Saturday, January 15, 2011

These Are A Few...


Of My Favorite Books

I didn't go to college and am somewhat of an autodidact, so my reading has not been systematic, but driven by whatever I was interested in at the time. Here are some books, fiction and non-fiction, in no particular order, that I've really enjoyed over the years and heartily recommend. And, I'm sure I've left a few out...

From John Barth:
The Floating Opera
The End Of The Road
The Sot-Weed Factor*
*especially this one

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

East Of Eden by John Steinbeck

A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey

I like everything I've read from Philip Roth, especially:
Sabbath's Theatre
American Pastoral
The Human Stain

Any short story collections by:
Franz Kafka
Paul Bowles
Alice Munro

The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Sophie's Choice by William Styron

From Scott Spencer
Endless Love
Waking The Dead

Damage by Josephine Hart

Any Title by psychotherapist Alexander Lowen

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

Any title by J.Krishnamurti

The first handful of Carlos Castaneda's "Don Juan" books.

And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran

Independent People by Halldor Laxness

The Guru Papers~Masks Of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad

Shogun by James Clavell

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert Jay Lifton

Waldon by Henry David Thoreau

Inner Tennis by Timothy Gallway

Chronicles by Bob Dylan

King Soloman's Ring by Konrad Lorenz

The Fabric Of The Cosmos by Brian Greene

Crow With No Mouth by Ikkyu

Any Haiku collection by Basho

Revolution In The Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties by Ian MacDonald

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Focusing by Eugene Gendlin

The Tao Te Tching by Lao Tsu (various translations)

Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences by Richard Pryor

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Games People Play by Eric Berne

From Nick Hornby
High Fidelity
About A Boy

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

1984 by George Orwell

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Bliss by Peter Carey

Money by Martin Amis

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

3 comments:

  1. Gene, if you liked "Dunces" you are going to love "The Neon Bible," Toole's only other book. He wrote it when he was 16. Wicked good.

    And I went through a Kazantzikas stage when I was in Greece. Just loved his writing.

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  2. I had no idea Toole wrote anything but Dunces! I'll have to order it. Thanks!!!

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  3. I searched for it after reading Dunces. I NEEDED more.

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