greek-American son of rug merchant struggles with success, adultery, pursuit of the American Dream.  Don Draper? Kazan also wrote The Anatolian (1982), America America (1962), The Understudy (1974), The Assassins (1972), Acts of Love (1978), and Beyond the Aegean (1994). Hugh Laurie.  The Gun Seller (1998).  A zany spy novel, evidently with shades of Wodehouse. (Our own Andrew has already more extensively discussed the fiction of Laurie and his sometime on screen collaborator Stephen Fry) Janet Leigh. House of Destiny (1995).  Rags to riches, bellboy to famous Hollywood producer.  Dream Factory (2002), more Hollywood. John Lennon.  A Spaniard in the Works (1965).  Goofy stories filled with puns and spoonerisms. Courtney Love, Ai Yazawa, Misaho Kujiradou, D.J. Milky.  Princess Ai (first 2004, several volumes thereafter).  Courtney Love does manga. Michael Madsen.  The Complete Poetic Works of Michael Madsen Vol. 1, 1995-2005 (2005).  That Michael Madsen is a prolific enough poet to necessitate delineation by volume number is for some reason a serious mind-fuck.  "Why do some men ask for a beating?/ You can see it in their faces,/ You know… they need it./ I beat a guy/ With a tire iron once ..."  Also, Burning in Paradise (1998).  Drugs, sex, sadness. Steve Martin.  Shopgirl (2000).  A young woman sells gloves, feels adrift, does it with a rich man.  Made for tepid and weird film, I thought.  The Pleasure of My Company (2004).  A guy with obsessive-compulsive disorder befriends single mother, hearts are warmed. Wasn't this the premise of As Good as it Gets? Willie Nelson and Mike Blakeley.  A Tale Out of Luck (2008).  Rustlers and so forth. Leonard Nimoy.  You and I (1973),  Will I Think of You? (1974),  Come be With Me (1978), Warmed by Love (1983), A Lifetime of Love (2002).  Nimoy also put out a book of photographs he took of plus-sized women in which he talked shit about the fashion industry.  Leonard Nimoy is the best. Chuck Norris, Ken Abraham, Aaron Norris.  The Justice Riders (2006) and  A Threat to Justice (2007).  Yes, Chuck Norris is a novelist.  Life has lost all sense and meaning. Bill O'Reilly.  Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder (1998).  There is something really dorky about writing thinly-disguised autobiographical mystery thrillers.  Bill O'Reilly totally has a dozen more of these in his nightstand drawer. Sharon Osbourne.  Revenge (2009).  Two sisters hungry for fame, one "will stop at nothing to get what she wants."  I propose a fifty-year moratorium on the phrase "will stop at nothing to get [x]." Katie Price.  Angel (2006), Crystal (2007), Angel Uncovered (2008), Sapphire (2009), Paradise (2010).  Quoth the author to The Guardian: "I'm not going to lie, I don't sit there with a typewriter and write it, of course I don't . . . I don't have time to do that." Sir Michael Redgrave.  The Mountebank's Tale (1959). From the earlier generation of actor-turned-novelists.  The one synopsis I could find (by the author's son Corin) makes this title sounds suspiciously literary for a celebrity novel. Carl Reiner.  Enter Laughing (1958), NNNNN: A Novel (2006), Just Desserts: A Novellelah (2006).  You know in the movie Wet Hot American Summer when Michael Showalter plays the wisecracking elderly emcee at the camp talent show, the one who says "I went to camp so long ago that fucking Jesus Christ was my counsellor"?  I think these novels might sound something like that. Nicole Richie.  The Truth About Diamonds (2005), Priceless (2010).  Daughter of famous musician is rich, goes to parties, does drugs, does rehab, etc. etc. etc.  What an  imagination!  Send this woman to the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Joan Rivers and Jerrilyn Farmer.  Murder at the Academy Awards (2009).  There is nothing about this book I don't think I can learn from the title. Mickey Rooney.  The Search for Sonny Skies (1994).  Ugh, title puns. William Shatner.  Jesus, so many.  Tek Series (1990), Man O'War (1996), Quest for Tomorrow series (1997), Assorted Star Trek titles (with other authors).  William Shatner appears to have written (or authorized, maybe) several thousand of these, with several other people. Wesley Snipes, Antoine Fuqua, Peter Milligan, Jeff Nentrup.  After Dark #1 (2010).  Wesley Snipes does comic books. Britney and Lynne Spears.  A Mother's Gift (2001).  Little Holly is a born singer.  She gets a scholarship to a singing school, everyone makes fun of her homespun, she feels ashamed of her roots.  Blah, blah, blah. Sylvester Stallone.  Paradise Alley (1977).  Apparently the book came before the movie, and Stallone wrote it. Courtney Thorne-Smith. Outside In (2007).  The fictional heroine is a failed movie actress turned television star with a hyphenated last name.  That is just lazy. Meg Tilly.  Singing Songs (1994), Gemma (2006), Porcupine (2007), First Time (2008).  These sound like really intense titles for young adults and grownups, all dealing with childhood sexual abuse and trauma. Ivana Trump.  For Love Alone (1992), Free to Love (1993).  Calling these books novels really seems like a stretch.  I'm not even sure that she changed the heroine's name, and her own glamor shot is on the cover. Mae West.  Sex (1926), The Drag (1927), Babe Gordon (1930), Diamond Lil (1932), Pleasure Man (1975).  I think some of these are novelizations of plays that she wrote.  Mae West sounds like kind of a badass. Gene Wilder.  What is This Thing Called Love? (2010), My French Whore (2008), The Woman Who Wouldn't (2008).  I find it bizarre and delightful that Gene Wilder writes short stories about love and historical romances featuring Chekhov. So that's what I've got.  I welcome your additions, revisions, and quibbles.
Lists
| 41 10 min read
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Lists

What, if Anything, I Taught Them

Lists
November 26, 2007 | 3 4 min read
This fall, among other pursuits, I've been teaching one section of "Composition & Rhetoric" at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus. I've led fiction writing workshops at the university level before, but this has been my first foray into expository writing. At times, I've found myself questioning my professorial fitness (as regular readers of this blog may even now be doing); how can I claim to explain a set of forms that I haven't myself mastered?But when it comes to writing, we're all apprentices (to paraphrase Hemingway), and I've been blessed with a group of creative, curious, and hardworking writers-in-training. Of my 16 students, 14 are enrolled in the Alvin Ailey School of Dance - which is to say that they're well on their way to being artists in another medium. This may account for the high quality of their work.Or maybe it's the pedagogical principle I cribbed from my quondam teacher Lawrence Weschler: Assign your students readings that you really love. My syllabus, thrown together in a single manic week in August, wound up coalescing loosely around ideas of New York before and after September 11, 2001. Even in a week when my Socratic skills failed me, my class and I would at least have the consolation of having read something complex and beautiful, like the city itself. What follows is a diary of our mutual education.Week 1: "Here is New York," by E.B. White (from Essays)For me, this is what a good essay looks like, but at this point in the semester, I can't quite explain why. My instructions: "Go sit in Central Park when you read this. You can thank me later." They do.Week 2: "Bartleby, the Scrivener," by Herman Melville (from Great Short Works) and "Bartleby in Manhattan," by Elizabeth Hardwick (from Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays)One of the weird things about literary criticism at the college level is that students are often asked to write it without ever having read it. I'm hoping that this pairing might provide an object lesson in good criticism. My class, of course, prefers the story to the essay. The fiction writer in me sees this as a promising sign.Week 3: "Still-Life," by Don Delillo (an excerpt from Falling Man originally published in The New Yorker) I tell students to treat DeLillo the way Hardwick treated Melville. That is, critically. Instead, they fall in love with him. I end up thinking more highly of Falling Man than I did when I first read it, and liked it.Week 4: "Echoes at Ground Zero," by Lawrence Weschler (from Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences and "Against Interpretation," by Susan Sontag (from Against Interpretation)The Weschler reading, which included photographs, leads to a discussion of reading images critically - a skill we all need these days. Then we read the Sontag, which is kind of an argument against everything I've been teaching them up to this point. Is this brilliant, or suicidal?Week 4: "Come September," by Arundhati Roy (from The Impossible Will Take A Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear)Moving away from literary criticism and toward social criticism proves difficult, as many readers, myself included, find this essay frustratingly orthodox in its politics. We end up talking about "preaching to the choir," and the failure of partisan arguments to persuade their opponents. Victory snatched from jaws of defeat.Weeks 5 - 7: The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin.Rereading this clarifies some things for me. Among them, that an essay doesn't always have to be an argument; that it can be an exploration. This will become a theme. (Damn you, Sontag!)Week 8: "What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill," by Sarah Vowell (from Take the Cannoli)This one doesn't get quite the reaction I had hoped for; students find it a little didactic. Maybe I should have chosen "Ixnay on the My Way." Still, the Vowell essay on Cherokee history does offer an example of how exposition can be structured narratively.Week 9-Week 10: "The White Album," by Joan Didion (from The White Album)With its jagged, discontinuous structure, this memoir of the '60s provokes the strongest responses I'll probably get this year, ranging from, "I loved this" to "I hated this" - which is pretty much what I've been hoping for all semester. When I read my students' personal essays, I'll see that "The White Album" has challenged them to become better writers. It never hurts to expose undergraduates to a surgically precise stylist like Didion, either.Week 11: "Dancing in the Dark," by Joan Acocella (from Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints)Yet another of those frequent occasions when the professor learns more from the students than vice versa. The dancers tell me all about Bob Fosse, and evaluate Acocella's claims critically. In the end, most agree that Fosse's choreography is more about power than about sex. And again, exposure to a writer of Acocella's intelligence and lucidity can only help their prose. It's certainly helped mine.Week 12: "Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn," by Jonathan Lethem (from The Disappointment Artist)This should be interesting. We're now in the middle of the research essay unit, but I'd love to see my students push beyond the conventions of the term paper; to combine research, personal reflection, and critical thought as Lethem does in this essay about a subway stop.Week 14: "Last Cigarettes," by Marco Roth.This piece originally appeared in N+1, and has a lot to say about college, and becoming a writer. Like the Lethem essay, it pushes against the rigid boundaries of the "four rhetorical modes." If I've learned anything this semester, it's that good expository writing doesn't always adhere to such neat distinctions. Though at times I've wished I could tell my class, "This is how you write an essay," throwing them into the messy process of discovery may ultimately be a more honest initiation into the pains - and joys - of writing.
Lists
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46 comments:

  5. Marcia Muller writes a series of mystery novels about a private investigator named Sharon McCone. They’re pretty good, too.

  7. “You should read books mentioned in other books.”

    I did that. I’ve started reading classic Russian literature after Hemingway recommended it in his books. Once I got there I never went back to Hemingway, and that I do not regret.

  8. Maybe it should be books to think about rather than books to read.

    Of course you can’t think much about a book if you haven’t read it.

    But I have read many books that I decided weren’t worth thinking about and therefore were not worth reading. The trouble is I didn’t know until after I had read them.

    Lord of the Rings was not worth reading. The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein is worth thinking about.

  9. The only book i have come across where the main character shares my name is Rape, A love story by Joyce Carol Oates. It was actually quite a disconcerting experience,maybe not shared by people with common names who see their name in books all the time.

  13. Diving into a book from the library I came across the previous reader’s return ticket for several books. Feeling the karma I checked out two and that’s how I found Geek Love and The Dinner. Good reads I had not heard of before. You never know how inspiration hits

  15. Good list!!! And also the first list that doesn’t make you feel that if you haven’t read a certain book then you have not read anything. Of course to add to it the books you dhould read that you haven’t heard about before but two of your friends just keep arguing about it. :-D

  16. I do read ALL the time……when we go on a trip I buy paperbacks, I read them and then leave them wherever I am. Love them.

  17. Best List Ever. Thank you.

    (Discovered Scott Turow as I was sitting across from a woman on a train who was reading the last few pp. of Presumed Innocent faster and faster the closer we got to the terminal and then whispered, “Ooh . . . shit!!”)

  18. Definitely read the one where the main character has your own name, in fact I was named after Bronwyn in How Green Was My Valley

  19. Yes! Some of my favorite books are the ones I’ve stumbled upon. I love stopping into a small bookshop and asking for a recommendation. Also, when I go to someone’s house for the first time, I always check out their shelves.

  20. I found one of my favorite books because it had been reserved at the library for someone with the same name. I picked up the four books I reserved and when I got home, I saw this other book, “St. Dale” by Sharyn McCrumb. It had just come out and I’m sure the other “Gigs” was anxious to have it, but I read the jacket and thought, “Well, that sounds right up my alley!” I read it in two days and returned it to the library with a note to the other “Gigs” both apologizing for picking up her book and thanking her for her excellent taste.

  22. Yes, yes. It’s all about discovery. Not only the story within the pages but what might fall out. I wrote a column this week about such discoveries — and found new treasures. I told readers I have a 1936 edition of “The Complete Works of O. Henry” that I bought from a pile of books on a picnic table. I later found a four-leaf clover within the pages. After writing this column, I flipped through the thin, fragile pages again last night. I was surprised to discover a total of 28 clovers, pressed and saved. All had four leaves except a few with two. Amazing, yes?

  23. Pingback: The Del Val #3 | EbooksInfoBlog
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  27. I once bought a leather-bound, gold-embossed Dickens from the late 1800s for $10, just for its look and feel. It was Dombey & Son, which I’d never heard of. A couple of years later, I thought it would be so cool to hold it in my hands and read it. Whoa! Amazing! Dickens! The happiest of accidents!

  29. Speaking of what books we do and do not hear about: thanks for posting VIDA’s new findings about “Dudesville” magazines that mostly hire male reviewers and mostly publish male books.

    Makes me mad.

  31. Just read ! When I was bored as a child, I would read the ingredients on the ketchup bottle! My mum used to tell me, “Don’t Read ! You’ll get Ideas!'” Just read ! :) It is a gift !

  32. Love this list.

    Would you mind if I turned your words into a poster to put up in my school library? This year’s Book Week Theme in Australia is “Connect to Reading” and (most of) your list would be perfect to support that theme in a school with girls from 3 to 17 years of age. What doesn’t suit the girls should speak volumes to the staff.

    Obviously, I’ll cite the source (currently trying to really reinforce the whole “plagarism is not okay” message with best practise examples) but I understand if your answer is no.

    Either way – fantastic list!

  33. Some of my favorite books that I suggest are ones that get discarded from the local library and get put in the book sale. Just because no one has borrowed them doesn’t mean they aren’t good books, or if they’re falling apart they’ve been read many times and show promise of being loved.

  34. I read Watership Downs because Stephen King mention it in The Stand. Still one of my favs!! (Both actually are).

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  38. The Gutenberg project has just about everything turned into digital. Ot however one would phrase that process. I think that is where I got that Chretian deTroyes Arthurian thing.

  39. Pingback: Review: I Feel Bad About My Neck – Nora Ephron | the found girl
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Lists Notable Articles

Literary Fiction is a Genre: A List

Lists Notable Articles
October 22, 2012 | 42 6 min read
A few weeks ago, whenever I told anyone I was reading Molly Ringwald's novel-in-stories When it Happens to You, they either said, "Wow, cool!" or, "Ugh. Why?" To the latter, I replied, "Why not?" Ringwald has always presented herself as well-spoken and well-read, and being an actress isn't necessarily a detriment to writing: after all, actors, like fiction writers, must inhabit characters and seek out a scene's power. (And, dude, if you were in Pretty in Pink, you're basically qualified to win a Nobel.) I devoured When it Happens to You in a day or two. It was an engaging and pleasing read, with lines like, "Greta had always been most beautiful to him when emerging from water. Swimming pools, oceans, bath tubs." Ringwald treats her characters with compassion, and I enjoyed seeing how each story would connect to the next. Overall, though, I was underwhelmed, perhaps because the territory mined is so familiar: there's an affair, there are blah sentences like, "The color had drained from her face." There's even a description of a woman who, after almost being run over, raises "a furious fist" at the driver, like some irate extra in an action flick's chase sequence. I longed for a more daring and complicated book; Ringwald has one in her future, I know it, but this isn't it. Even so, as I said, I devoured the novel, and, in general, enjoyed it. Its predictable content and structure were comforting, like a catchy pop song or a romantic comedy. You know, as Adorno might say, its familiarity helped me ward off death. Or something. In a recent profile of Justin Cronin in the New York Times Magazine, Colson Whitehead is quoted as saying he'd "rather shoot [him]self in the face" than have another discussion about literature genres. I don't blame him. When people ask me what kind of fiction I write, I usually say, "It's about people," and leave it at that. But as I read Ringwald's book, I found myself pondering literary fiction: as a genre, as a taxonomical category. When It Happens to You, you see, is a sterling example of literary fiction, if we were to consider literary fiction as a straightforward genre like romance or science fiction, with certain expected tropes and motifs. What, you ask, are some attributes of this genre? Read on, my friend, read on. 1. The Long Title When it Happens to You is not only a long title, it's also in the second person, as are many titles in the literary fiction category. I think we should blame Dave Eggers for starting this trend with his novel You Shall Know Our Velocity. Or maybe Miranda July's story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, really got things going. I, too, am guilty of joining the bandwagon with my hard-to-say novella title, If You're Not Yet Like Me. Uwem Akpan demanded us to Say You're One Of Them, and Elliott Holt will comply with her forthcoming  You Are One Of Them.  Ramona Ausubel's debut,  No One Is Here Except All of Us, switched things up with the first-person plural; perhaps she was inspired by fellow UC Irvine alumnus Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End. If Ringwald hadn't chosen the long second-person title, she might have picked one with a full name, a la, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, or Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, or The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey, or Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures by Emma Straub. Sheesh. I should call my next book And So Olivo D'Havellind and You Will Move Away From this Place I Call Home. It's sure to win the Pulitzer. 2. Adultery A decade later, Sean Carman's "Lessons Learned from My Study of Literature" still makes me laugh. But the third lesson, "The thing about adultery is it’s the highest expression of pure human freedom," has its inverse as well: that adultery in literary fiction (and in real life, too, I presume) also leads to stress, despair, and a complicated regret. Let's just go ahead and credit Tolstoy's Anna Karenina for making extra-marital affairs in fiction so popular. Anton Chekhov also gets points for his enormously influential story, "The Lady with The Lap Dog." And all contemporary tales of domestic unrest must also pay dues to Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, with its depiction of The Wheelers, an unhappy, unfaithful couple living in the suburbs. If you aren't sure what kind of literary novel to write, I suggest starting with an English professor who has an affair with his (her?!) student while the wife (husband?! life partner?!) sculpts and flails at home. Abortion plot-line optional. 3. Scene, Exposition, Scene, Flashback, Scene, Cue Epiphany The reader of literary genre fiction should feel the structure in her body, particularly with short stories. It's a recognizable rhythm, it's a shimmering in one's veins as one moves from opening scene to well-placed background information to the next, more tense scene to that special, oh-so-revealing flashback about the time our protagonist ran over his rubber horse, or the time he knew he was in love with a real horse, or the time he -- oh you see what I mean. In the genre of literary fiction, this structure must lead to a moment of revelation, suggested but never explained. The image of our protagonist in a Safeway parking lot, pushing his cart as if he were a cowboy riding a horse, the wind roughing up his hair, the distant neighs of horns in the far off distance. (Can you feel it? I can.) Let's go ahead and give James Joyce his rightful due for such faintly falling, falling faintly moments of reverie and character change in literary fiction. (Damn that horse! Now I'm sobbing!) 4. A Dog barks, someone eats a watermelon, a car drives away. In his terrific and funny Slate essay, Rosecrans Baldwin unveils how many authors write barking dogs into the backgrounds of their novels. Though he points out barking dogs in genre novels as well, I'd argue that you find them in literary fiction precisely because they show time passing. As Baldwin says, "Most authors...employ the trope as a narrative rest stop, an innocuous way to fill space and time." In literary fiction, there is so little event, authors need that dang dog; without it, there's only the mind, there's only emotion, and the reader is floating in a vacuum. As James Wood has said of the aforementioned  "The Lady With the Lap Dog," Chekhov needs Gurov to eat a watermelon for half an hour in front of his new mistress in order to show time passing. Otherwise, nada is happening! For good measure, I suggest adding to your scene a car driving away. Or even better, the distant rumble of a motorcycle. Ooh. Yes. 5. The plate drops! Years ago, Maud Newton lodged the phrase "tea towel fiction" in my brain, and it's stuck with me. Newton quotes a judge for the Orange Prize, Katharine Viner, who said of the many submissions she read: They are books with 500 pages discussing a subtle but allegedly profound shift within a relationship. They are books where intricate descriptions of a man taking a glass out of the dishwasher, taking a tea-towel off a rail, opening out the tea-towel, then delicately drying the glass with the tea-towel, before pouring a drink into the glass, signify that he has just been through a divorce. This is a "nothing happens" book, the former it girl of literary genre fiction. In my classes, I like to describe these stories as: "A man and a woman buy dishes at the store. When they get home, she goes to lie down, barely talking, something unsettling her. A dog barks in the distance. The man starts to put the plates away, and one breaks. The end." What I love about this kind of narrative is that it's often deliciously readable. How is that possible? Of course, this kind of narrative is a bit out of vogue -- there's a new it girl on the scene. It's the same man and woman, but now time travel or zombies or tiny people who live in walnuts are involved. Raymond Carver is to blame for the popularity of the first kind of narrative, with his profound stories of small actions, uninterested as they are in directly exploring the inner lives of characters. That genius George Saunders is to blame for the latter: damn him and his faxing cave man! I have certainly missed other tropes of this rich and admired genre. Feel free to add more in the comments -- I need some tips for my next story. (I'm thinking of making it about a woman named Edan Lepucki. Woh...woh...mind melt!)
Lists Notable Articles
| 42 6 min read
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Lists

Before They Were Notable: 2014

Lists
December 2, 2014 | 2 min read
This year’s New York Times Notable Books of the Year list is out. At 100 titles, the list is more of a catalog of the noteworthy than a distinction. Sticking with the fiction exclusively, it appears that we touched upon a few of these books and authors as well: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Year In Reading: Anthony Doerr) The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel (Character Assassin: An Interview with Hilary Mantel) Bark: Stories by Lorrie Moore (Is She Writing About Me?: A Profile of Lorrie Moore) The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt (Guerilla Grandma: On Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World) The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (In the Edges of the Maps: David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, ‘The Blank Screen Is the Enemy': The Millions Interviews David Mitchell, Exclusive: David Mitchell’s Twitter Story “The Right Sort” Collected) The Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henríquez (Hug Your Darlings, Give the Moon the Finger: Writers On Delight) Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (Aloof, Quiet, and Dissonant: On Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, The Elusive Qualities of Dreams: On Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Strange Library’) Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (Are You My Mother? On Maternal Abandonment in Literature) A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Scraps of Prayers: On Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing) The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson (In a Toxic Dreamscape: On Denis Johnson’s The Laughing Monsters) Let Me Be Frank with You by Richard Ford (Tossed on Life’s Tide: Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank with You) Lila by Marilynne Robinson (Marilynne Robinson’s Singular Vision) The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami (Ship of Fools: On Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Art After Tragedy: The Narrow Road to the Deep North) Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya (More Alive and Much Stranger: On Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s Panic in a Suitcase) 10:04 by Ben Lerner (Only Disconnect: Ben Lerner’s 10:04) We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas (This Could Be Your Story: On Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves)
Lists
| 2 min read
Best of the Millennium Notable Articles

Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers

Best of the Millennium Notable Articles
September 25, 2009 | 85 3 min read
One thing I know after working on The Millions for all these years is that the site has some incredibly knowledgeable and avid readers, the sort of book people I loved working with back in my bookstore days and who are the lifeblood of literary culture. And so, even as we were polling our distinguished panel of writers, editors, and critics, we wondered, what do Millions readers think? We polled The Millions Facebook group to find out. The list our readers came up with was very interesting, and deviated in noticeable ways from that of the Pros. Before I get into the details. Have a look at the two lists below (Links in our panel list go to the writeups we published throughout the week.  Links in our reader list go to Amazon): Panel Readers 1 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 1 The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz 2 The Known World by Edward P. Jones 2 2666 by Roberto Bolaño 3 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 3 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 4 2666 by Roberto Bolaño 4 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 5 Pastoralia by George Saunders 5 The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6 The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6 Atonement by Ian McEwan 7 Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald 7 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon 8 Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson 8 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 9 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro 9 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 10 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 10 White Teeth by Zadie Smith 11 The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz 11 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami 12 Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg 12 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 13 Mortals by Norman Rush 13 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 14 Atonement by Ian McEwan 14 Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald 15 Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis 15 Empire Falls by Richard Russo 16 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 16 Runaway by Alice Munro 17 The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem 17 The Master by Colm Tóibín 18 Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link 18 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 19 American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman 19 Unaccustomed Earth ** by Jhumpa Lahiri 20 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 20 Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke      While everyone seems to agree that The Corrections is a great book (it was the panel winner by a landslide), Millions readers put seven books ahead of it, and anointed Oscar Wao the top book of the decade.  Our readers have always loved Oscar, so that wasn't a huge surprise, but it was also interesting to see that the readers had a high opinion of  Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, rectifying probably the biggest snub on our panel list, (along with White Teeth).  But then, the readers snubbed The Known World, so who knows. With a massive field of potential books, snubs were inevitable. Left off both lists were both of Jonathan Safran Foer's novels, David Foster Wallace's Oblivion (his only fiction of the decade), and Denis Johnson's much praised Tree of Smoke. Voters were also dying to include Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. It was ineligible because it was published in Spanish in 1998, but it makes one wonder, what books will seem like shoo-ins for this type of exercise 10 or 11 years from now but are completely under the radar (or still untranslated) today? Moving back to the books that did make the list, I also loved that the readers included Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a book that I've been hearing about from our readers for years, and Half of a Yellow Sun, a book that's always had a lot of support in the online literary community.  Also intriguing is the appearance of mega-best seller The Kite Runner. Finally, if we try to look for a consensus among the two lists, several titles appear on both, but the two with the most support across the entire spectrum of respondents are 2666 and Cloud Atlas, which, if you had to pick just two books to define the literary decade now coming to an end, would make for very interesting selections indeed. We'll be publishing follow-up pieces in our Millennium series over the coming weeks, so look for those. I also wanted to thank our panel and Millions readers for taking the time to participate in the series. If you enjoyed the series and value the coverage that The Millions provides, please consider supporting the site.
Best of the Millennium Notable Articles
| 85 3 min read
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Lists

Book List: Food glorious food

Lists
July 29, 2005 | 2 min read
The Guardian reprints a list of the top ten cook books - in order, no less - from Waitrose Food Illustrated. The list includes some classics, as well as some tasty-looking obscurities. These would look so nice on that shelf in my kitchen:Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham ("its diminutive size belies its incredible value")Delia's Complete Cookery Course by Delia Smith (beloved in Britain)Real Fast Food by Nigel Slater (the ultimate book for quick cooking)The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (my favorite book title, author name and book cover art on this list)A New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden (in 1968, this book helped bring Middle Eastern food into the mainstream)Leith's Techniques Bible by Susan Spaull and Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne (a cooking textbook of sorts)Elizabeth David Classics by Elizabeth David (has been called "the best food writer of her time" by The Times Literary Supplement)Rick Stein's Seafood School Cookbook by Rick Stein (proprietor of the Seafood Restaurant and the Padstow Seafood School, also a TV chef in England)Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook by Alice Waters (an American classic)The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander (of Australia)
Lists
| 2 min read