I'm attempting to make a list of my favorite books because I've started to forget a lot of what I've read. Plus, I think it would be nice to revisit the list every few years - to add or remove a few and to reread some (honestly, I read some of these books so long ago that I can barely remember why they're on the list, other than a general memory of awe); though right now rereading seems ambitious. I ended up going with alphabetical order because otherwise I kept adding the same books over and over.
1. Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
(NONFICTION)2. Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin: A Novel
3. Margaret Atwood - Moral Disorder and Other Stories
(SHORT STORIES)4. Frederick Barthelme - The Law of Averages: New and Selected Stories
(SHORT STORIES)5. Rick Bass - In the Loyal Mountains
(SHORT STORIES)6. Rick Bass - Where the Sea Used to Be
**Anne Beattie - What Was Mine (SHORT STORIES)
7. William Boyd - Any Human Heart
8. Charles Bukowski - post office: A Novel
9. Charles Bukowski - Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader
(SHORT STORIES & POEMS)10. Raymond Carver - Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories
(SHORT STORIES)11. Willa Cather - Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather Scholarly Edition)
12. Anton Chekhov - Stories of Anton Chekhov
(SHORT STORIES)13. Kate Chopin - The Awakening
14. Charles Dickens - Classic Starts: Great Expectations (Classic Starts Series)
15. Feodor Dostoevsky - Notes from the Underground
16. Theodore Dreiser - Sister Carrie: a Novel
17. Stuart Dybek - The Coast of Chicago: Stories
(SHORT STORIES)18. Deborah Eisenberg - The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg
(SHORT STORIES)***Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad
19. Nell Freudenberger - Lucky Girls: Stories (P.S.)
(SHORT STORIES)20. Mary Gaitskill - Veronica
21. Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)
22. John Irving - The World According to Garp (Modern Library)
23. Ha Jin - A Free Life (Vintage International)
24. James Jones - From Here to Eternity
25. Ghassan Kanafani - Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories
(SHORT STORIES) (discussed in this post)26. Jack Kerouac - On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
27. Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.)
28. John Krakauer - Into the Wild
29. Jhumpa Lahiri - Unaccustomed Earth
(SHORT STORIES) (discussed in this post)30. Yann Martel - Life of Pi
31. Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage (Modern Library Classics)
32. Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
***Sue Miller - The Senator's Wife
33. Lorrie Moore - Anagrams
(SHORT STORIES)34. Lorrie Moore - Self-Help
(SHORT STORIES)35. Daniyal Mueenuddin - In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
(SHORT STORIES) (discussed in this post)36. Alice Munro - Runaway
(SHORT STORIES) (discussed in this post)37. Alice Munro - Lives of Girls and Women: A Novel
38. Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart
39. Haruki Murakami - The Elephant Vanishes: Stories
and After the Quake: Stories
(SHORT STORIES) (discussed in this post)40. V.S. Naipaul - A Bend in the River
41. V.S. Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas
42. Pablo Neruda - Memoirs
(SORT OF NONFICTION)43. Thisbe Nissen - Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night: Stories
(SHORT STORIES)44. John O'Hara - A Rage to Live (Modern Library Classics)
45. Michael Pollan - The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
(NONFICTION) (discussed in this post)46. Philip Roth - American Pastoral
47. Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy: A Novel (Modern Classics)
48. Jane Smiley - Ordinary Love and Good Will
(SHORT STORIES) (discussed in this post)49. John Steinbeck - East of Eden
50. Anne Tyler - The Accidental Tourist: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
51. Kate Walbert - A Short History of Women: A Novel
52. Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway N/E (Owc)
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I made the list without a preconceived number of books, hence how I ended up at 52 (which makes me want to either add three or cut out two, but I won't). I'm surprised by how many short stories I love (does this mean I have a short attention span?) and how few nonfiction books. So it goes. What about everyone else? What are your favorite books?
The Known World by Edward P Jones. Definitely in my top 10 best!
ReplyDeleteThat's been on my "must read" list forever, but I still haven't read it, I'll have to check it out!
ReplyDeleteForgetting what I read is the reason I now use goodreads.com. It happened several times where I started a book and it turned out I had already read it before... I'm definitely going to add some of these to my to-read list.
ReplyDeleteOkay- now I have a whole lot of books I can look for if I run out of reading stuff :o) There were times I tried to keep track on the good books I read- but after a while I always gave up... there are just too many. I used to read tons of short stories when I studied (on my way to college and back everyday- in the train).
ReplyDeleteI might try to get my hands on this Ghassan Kanafani-book...
Have you read Feast of Love, by Charles Baxter? I loved it. (As an aside, he's from Ann Arbor, which might be fun for you.) His other books are great, too, including his short stories. I also really liked The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers. It's odd, for sure. But there's a lot of depth to it -- definitely an interseting read.
ReplyDeleteElise - I'll have to try goodreads again, I tried using it through their facebook interface last year but they kept changing the interface which made it tricky for me.
ReplyDeleteRahel - Kanafani's writing is excellent very sparse and dark, but well done. I warn you though, he is very anti-Israel and some of the stories seem a little unrealistic, like the last one in the collection, i just don't think any decent people would really act like that. if you do read it (and I can send you my copy if you want), let me know what you think.
Deb - I did read Feast of Love and I definitely liked it, but i didn't love it as much as most people. would love to talk about it sometime. I will definitely check out the echo maker!