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So here’s a write-up of some of my all-time favorite books, followed by a bunch more because I couldn't help myself:
All-Time Favorites
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
Beloved by Toni Morrison
King Lear by Shakespeare
Greek, Roman, and Chinese Classics
Sappho’s poetry—Anne Carson translation (also Eros the Bittersweet by Carson)
The Iliad and The Odyssey (I like Fagles' translations best)
The poetry of Catullus (for the strength and clarity of his voice, not to mention his outlandishness)
Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Ted Hughes, trans)
The philosophy of Zhuang Zi (Burton Watson, trans)
The poetry of Du Fu, Li Bai, and Wang Wei (China’s great three Tang Dynasty poets)
Misc. Zen tales--too many good ones to choose from!
Later Western Classics
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Middlemarch by George Eliot
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Poetry
Emily Dickinson--my all time favorite poet
Tao Qian (Tao Yuan Ming)
The Shi Jing or Book of Songs
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Frank O'Hara
Shakespeare's sonnets (how could you not include these on a list of favorite poems?)
Anne Carson (a great teacher)
Linda Gregg (also an amazing teacher)
Jack Gilbert (one of the most gracious men I've ever met)
Contemporary Classics
Collected stories of Lu Xun
Love in the Time of Cholera
Midnight’s Children
Remains of the Day (actually, anything by Ishiguro, his voice is just so compelling)
Blood Meridian
Middlesex
Lord of the Rings
Contemporary Fiction that I’ve enjoyed recently (or not that recently):
Astonish Me
Beautiful Ruins
The Corrections
Wolf Hall
The Hours
Regeneration
Cold Mountain
Wild Swans
Game of Thrones
Contemporary Nonfiction
Sea Biscuit
Reading Like a Writer
Eros the Bittersweet
Outliers (anything by Malcolm Gladwell)
In the Garden of Beasts
The Big Short
Into Thin Air
Contemporary YA
Harry Potter (of course)
The Golden Compass
The Hunger Games
The Maze Runner
Prep
Memoirs
Autobiography of a Face
The Glass Castle
Angela’s Ashes
Wild
What I’ve Just Read and Really liked
Neapolitan Series by Elena Ferrante—my new favorite!
The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by Malcolm Hillgartner
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
Various essays and short stories by David Foster Wallace (okay, I admit, I'm on a DFW kick at the moment--really find the guy's work fascinating)
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