Favorite Books

I wanted to compile a list of books I really like, both for my own reference and if anyone wants a recommendation and happens to care about my opinion. Especially if you already like some of the books on the list, you'll proabably be partial to the others. Works in the public domain (chiefly stuff before 1929) are provided with links for downloading from Project Gutenberg, a web site that collects public domain work for download and whom I've done some volunteer work proofreading for at the Distributed Proofreaders site. This is a work in progress; I'll probably be adding more books and more commentary on each of the books later, as well as links to the Amazon.com pages of the non-public domain work, so that I can get that 15% commission. Some of these books are very famous, some are not. I simply picked my favorites. Enjoy.

Mark Twain
How to Tell a Story and Other Writings
Sketches, New and Old
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck Finn gets taken for granted sometimes, and we tend to get assigned it in Middle School. As an adult you're much more likely to realize that it really is as brilliant as everyone has always said it is. The thing to remember is that it's as much about how it's written as what it's written about. Personally, I recommend reading the essay "How to Tell a Story," then reading "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calavarus County" from Sketches, and then reading Huck, as I think they inform each other.

William Godwin
The Adventures of Caleb Williams or Things as They Are
Brilliant 18th century proto-noir novel by the father of Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame). Longtime considered an anarchist classic, it had new attention brought to it following the work of lit critic Michel Foucault because of how it plays into the modern ideas of paranoia and being watched.

Harold Frederic
The Damnation of Theron Ware

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes from the Underground (aka Notes from Underground)

Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis
The Trial

Alfred Bester
The Stars My Destination

Philip K. Dick
Valis

James Joyce
"The Dead"
from Dubliners

Jorge Luis Borges
Everything he has every written, but especially,
The Garden of the Forking Paths (much of which is also published in Ficciones)
The Aleph

Gabrial Garcia Marquez
100 Years of Solitude
My friend Jason made the calim that this is the single greatest novel of the 20th century. I tried, but could not think of another single novel that could go in the ring with it.
Love in the Time of Cholera

Philip Roth
Probably the best American writer of the second half of the 20th century. His ouvre as a whole I think can go up against Garcia Marquez as a whole.
Portnoy's Complaint
The Counterlife
Sabbath's Theatre
Operation Shylock

Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow
Yes, Gravity's Rainbow.

Don Delillo
White Noise

Neil Gaimen
Mr. Punch
Fables and Recollections
American Gods

Dan Clowes
David Boring

Chris Ware
Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth

Alan Moore
From Hell (with Eddie Campbell)

Will Self
Tough, Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys

Steve Erickson
The Sea Came in at Midnight
Rubicon Beach

Umberto Eco
Foucault's Pendulum
Everything The Divinci Code wants to be and much, much more.

David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Paul Auster
If you haven't read Paul Auster, the man is like unto a God. And he lives in my borough.
The Book of Illusions
Leviathan

Jose Saramago
Blindness

Brett Easton Ellis
American Psycho
Fuck you.

Haruki Murakami
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Evan Dorkin
Circling the Drain
Just because.

Gore Vidal
Live from Golgotha

Bruce Sterling
Holy Fire

James Baldwin
Giovanni's Room

More as I think of them.

Posted by Eric Rosenfield at April 16, 2004 11:06 PM |