I don't actually believe that there are 10 books everyone should read. I know almost nothing about how my life will go except for this: when I die, I will still not have read everything I want to have read.
For some reason, I've always found this thought very comforting.
If, after that preface, you are curious about books that shaped my opinions on things, or for some reason have yet to discover Goodreads or that handly little web applet what should I read next, or you just have time to kill, here are some things that I have enjoyed reading a lot.
"Black Box," by Jennifer Egan. I've violated my own rules because the first thing on this list isn't even a book, it's not even a short story. It's a narrative series of Tweets, published in the "New Yorker." And if that apparent contradiction hasn't already blown your mind or totally turned you off, let me add one thing. A perfect sentence isn't an inspiration, it's an animal wrestled into somewhat grudging submission by an unflagging author. By which I mean: I really love Egan's books, but it wasn't until I read "Black Box" that I really began to glimpse how deep her talent runs. I don't think there are too many writers around who could have pulled this off.
"An American Dream," by Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer is equally famous for his writing and other things, like bickering with Gore Vidal, giving the metaphorical finger to his bad reviewers, and stabbing his second wife with a penknife in a fit of rage. Now the man is dead, and all we have left is his fiction and a handful of cynical aphorisms. On to the book: it opens with a drunken mental rampage during which a man murders his wife based on what he perceives to be the urgings of the moon. If that hasn't got you running to the bookstore, let me add: it's not the material that makes me love this book, it's how Mailer transmits an almost viral rage through the medium of the written word. His sentences are not prose, they are vectors.
"Up in Michigan," by Ernest Hemingway. To continue my grand meander through the great misogynists of literary history, here's Hemingway. Okay, so I like most of his writing, but I actually hunted down "Up in Michigan" after reading a summary of it in which a professor of feminist studies said she uses this story to introduce her students to the concept of "consent." Oh dear. I ended up reading it in a random Barnes & Noble in suburban Illinois, hunched on the floor, waiting for a train. The synopsis on Wikipedia says only "A young woman's romantic notions of life are crushed over the course of a night." The story is very brief and very tragic, and is one of those rare short stories to which I think almost anyone can relate: the unbearable realization that your faith in another person has been misplaced, perhaps entirely invented.
"Birdsong," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Hidden behind a paywall over at the "New Yorker." On the surface it's the story of a young professional woman who appears to be looking for love in all the wrong places. Interestingly, Adichie said that part of her goal - she is Nigerian - was to write a story in which the city of Lagos features as a character. And it does, brilliantly - on the surface, she shows us Lagos as a humid and rapidly expanding urban center. But she also captures the delicate balance of power between a man and a woman in a city and country where men still hold all the cards. Lagos is unique, but it could also be New Delhi, it could also be New York. We can be held back by others but also by our own contradictory aspirations.
"A Sport and a Pastime," by James Salter. Google Books says: "Touring Paris and provincial France in a handsome borrowed car, Philip Dean, Yale dropout, has an affair with a young French woman named Anne-Marie. Their liaison is imagined with candour and sensitivity by an unnamed narrator, whose fantasies become compellingly and hauntingly real." My favorite part of this story is how it unfolds through the eyes of a random third party narrator, and how Salter captures our tendency to torment ourselves with misguided nostalgia and a love of things that maybe never were.
"What I Loved," by Siri Hustvedt. This is a book about art but also about how life mimics art. In places I couldn't put it down, in places I struggled to keep going. At one point, Hustvedt makes the observation that a woman looking at a man's painting of a woman is never just an observer; she sees herself both as the artist and as the subject being looked at through the artist's eyes. I found this observation equally applicable to the world of fiction, where women feature so prominently as objects, as the other, and the weird dual experience of reading such fiction while trying to hold in your mind the fact that you're not the other.
"In the Presence of Absence," by Mahmoud Darwish, trans. by Sinan Antoon. I read "Absence" in a series of airports, which unreal setting may have been the perfect place for this novel-poem-thing that seeks to answer the question, "What does it mean for your life to flash before your eyes?" As he dies of cancer, Darwish clings to writing as the thing that will allow him, for at least a little while longer, to continue to live. But even without the tragic context, it's utterly unlike anything else I've ever read. Words in their purest form.
"Straight Man," by Richard Russo. Of all the books on this list, this is the probably the most conventional narrative. A middle-aged professor at a random liberal arts college struggles with life and marriage. "Straight Man" is wickedly self-effacing and clever, and showcases Russo's trademark humor and warmth, as well as his talent for creating serious fiction using genuinely likable characters.
"The Left Hand of Darkness," by Ursula LeGuin. This is one of those science fiction gems that gets buried and/or overlooked because of its "genre fiction" title, which is a shame, because I've always felt that some of the grandest "What If's" are best explored in the context of the impossible. At its best, science fiction is philosophy, and that's what LeGuin manages to achieve in this story about a world in which gender does not exist. It's apt, deft, sensitive, and an award winner.
Here's an unpleasant surprise: there are only 9 things on this list. I simply cannot think of another book that I would recommend that people haven't already heard of a million times. Honorable mentions might go to "Lolita" and "Madame Bovary," the first for its brilliant use of an unreliable narrator and the second for its sensitive exploration of the female psyche, another to "The Golden Notebook" just because Doris Lessing deserves some credit for finishing that thing, another to "My Name is Red" for its complex structures and stories within stories.
BIG PS: I omitted drama and poetry, because they're totally different and would require their own lists.
For some reason, I've always found this thought very comforting.
If, after that preface, you are curious about books that shaped my opinions on things, or for some reason have yet to discover Goodreads or that handly little web applet what should I read next, or you just have time to kill, here are some things that I have enjoyed reading a lot.
"Black Box," by Jennifer Egan. I've violated my own rules because the first thing on this list isn't even a book, it's not even a short story. It's a narrative series of Tweets, published in the "New Yorker." And if that apparent contradiction hasn't already blown your mind or totally turned you off, let me add one thing. A perfect sentence isn't an inspiration, it's an animal wrestled into somewhat grudging submission by an unflagging author. By which I mean: I really love Egan's books, but it wasn't until I read "Black Box" that I really began to glimpse how deep her talent runs. I don't think there are too many writers around who could have pulled this off.
"An American Dream," by Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer is equally famous for his writing and other things, like bickering with Gore Vidal, giving the metaphorical finger to his bad reviewers, and stabbing his second wife with a penknife in a fit of rage. Now the man is dead, and all we have left is his fiction and a handful of cynical aphorisms. On to the book: it opens with a drunken mental rampage during which a man murders his wife based on what he perceives to be the urgings of the moon. If that hasn't got you running to the bookstore, let me add: it's not the material that makes me love this book, it's how Mailer transmits an almost viral rage through the medium of the written word. His sentences are not prose, they are vectors.
"Up in Michigan," by Ernest Hemingway. To continue my grand meander through the great misogynists of literary history, here's Hemingway. Okay, so I like most of his writing, but I actually hunted down "Up in Michigan" after reading a summary of it in which a professor of feminist studies said she uses this story to introduce her students to the concept of "consent." Oh dear. I ended up reading it in a random Barnes & Noble in suburban Illinois, hunched on the floor, waiting for a train. The synopsis on Wikipedia says only "A young woman's romantic notions of life are crushed over the course of a night." The story is very brief and very tragic, and is one of those rare short stories to which I think almost anyone can relate: the unbearable realization that your faith in another person has been misplaced, perhaps entirely invented.
"Birdsong," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Hidden behind a paywall over at the "New Yorker." On the surface it's the story of a young professional woman who appears to be looking for love in all the wrong places. Interestingly, Adichie said that part of her goal - she is Nigerian - was to write a story in which the city of Lagos features as a character. And it does, brilliantly - on the surface, she shows us Lagos as a humid and rapidly expanding urban center. But she also captures the delicate balance of power between a man and a woman in a city and country where men still hold all the cards. Lagos is unique, but it could also be New Delhi, it could also be New York. We can be held back by others but also by our own contradictory aspirations.
"A Sport and a Pastime," by James Salter. Google Books says: "Touring Paris and provincial France in a handsome borrowed car, Philip Dean, Yale dropout, has an affair with a young French woman named Anne-Marie. Their liaison is imagined with candour and sensitivity by an unnamed narrator, whose fantasies become compellingly and hauntingly real." My favorite part of this story is how it unfolds through the eyes of a random third party narrator, and how Salter captures our tendency to torment ourselves with misguided nostalgia and a love of things that maybe never were.
"What I Loved," by Siri Hustvedt. This is a book about art but also about how life mimics art. In places I couldn't put it down, in places I struggled to keep going. At one point, Hustvedt makes the observation that a woman looking at a man's painting of a woman is never just an observer; she sees herself both as the artist and as the subject being looked at through the artist's eyes. I found this observation equally applicable to the world of fiction, where women feature so prominently as objects, as the other, and the weird dual experience of reading such fiction while trying to hold in your mind the fact that you're not the other.
"In the Presence of Absence," by Mahmoud Darwish, trans. by Sinan Antoon. I read "Absence" in a series of airports, which unreal setting may have been the perfect place for this novel-poem-thing that seeks to answer the question, "What does it mean for your life to flash before your eyes?" As he dies of cancer, Darwish clings to writing as the thing that will allow him, for at least a little while longer, to continue to live. But even without the tragic context, it's utterly unlike anything else I've ever read. Words in their purest form.
"Straight Man," by Richard Russo. Of all the books on this list, this is the probably the most conventional narrative. A middle-aged professor at a random liberal arts college struggles with life and marriage. "Straight Man" is wickedly self-effacing and clever, and showcases Russo's trademark humor and warmth, as well as his talent for creating serious fiction using genuinely likable characters.
"The Left Hand of Darkness," by Ursula LeGuin. This is one of those science fiction gems that gets buried and/or overlooked because of its "genre fiction" title, which is a shame, because I've always felt that some of the grandest "What If's" are best explored in the context of the impossible. At its best, science fiction is philosophy, and that's what LeGuin manages to achieve in this story about a world in which gender does not exist. It's apt, deft, sensitive, and an award winner.
Here's an unpleasant surprise: there are only 9 things on this list. I simply cannot think of another book that I would recommend that people haven't already heard of a million times. Honorable mentions might go to "Lolita" and "Madame Bovary," the first for its brilliant use of an unreliable narrator and the second for its sensitive exploration of the female psyche, another to "The Golden Notebook" just because Doris Lessing deserves some credit for finishing that thing, another to "My Name is Red" for its complex structures and stories within stories.
BIG PS: I omitted drama and poetry, because they're totally different and would require their own lists.
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