>. . . you know. I just saw a list (here, but I don’t know how long the link will work) that purportedly is 10 Books to Read Before You Die. It includes The Bible, Gone With the Wind, Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter Series, The Stand (Stephen King), both The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, To Kill a Mockingbird, Atlas Shrugged and The Catcher in the Rye. It turns out, though, that the list is from a poll that asked people to name their favorite books. That’s something else, no?
So, forget this ridiculous list. I’m working on my own, and I welcome comments naming your favorite books.
Here are fifteen of my favorites (although, in truth, the titles in many cases are representative of the whole body of work–Greene, Hesse, Mishima, etc.):
Affliction, Russell Banks
The Quiet American, Graham Greene
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse
Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones
Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Temple of Dawn, Yukio Mishima
A Mercy, Toni Morrison
Going After Cacciato, Tim O’Brien
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley
Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
The Spectator Bird, Wallace Stegner