Read this post to see what this is all about. For more favorites, see here.
Thomas Perry, author of Runner
- I'll take care of the easiest first: Barack Obama - Dreams from My Father. Everybody's heard of the author. Someone mentioned recently that he'll be the first President since Woodrow Wilson who could have made a living as a writer.
- Don DeLillo - Underworld. The novel was published in 1997. There's a kind of dreamy, slow apocalypse going on in DeLillo's work that gives the reader time to notice how brilliantly written the books are.
- Joseph Mitchell - Up in the Old Hotel. This is actually a re-issued collection of four books written between 1943 and 1965: McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret. Mitchell was one of the best writers for The New Yorker ever.
Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Murder Notebook
- Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- John Fowles - The French Lieutenant's Woman. I read this 20 years ago and loved it but it's even better the 2nd time around. I'd say one of the great novels and a must for writers.
- Phillip Roth - Everyman. Truly suicide material, but brilliant.
Hallie Ephron, author of Never Tell a Lie and critic (Boston Globe)
- Carolyn Wall - Sweeping Up Glass. A young widow is peacefully raising her grandson and taking care of her crazy mother on the side of a mountain in 1938 Kentucky when trespassers start shooting the local wolves and taking their as hunting trophies. This extraordinary debut novel, both a "what happened" and a "whodunit," explores survival and the guilt that can accompany it. The writing is filled with arresting images, bitter humor, and characters with palpable physical presence. The fresh voice of that clear-eyed narrator reminded me of Scout in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Barbara Corrado Pope - Cezanne's Quarry. The author takes a whiff of historical evidence that artist Paul Cézanne had a love affair with a mysterious woman when he was painting the mountains and quarries of Aix-en-Provence, France, in 1885 and spins it into an elegant murder mystery.
- Jennifer McMahon - Island of Lost Girls. Rhonda Farr watches from her car by the gas pumps while a gold Volkswagen Beetle pulls up, and what is surely a tall man in a bunny suit hops out and helps little Ernestine Forcucci (her mother is in the store buying a lottery ticket) out of the backseat of her mother's car and abducts her. Like The Lovely Bones, despite grim and nearly unbearable subject matter, this book is un-put-downable from page 1.
Sean Doolittle, author of Safer
- Richard Russo - Empire Falls
- Dennis Lehane - The Given Day
- Owen King - We're All In This Together: A Novella and Stories
Daniel Conway, agent at Writers House
- Megan Abbott - Queenpin
- Sean Chercover - Trigger City
- Charlie Houston - The Shotgun Rule
Why don't you stop with all this listing caca! You youngsters think you're so high and mighty with your lists and your blogs and your microwave meals.
What about Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey?
You don't see their names here on your little list with all your young writer friends. Bah!
These blogs make me so angry!
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