Happy September! I don’t know if it’s like this for everyone, but for me, this time of year always feels like the exciting start of something new: that anticipatory back-to-school feeling has never gone away, no matter how many years it’s been since I’ve actually had to go to school.
Back when I was a kid, one of my absolute favorite things in the world was when my dad took me to Staples to shop for school supplies. Usually, I was the only sibling that went. Everyone else was happy enough to let the adults do the shopping, while they continued on with summer activities to the very last moment. Me, though—I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the pristine pages of a new notebook, hear the satisfying opening-and-shutting click of a new three-ring binder, pick the perfect planner for the next stage of my academic life. I could spend hours wandering those aisles.
To this day, September feels like much more of a fresh start, a time of endless possibility, a moment to kickstart all of my projects and plans than January ever has, New Year’s resolutions be damned. Which is why this year, I’ve decided to bring you all along, with the most New School Year Thing of all new school year things: a reading list.
A few weeks ago, I was playing poker at EPT Barcelona, chatting with a high stakes poker pro that I don’t know particularly well but quite like about our reading habits. He confessed that he did not read fiction. Like, ever? I asked. Turns out, yes, basically ever. He loves to read, he told me, but he’d always thought that non-fiction was far more practical and useful than, say, a novel. But he’d decided that he wanted a change. What would be my top three novels, he wanted to know, if I were to suggest books for him to read?
I couldn’t answer. Not because I don’t have top books, but because choosing three novels out of the thousands I’ve read, out of the hundreds I’ve loved, out of the dozens that would be in my all-time favorites in order to convince one specific person that literature is one of the greatest joys of living is a nearly impossible task. I told him I’d give him recommendations, but on my own terms: it would be far more than three.
Two weeks later, this list is the result of that conversation. This is not a list of every one of my all-time favorite books—although many of my all-time favorites are on it, and I love every title here. This is, rather, a list that I thought might get a very smart male poker player who reads but doesn’t quite believe in literature (at least not yet) to change his mind. Maybe.
The books are not in any order other than the order they came to me. Really. I thought it would be informative to leave the list exactly as it was, with books appearing here the way they did in the literary crevices of my mind. There’s something fun and informative about the journey itself.
I looked at no other lists of books while composing this one and made sure to not look at any of my bookshelves: I wanted this particular compilation to come purely from my brain. A natural result is that it’s going to be missing many titles that I’ll (naturally) think of later.
The list is also deliberately missing some of my favorite writers that didn’t seem quite right for this particular set of recommendations. (Sorry, Jane Austen; apologies, George Eliot; my sincere regrets, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison; and on and on and on.) There is no poetry, other than some that qualifies as a full-scale literary work. There are no plays, despite my deep love of the medium. This is a list with a purpose and not an all-purpose list.
Some titles will be listed here with no comment. Others, I’ve added some editorial color. You’ll also note that I often recommend the short stories of famous novelists. This is not simply because they’re, well, shorter, but because I often find that they are among my favorite—and sometimes, my actual favorite—works a writer has produced.
One final thing: I firmly believe that life is too short to read books you don’t like. I’d give each of these a fair chance (some books, I’ve had to revisit multiple times before they “stuck”), but if you aren’t feeling something, close it and move on. I don’t care how much of a classic it’s supposed to be; if it’s not for you, it’s not for you. I will never read Finnegan’s Wake. I have tried. Many times. And I’m sorry, but no. Attempting it yet again is not the way I plan to spend my one wild and precious life.
So, without further ado, a fiction reading list, inspired by poker friendship but meant for much wider consumption. I hope it will lead you to discover a new favorite or reacquaint yourself with an old one. At the very least, I hope it makes you think of books that have held a special place in your heart. For what is life, really, if we don’t use at least a part of it for art?
A Fiction Reading List, presented in the exact order my brain thought of it
J D Salinger
Nine Stories
Franny and Zooey
Catcher, of course, but: This is actually how I jotted it down on the list. “Catcher” is, of course, “Catcher in the Rye,” and the of course is, well, of course. It’s the book that is synonymous with Salinger. And it’s a masterpiece. But give me Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey over it all day, every day. Nine Stories, incidentally, is one of the most perfect books of short stories (if you can call it that) ever created.
F Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby. Probably the single most perfect English-language book ever written. In my view, of course. But this is one of those masterpieces that I’ve reread countless times, and every time, holy shit. It gets me anew—and new parts get me anew.
Tender is the Night. This one holds a special place in my heart from when I first read it as a pre-teen.
Short stories. I love Fitzgerald’s short fiction.
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises. If this one doesn’t speak to someone who plays competitive poker for a living, I’m not sure what will.
Everyone reads The Old Man and the Sea for a reason.
A Moveable Feast. I know technically this one is non-fiction, but honestly, it’s only non-fiction in Hemingway’s mind.
William Faulkner
He’s lower on my list of American classics, to be honest—Faulkner was never quite my thing—but I do think Absalom, Absalom and As I Lay Dying should be on this list.
James Joyce
Dubliners. Yup. His short stories. What can I say, it’s my favorite of his writing.
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. This, and not Ulysses? Yup. My list.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in the Time of Cholera. Maybe the best love story ever? And so much more than that.
100 Years of Solitude. What a masterpiece.
Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita. I’ve read this book so many times. I can never get over how good it is. I love many of Bulgakov’s novels, but going to just keep it to this one for the list.
Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire
Pnin
Lolita. “Pale Fire” is a thing of beauty. “Pnin” makes me cry, every time. “Lolita” is an absolute, devastating masterpiece, full stop.
Short stories. I’m a broken record here, but wow, Nabokov’s early short stories are just things of beauty.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Idiot
Crime and Punishment
The Gambler. How could I leave that one off of this list?
Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina. Yup, that’s the one I’m putting on, and not “War and Peace.” My list, my rules.
Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye. What a stunning book. Made me realize why so many of my favorite writers listed Chandler as an inspiration.
The Big Sleep
Cormac McCarthy
*I will caveat by saying that while I love McCarthy, I’d not put him on a list of all-time favorite writers. But for this particular list, I think he’s perfect.*
The Road. My favorite, and so appropriate for the present moment.
Blood Meridian
All the Pretty Horses
Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. One of my favorite contemporary novels, from one of my favorite contemporary writers.
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. I think this is my favorite Chabon novel, though I understand that Kavalier and Clay is probably more Important, with a capital letter.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go. This one is devastating and perfect for the present moment.
Haruki Murakami
1Q84
Kafka on the Shore
Men Without Women. This is a short story collection, and I think it’s one of his best pieces of work.
David Mitchell
Black Swan Green. This is the most un-Mitchell-like of Mitchell’s books. It’s an autobiographical novel of childhood rather than the magical realism/science fiction-y novels he’s best known for. And it’s my favorite. But I love almost all Mitchell.
Cloud Atlas. If you had to pick one of the more typical Mitchell novels, this one is it.
Richard Powers
Galatea 2.2. This is an older Powers book but one that is so appropriate for the AI age.
The Overstory. A modern classic
Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections. When I read this, I thought, wow, this guy is going to write the Great American Novel. And I’ve either disliked or outright hated every book he’s written since. So there’s that. But: I stand behind this choice. It’s a remarkable book.
Donna Tartt
The Secret History. Still love it, long after I’ve left college behind.
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Grey. I think this is another one of those basically perfect books that I find myself returning to time and time again.
This one comes in a paragraph of recommendations rather than the book list form, because that’s how my brain thought of it: these are the Most Classic Classics. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (what an incredible book). Get thee some Shakespeare, please! Lear. Hamlet. Othello. I mean, all of it. This is the foundation of literature and it’s so damn powerful. Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf is beyond words. Dante’s Divine Comedy is the book that inspired me to learn Italian, so that I could read it in the original. Best decision ever. The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Metamorphoses. I’ve read these all countless time and each time, wow.
John Williams
Stoner. A book I discovered about a decade ago. Wow.
Tom Wolfe
Bonfire of the Vanities. The perfect alpha male book.
Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451. Sadly, all too relevant today.
Julio Cortázar
Hopscotch
Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths
Albert Camus
The Stranger. The existential bible.
Kurt Vonnegut
Honestly, choose your fighter here. Maybe it’s Slaughterhouse Five. Maybe it’s Cat’s Cradle. Maybe something else.
Norman Mailer
The Naked and the Dead. The opposite of glamorizing war.
Don DeLillo
Underworld. DeLillo may be more famous for books like White Noise (which is great), but Underworld is the one that never let me go.
Franz Kafka
The Trial. I feel like this is a nonfiction account of present day America.
The Metamorphosis. A classic for a reason.
Bruno Schulz
The Street of Crocodiles
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Both of these are books of short stories. Schulz is a remarkable writer and I wish he had lived long enough to give us more. Alas, he was one of the many artists who were murdered during the Holocaust. He was shot in 1942, while carrying a loaf of bread back to his family in the Drohobycz Ghetto. Read this powerful piece about him from Kathryn Schulz.
Evan S. Connell
Mrs Bridge. I almost took this off the list, for the same reason I’m keeping some of my other favorites off, but in the end, I couldn’t do it. This book is too perfect. Thank you to my friend Meg Wolitzer for introducing it into my life almost twenty years ago. (Meg is also a brilliant novelist. Read her books! The Interestings is a favorite.)
I was basically done, but then I realized that I should probably add some fantasy/science fiction—both because I love it, but also because I think it’s a great way to get someone who isn’t sold on fiction to be sold on fiction. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings is a must-read (and he should have won the Nobel Prize, but that’s a different essay). Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle is magical. Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and The Foundation series are standouts. Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a powerhouse. William Gibson is an endless inspiration. Neuromancer, but really, all of it. Fun fact: I re-read Gibson when writing The Biggest Bluff to get my story pacing right.
Oh, and while we’re at it, if you haven’t read the greats of childhood-to-adulthood fiction, no list is complete without Le Petit Prince, Alice In Wonderland, and Winnie-the-Pooh.
Happy reading.
If you’re a paid subscriber, I’m going to start a chat for books. If you want specific recommendations in any genre, or have specific questions, you can ask them there and I’ll either respond directly or make a larger post about it. And as always, comments here are open to everyone, and I hope you’ll share some of your own favorites—though I will not be answering any specific recommendation questions. That, I’ll reserve as a paid subscriber perk.
I HATE Moby Dick. Seriously. Maybe read it as a test of endurance, but nothing else. It's an encyclopedia of whale knowledge (questionable), with a light story that could have been wrapped up in, at most, 200 pages.
You have good taste and also are forgiven for the Ulysses thing and it’s clear that Wind Up Bird Chronicle just skipped your mind