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
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.
ReplyDeleteAnd I went through a Kazantzikas stage when I was in Greece. Just loved his writing.
I had no idea Toole wrote anything but Dunces! I'll have to order it. Thanks!!!
ReplyDeleteI searched for it after reading Dunces. I NEEDED more.
ReplyDelete