Recommendations
Fiction
Looking for a story that will keep you engrossed, will be touching and funny, with some love and some action? A 700-pager that will read like a 300-pager, a book that will put you in a tight community with others who’ve read it? Try Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.
Looking for high modernism? Peak prose? A story that’s progressive and challenging? Try Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
Want a quickie? Amazing stories with a smattering of the literary? Try Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson.
Non-Fiction
Want an economic read? A history of bursted bubbles, a look at what we mean when we say “recession,” some great historical tidbits and well-written characters? Try The Ascent of Money by Niall Fergusson.
Want a run-down of the last 100 years of scientific progress? A heady read full of facts and figures? Try Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.
Stats
Most read writer: Ottessa Moshfegh (2)
Most read decade: the 1990’s (5)
21st Century (37%)
20th Century (53%)
19th Century (10%)
Male writers (60%)
The Ranking
32. The Secret History— Donna Tartt, 1992
Okay, it wasn’t that bad. I’m mostly just fighting against all the hype this book gets. There is some amazing content in here, I learned a lot about how to write group dynamics in this, how to introduce and separate characters who seem at first to have a lot of similarities. One of my favorite reads from 2022, A Little Life, definitely learned a lot from this text. I love the Talented Mr. Ripley films, never read those books but those films suffice for this genre, and I suspect the folks who loved this one would probably have a field day with Patricia Highsmith’s series.
Why is this in last place? I think it squandered what could have been an incredible text with my least favorite thing on earth: true-crime drama. There was a very meaty bildungsroman established in the first 150 pages, a delicious intellectual thriller, if you will, which veers into the sort of paranoia that I live with all the time and don’t need to get from literature. It’s why I don’t really like horror movies. Besides the fact that they often good, honest story-telling and pragmatic film-making for the sake of spookiness, they make me feel scared, which is generally how I feel all the time about everything. This book made me paranoid, on purpose. I’m a simple “no thank you” on that.
But here’s the rub. When it veers into the realm of true-crime, it abandons all the exciting theoretical and higher-minded stuff that gripped me in the first third. I had to read 300 pages of material about characters I was invested in ignoring fascinating themes and questions raised early-on. It’s a testament to how good a writer Tartt is, that I was so upset.
31. All About Love— bell hooks, 1999
This is another good book which I am probably under-valuing. I learned a lot of good definitions, was lead to some good introspection from it. And yet, something about hooks’ writing just misses me— it is geared towards a sort of brain which I don’t have. Every sentence is an aphorism about Love, and most of them on their own are pretty solid. But as they flew at me one after the other, I could not stay focused. I think I would have gotten more from it if I read one paragraph every day, but I didn’t. It just lost me with its lack of narrative, the sort of narrative that non-fiction needs to be cohesive. The narrative progression of ideas.
30. The Ascent of Money— Niall Ferguson, 2008
Another solid read, I think I just had an anti-non-fiction year. This details the history of boom-bust cycles, and was either greatly hurt or incredibly helped by being release in November of 2008. Much of what he said applied well to what would unfold over the months which followed its release, and he probably released the earliest book detailing the housing market collapse, he just didn’t know its full implications, and you could feel him pulling back from insinuating that one of the largest recessions in the last century was currently occurring. The best story in here was about John Law, the charlatan who invented the concept of a stock market, invented the concept of Louisiana (not an understatement), owned most of the money in France (not an understatement), and then caused the entire French monetary system to collapse. Niall Ferguson is one of the coolest dudes on earth, just a brilliant and hilarious Scot with axes to grind and stories to tell. Does a wicked Sean Connery impression. If he did the audio-book for this text, I think it would sky-rocket to my top ten. As it is, I mostly just got bogged down in him moving too quickly, throwing too many facts, writing this book for Econ PhDs rather than the casual econ fan. Once again, my brain last year just wasn’t functioning in a non-fiction context. I also learned from this book that West Virginia has one of the highest rates of Owner Occupied Housing in the world at 83%. That means if you see a residential building in this state, there is an 83% chance that the owner of that building lives there. For context, New York’s is the lowest at 54%. This is a poor state, but it speaks leagues to me that as poor as it is, WV’ians do not live in a landlord-run system. If the Dream is to own land, then this state is number one at living that dream.
29. Book of Thomas— Ron Miller, 2004
The Gospel of Thomas was discovered in Egypt in 1945, after being successfully buried by the early Church for two thousand years. If you think Jesus was cool but hate Christianity, Thomas’ gospel is a great read. It’s not written by the apostle named Thomas (doubting Thomas, sticked his fingers in Jesus’ wounds, etc) but by an early group of peace-loving hippy christians about fifty years after the big dog floated into bye-bye-land. It’s funnier than the four other gospels, focuses less on miracles and more on Jesus’ teachings about being naïve and loving and “like a child.” It supports free love, radical kindness, silliness.
As great as the Gospel is, Ron Miller’s book is not a great companion to it. It’s too sentimental. Doesn’t give enough of the original text. The Gospel itself doesn’t really need a companion, reads very well on its own.
28. When We Cease To Understand The World— Benjamín Labatut, 2020
This was my second read of this book in 2023. Still great, just not as good as the first pass.
27. The Wind— Lauren Groff, 2021
This was a short story from Groff, which I probably like because it was released on my birthday. Groff is one of the great living writers. This story is a brief masterwork in story-telling and character building. Almost nothing is said, but oh boy does it speak volumes.
26. Untethered Soul— Michael Alan Singer, 2007
A self-help book, essentially. But a powerful one, one that pulled me out of a very dark place with some tricks that should be taught in Kindergarten. If you don’t conceive of yourself as the witness to your own existence, as a conscious representation of the universe, this is required reading. Great intro-to-zen stuff, something you wanna keep on your bedside table.
25. Getting Lost— Annie Ernaux, 1988
This is only low on my list because it’s short, but it’s some great romance writing, which like most romance writing, does not forget the fact that in romance, we remain an individual. Or, perhaps the narrator forgets that, and this book is Ernaux’s lesson that we do. It is the journal entries she kept while having an affair. Juicy and meaningful— Ernaux is a legendary wit. Has that special way of putting things.
24. Nadja— André Breton, 1928
Another story about an affair. A landmark surrealist text, this book loses itself in trying to be surreal. The story is good, but as Breton realized, doesn’t quite make for a full book. The final product is scattered as all hell, but is a great way to get the brain churning, just gets one thinking interestingly about interesting shit.
23. Death in her Hands— Otessa Moshfegh, 2020
Ottessa released this one between her two best books, and it’s probably her worst. This was just before she became famous for My Year Of Rest And Relaxation and was cemented as a major literary figure. I talk about her in this piece.
She seems like someone obsessed with the future, elderly version of herself, and her worst work comes when that is central to her work. The book is still good, everything she touches is good. It just doesn’t quite hit, isn’t Ottessa enough for me.
22. Too Loud A Solitude— Bohumil Hrabal, 1976
Hrabal is of the most prominent Czech writers, after Kundera. But Hrabal stayed, Kundera fled, so…
I read this book as I visited Prague. It’s incredible, I’m not sure why it’s not higher on my list. Hrabal tells the story of a garbage-compacter being replaced by technology, but it’s of course really the story of living under an oppressive regime. The protagonist is obsessed with making his bundles of garbage beautiful, considers himself an artist. As books are banned across the country he reduces them to blocks of waste. It’s about beauty, about art for art’s sake, about the downtrodden, about Roma-persecution, all under 150 pages.
The book itself was banned for twenty years until it was officially released in the 90s. Very quick read full of amazing quotes.
21. Adult Life— [redacted], 2023
Amazing book written by a friend of mine. Not sure if she wants it publicly out there or not, but when she finally publishes it, get ready y’all!
I won’t say too much because you can’t read it so what’s the point, but her voice is so strong that I found myself thinking in her protagonists voice for a few days after finishing. It’s very current in a way that only a writer under thirty could accomplish. Very funny, moves very fast, is thought-provoking and surprisingly life-affirming.
20. Eileen— Otessa Moshfegh, 2015
Adapted into a film this year. I said a bit on it in this post. It’s good! A bit pulpy, maybe? But Ottessa knows what she’s doing.
19. Washington Square— Henry James, 1880
My first and only James read. I was underwhelmed, but I’m sure his other work is better. Of course he’s an amazing writer, I just… I don’t know. He seems too concerned with telling this story that he forgets to talk about life, the world, anything larger than the little plot he contrived.
Incidentally pretty misogynistic, though not as misogynistic as it could have been? Not sure how much credit he gets for that. The protagonist has zero agency in this book, but she is conscious about that fact, which is almost reveolutionary? Idk. The book is called Washington Square, and I lived by Washington Square for two years, and I wanted to understand this neighborhood in one of its most prominent eras, seventy years before it became the center of an international bohemian movement. The book doesn’t really do that. The story just takes places there, it’s not at all a mise-en-scene, time-in-place sort of hallmark text. It’s just a juicy story, that actually is hardly juicy at all.
18. Good Ol Neon— David Foster Wallace, 2001
Another short story, though because it’s DFW reads much longer than it is. Incredible, though. Just read it.
17. Winesburg, Ohio— Sherwood Anderson, 1919
A tender little text, but dense— it took years of picking up and putting down to get through. Ohio is, in my view, the best allegory for America. And this text is the best allegory for Ohio. There is a decent argument to be made that this is The Great American Novel, it tells the interwoven stories of a small town in the 1890s. Captures American idealism, American ennui, the classic tale of young Americans who want to escape their small-town origins and make a name for themselves in a city, but very sweetly acknowledges the debt we owe to those towns. Required reading.
16. Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story— Russell Banks, 1984
Brilliant short story from Banks, who died last year. Highly recommend. It has re-framed every story about romance I’ve read since. A major reference point with friends who have also read it. Very funny, very sad, a thinker and a stinker.
15. Elegant Universe— Brian Greene, 1999
Loved this. Not sure what the scientific community says about it, but I don’t want to. The scientific community ruined Sapiens for me, and sometimes pop-science is important. (I’m sorry Malcolm Gladwell— forgive me for forsaking you). Reading this text gave me the introduction I needed to understand other amazing works of art, such as When We Cease To Understand the World, Maria Popova’s Figuring, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and so many others. I don’t understand quantum theory, but I understand what I don’t understand about it, thanks to this book. Do you want to die without knowing the most cutting edge scientific ideas of your time? If not, then read this book. At least be in the loop on what kind of stuff the smartest human beings are working on.
If I have an issue, it’s that Greene seems to believe that understanding String theory is the final boss of Scientific theory. I don’t know nearly enough to argue this. BUT, from an outsider’s perspective, we should be so weary of what we know. We should always assume that, as much as we learn, if we keep learning for another thousand years then what we consider to be true would seem like occult nonsense. Greene says the string is the most foundational substance of matter. This, right after he says that Greeks thought it was the atom, that Enlightenment scientists thought it was the electron, that Einstein thought it was the muon, etc etc. He didn’t express healthy skepticism, I guess is what I’m saying. From what I understand of Karl Popper, Greene needs to read more Karl Popper, needs to heed Cowen’s First and Second Laws: 1) there is something wrong with everything and 2) if you don’t understand the major flaws of an argument, you don’t understand the argument. But again, I have no idea what I’m talking about. So, whatever, I guess.
14. Super Sad True Love Story— Gary Shteyngart, 2010
13. Relief of My Symptoms— Kevin Chesser, 2023
Kevin’s the fucking man. I really don’t fuck with poetry. But this book is amazing. Buy it.
12. A Confederate General In Big Sur— Richard Brautigan
A re-read of one of my favorite’s. If you like Kurt Vonnegut for being both sad and funny, read Brautigan. He is funnier and sadder. Start with In Watermelon Sugar or with this one, either is amazing and quick. I learned a lot from his short chapter— he essentially invented his own structure, and wrote some amazing stuff before his suicide at age 41. The way to understand him is as a beatnik, who should have been one of the original gang alongside Burroughs and Ginsberg and Kerouac but was born fifteen years too late, and was haunted by the knowledge that the youth rebellion spurred in the 50s and popularized in the 60s lost, the dream died. He was reserved by the literary gods for the 70s, forced to observe the ruins of a once hopeful movement and take notes before giving up.
11. Pale Fire— Vladimir Nabokov, 1962
If you like epic poetry, read this. If you don’t like epic poetry, read this. It is incredibly beyond its time, the way it plays with expectations and structure. It is a mystery-thriller, but (and here is where it beats The Secret History) it also works as a significant piece of intellectual literature. The mystery draws you through, but it remains a cohesive text of significance, questioning the idea of narrator vs writer vs protagonist, the way we separate and merge those concepts in our minds as we read.
10. Heart of Darkness— Joseph Conrad, 1899
This is the book that one of my favorite movies, Apocalypse Now, is based on. The structure of this story can be found in some form in everything I write. More on Josef Konrad below.
9. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man— James Joyce, 1916
A re-read of a classic. One of the first books I ever read, and alongside On The Road was very foundational to who I am. I have held Joyce’s politics against him my whole life, but in re-reading this one opened up some space in my heart for him. He did not hate Ireland, he was not an anti-nationalist, he was just sad, was just defeated. This is the archetypical bildungsroman, in my opinion, the same way that Werther is the archetypical Romantic novel. I’m not sure that it means as much to me as it once did, but as a young lad, a budding writer, a confused Catholic, this book guided me the way Catcher In The Rye guides people. I conflate scenes in this book with memories I have— a phenomenon I only have with two or three other books (most notably, A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius). I think when I was sixteen, a part of me believed that I had written it. This is only slightly de-valued by the fact that hundreds of millions of people think the same thing.
I was reading this book in public about a year ago when a stranger approached me to talk about it. That stranger is now one of my closest friends, and that was the night where I met a lot of the people who I now consider family. Very fitting that it was this text. It’s a book about discovering who you are, and choosing to be that person. It ends when Dedalus’ life begins, everything in it is just pre-text. The book that put F. Scott Fitzgerald on the map, This Side Of Paradise, is a scene for scene knock-off of this. Also, if you want to read Joyce but can’t fathom reading Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake, this book is perfect.
8. Vineland— Thomas Pynchon, 1990
I am part of a community online which takes every photograph and every press release about Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film and tries to determine if it’s a an adaptation of this novel. It has been a rollercoaster, folks. The question is still not answered, as of 1pm today, but there is significant evidence for both sides of the argument. If true, it would be PTA’s second adaptation of a Pynchon book and, incidentally, the second film adaptation ever of a Pynchon text. It means PTA and Pynchon have been spending more time hanging out, which is most enticing for heady film/literary nerds like myself.
The book is good, not great, but good. There is a 100-page stretch in the middle (the story of DL and Takeshi, for those who have read it), that is among my favorite chapters of all literature of all time. That puts it in my top ten for the year, but the book fails to stick the landing, and abandons a lot of plots and characters introduced early, in a way which I found disappointing.
Aside from that, Pynchon does something structurally in this book which I struggle to comprehend, but which is worth noting. It would be reductive to call the book “non-linear.” It’s way more than that. Vineland twists around the central story like a snake, and we only get a sense of the hero-journey narrative when that snake makes contact with the central coil. It moves like life, is one way of saying it. It does not conform to the classical perception of narrative, it does not egregiously complicate that perception, either. It is a milieu of an era— more specifically, a pervasive sensation within an era, more specifically, the crumbling of 60s rebellion in the face of hard-power and government manipulation— which may speak to the way Pynch tried to present us this tale. I found it liberating, and, as liberation often does, it disheartened me. It disheartened me because I hold dearly the idea that we do not need the classical narrative structure, that humans are not as programmatic as that structure supposes. The confusion this book caused in me signaled a reliance on that structure. There is a chance that in the next 100 years the classical structure is upended in a way it hasn’t been since… Homer. And if that is the case, Vineland may be identified as a revolutionary text. For now, if you want to read Pynchon wax poetic on the legacy of the sixties, read Inherent Vice.
If PTA is adopting this novel, then the sequence where Prairie watches recovered footage from her mother’s 16mm is sure to be legendary.
Stay tuned for a review of Mason & Dixon.
7. Last Tales— Isak Dinesen, 1957
Dinesen is my favorite writer, most days of the week. Her Seven Gothic Tales is the voice which my writing is most influenced by. These later stories are not nearly on the level of those, but still very strong, still full of the complexity and genius that I adore Dinesen for. Her profoundness-per-paragraph ratio is un-paralleled. Her blend of narrative and introspection is still off the charts. Definitely worth the read, but if you haven’t read Seven Gothic yet, start there— as soon as possible, people.
6. When We Cease To Understand The World— Benjamin Lebatut, 2020
Full review of this one will be posted on the mouse-car moment next week.
5. Wuthering Heights— Emily Brontë, 1847
This book was not at all what I expected. I am shocked that it was released in 1847, I guess I was naïve in that sense. I am not very familiar with gothic literature, and was deeply unsettled by how dark this story got. It is NOT a love story— it is a hate story. I struggle to say anything original about a book that’s been taught to death for almost 200 years. Worth checking out, if you haven’t. It is remarkable for a book to hold up for this long, but this could have been published today and not felt antiquated or weak at all. I was lucky enough to not read this one for a high-school english requirement— I suppose if I was, I would have the same bias against it that I have for The Scarlet Letter.
4. Orlando— Virginia Woolf, 1928
An incredibly progressive text, in both the artistic and political sense. For anyone who thinks questions of gender roles are a symptom of the current moment, this book is more transgressive than 90% of the recursive material released on the matter today. Woolf was, as if it needs to be said, a genius. This book is amazing, provocative, funny, and written by one of the swiftest hands in the history of literature.
3. Jesus’ Son— Denis Johnson, 1992
A master-class in brevity. Amazing stories, amazing voice and vision. I’ve been talking a lot about cohesion, and this text is the emblem of the concept. It works like a hyper-realist painting, works when viewed from ten feet away and only continues to amaze you the closer you look. It is brutal, and simultaneously sweet.
2. Lonesome Dove— Larry McMurtry, 1985
Just a ripping good yarn. McMurtry wanted this to be a death knell for pulpy Westerns and accidentally wrote one of the greatest Westerns of all time. I’ve never felt connected or invested in as many characters at once as I did with this.
The band The Local Honeys writes a lot of songs about this book. If you like the book, digging through their catalogue looking for references to it is a fun activity.
1. Lord Jim— Joseph Conrad, 1900
I almost don’t want to touch this one, as dear as it is to me.
I will say that Josef Konrad exploded into my world last year, and I am better for it. He was born in Ukraine, which was really Poland, which was really Russia. He lived the first fourteen years of his life in exile in Serbia, with no one but his revolutionary parents to keep him company. He didn’t speak a word of English until he was sixteen, then went on to become one of the earliest and most notable writers of Modern english fiction.
This book is about redemption. If you have lost your sense of self, if you’ve fucked up, and you don’t feel like you deserve to live, this book will save you.