Read This Next: 500 of the Best Books You'll Ever Read

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady (King), 214, 232–33 Confessions of an English Opium Eater(de Quincey), 167 Confucius, 59 Connell, Evan S., 98, 109–10 Conrad, Joseph, 256 Conscience of a Conservative, The (Gold-water), 171, 173–75 Conscience of a Liberal, The (Wellstone), 179 Content of Our Character, The (Steele), 172, 197–99 Coontz, Stephanie, 4, 30–31 Cooper, Helene, 86–87 Cortázar, Julio, 127 Coulter, Ann, 178 Count of Monte Cristo, The (Dumas pere), 6 Coupland, Douglas, 362 Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), 256 Crisp, Quentin, 50, 53–56 Crusades Through Arab Eyes, The (Maalouf), 353 Cunningham, Michael, 35 Cutler, Ivor, 58 Cyberiad, The (Lem), 214, 240–41 Cyclomotors (Muckle), 391 D Dalrymple, William, 13 Dangarembga, Tsitsi, 85 Dark Re ections (Delany), 277 David, Elizabeth, 63, 64

David B., 51, 92–94 Da Vinci Code, The (Brown), 337 Davis, Lydia, 277 Dawkins, Richard, 286 Day of the Locust, The (West), 266–67 Day of the Tri ds, The (Wyndham), 147 Days of the Turbins, The (Bulgakov), 335 Dead Souls (Gogol), 185 Deadwood (Dexter), 383 Death Comes for the Archbishop (Cather), 382 Death in the Family, A (Agee), 368, 370–73 “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, The” (Jarrell), 238 Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, The (Quiroga), 126 Declare (Powers), 236 Decline and Fall (Waugh), 214, 244–46 de Kruif, Paul, 286 Dela eld, E. M., 213, 220–23 Delany, Samuel, 34, 277 de la Peña, Matt, 316 Demons (Shirley), 362 de Quincey, Thomas, 167 Devil on the Cross (Ngugi), 86 Devil’s Candy, The (Salamon), 268 Dexter, Pete, 383 Diamond Age, The (Stephenson), 205 Diaries of Franz Kafka, The, 164 Diary of a Provincial Lady (Dela eld), 213, 220–23 Diary of Frida Kahlo, The, 164 Diary of Lady Murasaki, The, 163 Diary of Samuel Pepys, The, 163–64 Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, The, 164

Dibdin, Michael, 235 Dick, Philip K., 146–47, 168, 241 Dickens, Charles, 255–56 Dickinson, Emily, 58 Dictionary of Maqiao, A (Shaogong), 71 Didion, Joan, 106, 267 Di erence Engine, The (Gibson and Sterling), 398 DiMarco, Damon, 325–26 Dinesen, Isak, 51, 81–83, 84, 276 Dirty Tricks (Dibdin), 235 Dispatches (Herr), 302 Dispossed, The (Le Guin), 173, 201–3 Distant Mirror, A (Tuchman), 134, 143–45 Dog Soldiers (Stone), 302 Doll’s House, A (Ibsen), 196 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 218 Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Fuller), 107 Doomsday Book (Willis), 134, 145–46 Dorothy Dunnett Companion, The, 149–50 Dorothy Dunnett Companion II, The, 150 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 186, 256 Double Helix, The (Watson), 286 Douglass, Frederick, 116 Down and Out in Paris and London (Orwell), 253, 273–75 Dray, Philip, 390–91 Drowned World, The (Ballard), 361 Dr. Zhivago (Pasternak), 186 Du Bois, W. E. B., 116–17 Dumas, Alexandre, ls, 3, 5–9, 12

Dumas, Alexandre, père, 5–6 Dunant, Sarah, 41 Dunn, Katherine, 98, 110–12 Dunnett, Dorothy, 134, 149–50 Dunsany, Lord, 22 Durrell, Gerald, 282 Durrell, Lawrence, 282 Dyer, Geo , 294, 308–9 Dykes to Watch Out For (Bechdel), 101 E Eagleman, David, 368, 403–4 Earthsea Trilogy, The (Le Guin), 23 Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Biskind), 268 Eco, Umberto, 226 Ecotopia (Callenbach), 205 Eddison, E. R., 24 Eggers, Dave, 60 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 179 Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The (Wolfe), 168 Elegant Universe, The (Greene), 285–86 Elegy for Iris (Bayley), 345–46 Eliot, George, 29, 255 Ellis, Bret Easton, 218 Ellison, Ralph, 117–18 Ellroy, James, 106 Emecheta, Buchi, 86 Emperors of Chocolate (Brenner), 65

Emshwiller, Carol, 399 Ende, Michael, 23 Ender’s Game (Card), 294, 312–14 Endless Love (Spencer), 4, 25–26 End of Alice, The (Homes), 12 End of the Story, The (Davis), 277 Enduring Love (McEwan), 3–4, 14-15, 16 Ensler, Eve, 197 Ephron, Nora, 64 Epileptic (David B.), 51, 92–94 Erasure (Everett), 277 Erewhon (Butler), 204 Eugene Onegin (Pushkin), 185 Everett, Percival, 277 F Faber, Michel, 368, 393–94 Failed States (Chomsky), 178 Fall, Bernard, 301 Falling Angels (Gowdy), 98–99, 120–22 Faludi, Susan, 197 Family Golovlyov, The (Saltykov-Shchedrin), 185–86 Family That Couldn’t Sleep, The (Max), 286 Far from the Madding Crowd (Hardy), 256 Farmer, Philip José, 147–48 Far Pavilions, The (Kaye), 41 Faulkner, William, 375 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Thomp son), 168

Fear of Flying (Jong), 197 Female Eunuch, The (Greer), 196–97 Female Man, The (Russ), 148 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 172, 194–96 Fermata, The (Baker), 12–13 Fermor, Patrick Leigh, 76 Ferris, Timothy, 285 Fever Pitch (Hornby), 315 Feynman, Richard, 50, 65–67 Field, Thalia, 392 Fielding, Henry, 255 Fiennes, William, 282–83 Fire on the Mountain (Bisson), 205 First Three Minutes, The (Weinberg), 285 Fisher, M.F.K., 50, 61–62, 63 Fiskadoro (Johnson), 362 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 257, 267 Fitzgerald, Penelope, 5, 38–40 Flag for Sunrise, A (Stone), 236 Flame Trees of Thika, The (Huxley), 84 Flaubert, Gustave, 3, 9–12 Fleming, Peter, 77 Flowers for Algernon (Keyes), 219 Forever Amber (Winsor), 40 Forster, E. M., 13, 34, 319 Fortune Cookie Chronicles, The (Lee), 64–65 Fountainhead, The (Rand), 58 Fowles, John, 235 Frank, Anne, 59

Frank, Thomas, 178 Frankenstein (Shelley), 360–61 Freud, Sigmund, 218 Frey, James, 92 Friday Night Lights (Bissinger), 315 Friedan, Betty, 172, 194–96 Friedman, Milton, 175, 178 Frost, Robert, 58 Frozen Desire (Buchan), 253, 287–89 Fuentes, Carlos, 127–28 Fuller, Alexandra, 107 Full Tilt (Murphy), 76 Fun House (Bechdel), 98, 99–101 Fussell, Paul, 252, 260–62 G Gabaldon, Diana, 40 Gaiman, Neil, 188 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 178 Galloway, Janice, 219 Game of Kings, The (Dunnett), 134, 149–50 Game of Thrones, The (Martin), 23 García Márquez, Gabriel, 99, 123–25 Gar eld, Simon, 135, 161–63 Gastronomical Me, The (Fisher), 50, 61–62 Gate to Women’s Country, The (Tepper), 361 Gateway (Pohl), 148 Geek Love (Dunn), 98, 110–12

Geller, Janna McCall, 337 Geller, Mallory, 337 Gellhorn, Martha, 76 Genet, Jean, 35 Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Weatherford), 134, 140–42 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Loos), 4, 26–28, 29 Get Shorty (Leonard), 268 Ghost World (Clowes), 102 Gibbons, Stella, 98, 107–8 Gibson, William, 398 Gifts of the Body, The (Brown), 35 Gig (Bowe, Bowe, and Streeter), 325 Giovanni’s Room (Baldwin), 13 Girlfriend in a Coma (Coupland), 362 Girl in the Flammable Skirt, The (Bender), 399 Gissing, George, 276 Giving Up the Ghost (Mantel), 106 Glass Castle, The (Walls), 105–6 Glory Goes and Gets Some (Carter), 168 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (Vonnegut), 172, 190–92 Godless (Coulter), 178 Gods and Generals (J. Shaara), 321 God’s Bits of Wood (Ousmane), 86 Gogol, Nikolai, 185 Going After Cacciato (O’Brien), 293, 299–301 Golden, Arthur, 41 Golden Notebook, The (Lessing), 172, 192–94 Goldwater, Barry, 171, 173–75

Gombrich, E. H., 133, 135–37 Gone with the Wind (Mitchell), 40 Goodall, Jane, 282 Good Man Is Hard to Find, A (O’Connor), 374 Good Soldier Schweik, The (Hasek), 294, 310–12 Good Women of China, The (Xinran), 72 Gorey, Edward, 214, 242–44 Gorky, Maxim, 335 Gormenghast (Peake), 24 Gorodischer, Angélica, 24 Go Tell It on the Mountain (Baldwin), 118 Gowdy, Barbara, 98–99, 120–22, 281 Graham, Janice, 41–42 Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon), 200 Gray, Francine du Plessix, 107 Gray, Spalding, 51, 87–90 Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald), 257 Greatness of Marlys, The (Barry), 102 Greenberg, Michael, 219 Greene, Brian, 285–86 Greene, Graham, 13–14, 78, 214, 233–35, 302–3 Green River Rising (Willocks), 235 Greer, Germaine, 196–97 Gregory, Philippa, 41 Group, The (McCarthy), 196 Groves of Academe, The (McCarthy), 239 Grubb, Davis, 374 Guevara, Ernesto “Che,” 164 Guidi, Chen, 72

Guns of August, The (Tuchman), 294, 306–7 Gun, with Occasional Music (Lethem), 399 Gurdjie , G. I., 117, 332, 339, 340, 341–42 H Half of a Yellow Sun (Adiche), 85 Hall, Oakley, 383 Halliday, Jon, 70 Hammett, Dashiell, 225 Harder They Fall, The (Schulberg), 316 Hard Times (Terkel), 324 Hardy, Thomas, 29, 256 Harrison, Kathryn, 13 Hasek, Jaroslav, 294, 310–12 Hate (Bagge), 102 Hatzfeld, Jean, 87 Hayslip, Le Ly, 303 Hearing Trumpet, The (Carrington), 400 Heartburn (Ephron), 64 Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The (McCul-lers), 337 Hedges, Chris, 293, 295–96 Heinlein, Robert, 147 Heller, Joseph, 293, 304–6 Helyar, John, 337 Hemingway, Ernest, 76, 82, 84 Henry and June (Nin), 164 Hernandez, Gilbert, 103 Hernandez, Jaime, 103

Herodotus, 76 Herr, Michael, 302 Herriot, James, 253, 278–80 Hersey, John, 368, 400–403 Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (Tiptree), 148 Highsmith, Patricia, 34, 252, 257–58 High Wind in Jamaica, A (Hughes), 368, 376–79 Hillenbrand, Laura, 315–16 Himes, Chester, 226 Hiroshima (Hersey), 368, 400–403 His Dark Materials (Pullman), 23 Histories, The (Herodotus), 76 Hoban, Russell, 362 Hochschild, Adam, 134, 154–56 Hodgson, William Hope, 399–400 Hollinghurst, Alan, 35 Hollywood Babylon (Anger), 267–68 Home at the End of the World, A (Cun-ningham), 35 Homes, A. M., 12 Homme qui rit, L’ (Hugo), 112–13 Homunculus (Blaylock), 398 hooks, bell, 197 Hopscotch (Cortázar), 127 Horn, Stacy, 391–92 Hornby, Jack, 315 Hotel New Hampshire, The (Irving), 13 Hot Zone, The (Preston), 236 House at Sugar Beach, The (Cooper), 87 House of Mirth, The (Wharton), 29, 252, 253–55

House of the Spirits, The (Allende), 127 House on the Borderland, The (Hodgson), 399–400 Howard’s End (Forster), 13 How I Became Hettie Jones (Jones), 107 How Not to Write a Novel (Newman and Mittelmark), 393 Hrabal, Bohumil, 252, 268–70 Hua, Yu, 71 Hughes, Richard, 368, 376–79 Hughes, Ted, 59 Hugo, Victor, 112–13 Huong, Duong Thu, 303 Hurry Down Sunshine (Greenberg), 219 Hurston, Zora Neale, 117 Hustler, The (Tevis), 237 Huxley, Elspeth, 84 “Hymns to the Night” (Novalis), 39 I I Am a Cat (Natsume), 281 Ibsen, Henrik, 196 I Capture the Castle (Smith), 213–14, 229–30 Identity and Society in American Poetry (Mookerjee), 392 If on a winter’s night a traveler (Calvino), 277 IHOP Papers, The (Liebegott), 35 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Ange-lou), 118 I’m Losing You (Wagner), 267 Imperial Life in the Emerald City (Chan-drasekaran), 294, 326–28

Incarnate: Story Material (Field), 392 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs), 116 In Cold Blood (Capote), 236 Indian Givers (Weatherford), 142 Indi erent Stars Above, The (Brown), 382 In nite Jest (Wallace), 246–48 Information, The (Amis), 276 In Patagonia (Chatwin), 76–77 In Search of King Solomon’s Mines (Shah), 77 In Search of Lost Time (Proust), 42–45 In Search of the Miraculous (Ouspensky), 331–32, 339–42 Inside Daisy Clover (Lambert), 266 In the Shadow of Man (Goodall), 282 Invention of the Restaurant, The (Spang), 63 Invisible Man (Ellison), 117–18 I Remember (Brainard), 50, 56–57 Iris and Her Friends (Bayley), 345 Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her (Wilson), 345 Irving, John, 13 I Served the King of England (Hrabal), 252, 268–70 Isherwood, Christopher, 267 Ishiguro, Kazuo, 368, 388–90 Islam (Armstrong), 353 I, The Supreme (Roa Bastos), 126 Ivins, Molly, 178 I Will Bear Witness 1942–1945 (Klem-perer), 164–65 Iyer, Pico, 77

J Jackson, Shirley, 3 6 8, 375–77 Jacobs, Harriet, 116 James, C.L.R., 316 James, P. D., 361 Jane Eyre (Brontë), 29, 256 Jarrell, Randall, 214, 237–39 Jesus’ Son (Johnson), 168 Joe the Engineer (Wachtel), 391 Johnson, Anthony Godby, 91 Johnson, Denis, 168, 302, 362 Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Clarke), 22–23 Jones, Hettie, 107 Jong, Erica, 197 Journey to Ixtlan (Castaneda), 332–33, 357–58 Joys of Motherhood, The (Emecheta), 86 Jude the Obscure (Hardy), 29 Jungle, The (Sinclair), 369 Junkie (Burroughs), 167 K Kafka, Franz, 59, 164 Kagan, Robert, 178 Kahlo, Frida, 164 Kalpa Imperial (Gorodischer), 24 Kapuściński, Ryszard, 76

Karr, Mary, 50, 52–53 Katz, Donald, 337 Kaye, M. M., 41 Keats, John, 59 Keillor, Garrison, 216 Kerr, Philip, 226 Kesey, Ken, 219 Keyes, Daniel, 219 Kharms, Daniel, 186–87 Kidder, Tracy, 287 Killer Angels, The (Shaara), 294, 319–21 Killer Inside Me, The (Thompson), 226 King, Florence, 214, 232–33 King Leopold’s Ghost (Hochschild), 134, 154–56 King of El and’s Daughter, The (Dun-sany), 22 King Solomon’s Ring (Lorenz), 282 Kiss, The (Harrison), 13 Klein, Naomi, 171–72, 175–78 Klemperer, Victor, 164–65 Kooks (Kossy), 218 Kossy, Donna, 218 Kourouma, Ahmadou, 294, 317–18 Kpomassie, Tété-Michel, 51, 73–75 Krakauer, Jon, 332, 355–57 Kujau, Konrad, 92 L LaBute, Neil, 314

Labyrinths (Borges), 127 Lady of the Camellias, The. See Camille Lambert, Gavin, 266 Larkin, Philip, 58, 337 La Rochefoucauld, 59 Larsen, Nella, 117 Last Full Measure, The (J. Shaara), 321 Last Man, The (Shelley), 361 Last Night I Dreamed of Peace (Tram), 303 Last of the Wine, The (Renault), 4, 31–34 Laye, Camara, 86 Lear, Edward, 58 Leaving Mother Lake (Namu), 72 Lee, Harper, 373 Lee, Jennifer 8., 64–65 Lee, Tanith, 205 Le Guin, Ursula K., 23, 173, 201–3 Leighton, Ralph, 65 Lem, Stanislaw, 214, 240–41 Leonard, Elmore, 268 LeRoy, J. T. (pseud.), 91–92 Lessing, Doris, 4, 36–37, 172, 192–94 Lethem, Jonathan, 399 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Agee), 371 Levels of the Game (McPhee), 316–17 Levi, Primo, 253, 283–85 Levy, Steven, 286–87 Lewis, C. S., 147, 188, 223 Lewis, Michael, 316

Lewis, Norman, 51, 78–80 Liar’s Club, The (Karr), 50, 52–53 Liebegott, Ali, 35 Life Among the Savages (Jackson), 376 Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am” (Gurdjie ), 341–42 Life of Insects, The (Pelevin), 187 Linebarger, Paul, 148–49 Link, Kelly, 368, 395–97 Lippman, Laura, 226 Little Big Man (Berger), 382 Little Friend, The (Tartt), 375 Little History of the World, A (Gombrich), 133, 135–37 Live From New York, 325 Lizard’s Tail, The (Valenzuela), 126 Locas (G. Hernandez), 103 Lolita (Nabokov), 12 London, Jack, 281 Londonistan (Phillips), 179 Long Night ofWinchell Dear, The (Waller), 391 Long Walk to Freedom (Mandela), 87 Looking Backward (Bellamy), 204 Loos, Anita, 4, 26–28, 29 Lorenz, Konrad, 282 Lost World of the Kalahari, The (van der Post), 76 Love & Rockets (Hernandez and Her nandez), 103 Love and War in the Apennines (Newby), 77 Lud-in-the-Mist (Mirrlee), 23 Lymond Chronicles (Dunnett), 149

M Maalouf, Amin, 353 Macaulay, Rose, 331, 338–39 Machete Season (Hatzfeld), 87 Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 3, 9–12 Madness (Porter), 215 Magic for Beginners (Link), 368, 395–97 Magic Mountain, The (Mann), 256–57 Mahfouz, Naghib, 354 Mailer, Norman, 206, 302 Malzberg, Barry, 390 Manchurian Candidate, The (Condon), 237 Mandela, Nelson, 87 Manguso, Sarah, 60, 336 Man in the High Castle, The (Dick), 147 Mann, Thomas, 256–57 Manon Lescaut (Prévost), 8–9 Mans eld, Katherine, 59 Mantel, Hilary, 106 Man Who Fell to Earth, The (Tevis), 361 Man Who Loved Children, The (Stead), 99, 122–23 Man Who Was Thursday, The (Chesterton), 172, 187–90 Mao: The Unknown Story (Chang and Halliday), 70 Marcus, Ben, 337 Markham, Beryl, 84 Márquez, Gabriel García. See Gárcia Márquez, Gabriel Marquis, Don, 281–82

Marriage, A History (Coontz), 4, 30–31 Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (Lessing), 4, 36–37 Martin, George R. R., 23 Marx, Karl, 58 Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (Chesnut), 164 Masnavi, The (Rumi), 354 Master and the Margarita, The (Bulga kov), 331, 333–34 Matthiessen, Peter, 332, 348–49 Maupin, Armistead, 35 Maurice (Forster), 34 Max, D. T., 286 Maxims (La Rochefoucauld), 59 May, C. Karl, 384 McCain, Gillian, 325 McCarthy, Cormac, 383 McCarthy, Mary, 196, 239 McCullers, Carson, 337, 374 McEwan, Ian, 3–4, 14-15, 16 McGinnis, Joe, 315 McNeil, Legs, 325 McNeill, William H., 286 McPhee, John, 316–17 Mediterranean Food (David), 64 Meetings with Remarkable Men (Gurd-jie ), 341 Mel Bay Presents …Exploring the Folk Harp (Geller and Geller), 337 Meltdown (Woods), 178–79 Memoirs of a Geisha (Golden), 41

Merchants of Grain (Morgan), 63–64 Message to the Blackman in America (Mu-hammad), 353 Meyer, Stephenie, 314 Microbe Hunters (de Kruif), 286 Middlemarch (Eliot), 29, 255 Mieville, China, 399 Mildred Pierce (Cain), 252, 258–60 Miller, Catherine, 12 Miracle of Castel di Sangro, The (McGin nis), 315 Mirrlee, Hope, 23 Missing of the Somme, The (Dyer), 294, 308–9 Mists of Avalon, The (Bradley), 40 Mitchell, Margaret, 40 Mitford, Jessica, 367, 369–70 Mitford, Nancy, 4, 17–20, 84 Mittelmark, Howard, 393 Moehringer, J. R., 106 Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? (Ivins), 178 Moncrie , C. Scott, 44 Moneyball (Lewis), 316 Monkey, Chinese epic, 71 Monsieur Proust (Albaret), 45 Moody, Anne, 106 Mookerjee, Robin, 392 Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, The (Heinlein), 147 Moorcock, Michael, 398 More, Thomas, 203 Morgan, Dan, 63–64

Morgan, Richard, 236 Morris, Jan, 76 Morrison, Toni, 98, 115–16 Morton, Brian, 277 Mount, The (Emshwiller), 399 Moviegoer, The (Percy), 374 Mrs. Bridge (Connell), 98, 109–10 Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), 219 Much Depends on Dinner (Visser), 63 Muckle, John, 391 Muhammad, Elijah, 353 Mumbo Jumbo (Reed), 118 Munro, Alice, 336 Murasaki, Lady, 163 Murder Must Advertise (Sayers), 226 Murder on the Appian Way, A (Saylor), 226 Murdoch, Iris, 332, 344–47 Murphy, Dervla, 76 Music & Silence (Tremain), 41 My Dark Places (Ellroy), 106 My Dog Tulip (Ackerley), 283 My Family and Other Animals (G. Dur rell), 282 My Father and Myself (Ackerley), 98, 113–14 My Life and Hard Times (Thurber), 213, 215–17 My Soul Is Rested (Raines), 325 N Nabokov, Vladimir, 12, 50–51, 67–69

Naipaul, V. S., 173, 206–9 Naked Civil Servant, The (Crisp), 50, 53–56 Name of the Rose, The (Eco), 226 Namu, Yang Erche, 72 Naples ‘44 (Lewis), 51, 78–80 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), 116 Native Roots (Weatherford), 142 Natsume, Soseki, 281 Nervous Conditions (Dangarembga), 85 Neverending Story, The (Ende), 23 Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro), 368, 388–90 Neverwhere (Gaiman), 188 New Atlantis, The (Bacon), 204 Newby, Eric, 77 New Grub Street (Gissing), 276 Newman, Sandra, 392–93 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 85–86 Night in Lisbon, The (Remarque), 160 Night Life (Anderson), 165 Night of the Hunter, The (Grubb), 374 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 164 Nin, Anaïs, 164 Nine Parts of Desire (Brooks), 332, 351–52 Ninh, Bao, 303–4 Niven, Larry, 148 Noonan, Peggy, 179 North Gladiola (Wilcox), 375 Norwich, John Julius, 133, 137–39

Nostromo (Conrad), 256 Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky), 186 Novalis, 39 Novel with Cocaine (Ageyev), 168 Novel Without a Name (Huong), 303 O Oates, Joyce Carol, 40–41 O’Brien, Flann, 213, 227–28 O’Brien, Tim, 293, 299–301 O’Connor, Flannery, 333, 363–64, 374 Oh the Glory of It All (Wilsey), 106 Old Deadwood Days (Bennett), 382–83 Old Gringo, The (Fuentes), 127–28 Olsen, Tillie, 277 O’Malley, Brian Lee, 103 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn), 172, 182–85 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey), 219 One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box (Eggers, Manguso, and Unferth), 60 One Hundred Years of Solitude (García Márquez), 99, 123–25 Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, The (Newman), 392–93 O Pioneers! (Cather), 98, 119–20 Optimist’s Daughter, The (Welty), 374 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Winter-son), 332, 342–44

Orner, Peter, 325 Orphan’s Tale, The (Valente), 24 Orwell, George, 223, 253, 273–75, 276 Oryx and Crake (Atwood), 361 Osborne, Frances, 84 Other Boleyn Girl, The (Gregory), 41 Other Side of Desire, The (Bergner), 218–19 Our Cancer Year (Pekar), 102 Our Hidden Lives (Gar eld), 135, 161–63 Our Lady of the Flowers (Genet), 35 Our Man in Havana (Greene), 214, 233–35 Ousmane, Sembene, 86 Ouspensky, P. D., 331–32, 339–42 Outlander (Gabaldon), 40 Out of Africa (Dinesen), 51, 81–83 Out of the Silent Planet (Lewis), 147 Ox-Bow Incident, The (Clark), 381 P Paci c Edge (Robinson), 205 Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Porter), 374 Palm-Wine Drinkard, The (Tutuola), 85 Palomar (J. Hernandez), 103 Pamela (Richardson), 29 Paper Lion (Plimpton), 315 Parasite Rex (Zimmer), 286 Parker, Dorothy, 215 Passing (Larsen), 117

Pasternak, Boris, 186 Pastoralia (Saunders), 99, 128–29 Pat Hobby Stories, The (Fitzgerald), 267 Peake, Mervyn, 24 Pechel, Peter, 324 Pekar, Harvey, 102 Pelevin, Victor, 187 Pepys, Samuel, 59, 163–64 Percy, Walker, 374 Perdido Street Station (Mieville), 399 Periodic Table, The (Levi), 253, 283–85 Petersburg (Biely), 186 Petrushevskaya, Ludmilla, 187 Pham, Andrew X., 303 Phillips, Melanie, 179 Physiology of Taste, The (Brillat-Savarin), 62–63 Pictures from an Institution (Jarrell), 214, 237–39 Plagues and Peoples (McNeill), 286 Plato, 203 Playingfor Thrills (Wang), 72–73 Play It as It Lays (Didion), 267 Please Kill Me (McCain and McNeil), 325 Plimpton, George, 315 Pohl, Frederik, 148 Pollan, Michael, 63 Pomfret, John, 72 Porter, Katherine Anne, 374 Porter, Roy, 215 Portis, Charles, 368, 379–81

Postman, The (Brin), 362 Postman Always Rings Twice, The (Cain), 237 Powers, Tim, 236, 398 Prater Violet (Isherwood), 267 Preacher comic book series, 103 President, The (Asturias), 126–27 Preston, Richard, 236 Prévost, Abbé, 8–9 Price of Salt, The (Highsmith), 34 Proust, Marcel, 42–45 Provincial Lady Goes Further, The (Dela eld), 221 Provincial Lady in America, The (Dela eld), 221 Provincial Lady in London, The (Dela eld), 221 Provincial Lady in Russia, The (Dela eld), 221 Provincial Lady in Wartime, The (Dela eld), 221 Psychological Warfare (Linebarger), 148 Psychopathology of Everyday Life, The (Freud), 218 Pullman, Philip, 23 Pursuit of Love, The (Mitford), 4, 17–20, 84 Pushkin, Alexander, 185 Pynchon, Thomas, 172, 200–201, 383 Q Queen’s Gambit, The (Tevis), 237 Quiet American, The (Greene), 302–3 Quiroga, Horacio, 126 R

Race (Terkel), 325 Radiance of the King, The (Laye), 86 Ragged Dick (Alger), 252, 262–64 Raines, Howell, 325 Raising Demons (Jackson), 376 Rand, Ayn, 58, 204–5 Real Cool Killers, The (Himes), 226 Red and the Black, The (Stendhal), 256 Red Cavalry (Babel), 186 Rediscovery of Man, The (Smith), 148–49 Reed, Ishmael, 118 Re ections in a Golden Eye (McCullers), 374 Remarque, Erich Maria, 134–35, 158–60 Remembrance of Things Past. See In Search of Lost Time Renault, Mary, 4, 31–34 Rent Girl (Tea), 35 Republic (Plato), 203 Requiem for a Dream (Selby), 168 Return of History and the End of Dreams, The (Kagan), 178 Richardson, Samuel, 29 Riddley Walker (Hoban), 362 Riding the Iron Rooster (Theroux), 71–72 Ringworld (Niven), 148 Roa Bastos, Augusto, 126 Robinson, Alex, 102 Robinson, Kim Stanley, 205 Rock and a Hard Place, A (Johnson), 91 Roma Sub Rosa series (Saylor), 226

Room of One’s Own, A (Woolf), 196 Rouge of the North, The (Chang), 71 Roughing It (Twain), 382 Rubyfruit Jungle (Brown), 35 Rule, Ann, 368, 385–86 Rumi, 354 Rush (Wozencraft), 168 Rushdie, Salman, 333, 354 Russ, Joanna, 148 Russell, Mary Doria, 332, 349–50 S Saadawi, Nawal El, 354–55 Sabato, Ernesto, 126 Sage, Lorna, 106 Sag Harbor (Whitehead), 118 Said, Edward, 207 Said, Kurban, 41 Salamon, Julie, 268 Salih, Tayeb, 86 Saltykov-Shchedrin, M. E., 185–86 Sanctuary (Faulkner), 375 Satanic Verses, The (Rushdie), 333, 354 Saunders, George, 99, 128–29 Sayers, Dorothy, 226 Saylor, Steven, 226 Sayra ezadeh, Said, 106–7 Scanner Darkly, A (Dick), 168

Schaefer, Jack, 381 Schlereth, Thomas, 134, 156–58 Schulberg, Budd, 252, 264–66, 316 Sciascia, Leonardo, 226 Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (O’Malley), 103 Seabiscuit (Hillenbrand), 315–16 Sebald, W. G., 337 Second Sex, The (de Beauvoir), 196 Secret History, The (Tartt), 226–27 Sedaris, David, 216 Selby, Hubert, Jr., 168 Sel sh Gene, The (Dawkins), 286 Seven Gothic Tales (Dinesen), 81 Sexual Life of Catherine M., The (Miller), 12 Shaara, Je , 321 Shaara, Michael, 294, 319–21 Shadow & Claw (Wolfe), 147 Shah, Idries, 353–54 Shah, Tahir, 77 Shane (Schaefer), 381 Shaogong, Han, 71 Shattered Dreams (Spencer), 13 Shaw, George Bernard, 188, 223 Sheehan, Neil, 301–2 Sheldon, Alice Bradley, 148 Shelley, Mary, 360–61 Shirley, John, 362 Shock Doctrine, The (Klein), 171–72, 175–78 Shortcomings (Tomine), 102

“Short Happy Life of Francis Ma-comber, The” (Hemingway), 82 Short History of Byzantium, A (Norwich), 133, 137–39 Showalter, Dennis, 324 Shriek (VanderMeer), 399 Silences (Olsen), 277 Sinclair, Upton, 369 Singer, Peter, 283 Smith, Cordwainer (Linebarger pseud.), 148–49 Smith, Dodie, 213–14, 229–30 Smith, Peter, 337 Smith, Tom Rob, 236 Snow Geese, The (Fiennes), 282–83 Snow Leopard, The (Matthiessen), 332, 348–49 Society of the Muslim Brothers, The, 353 Soldiers of Salamis (Cercas), 293, 296–99 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 172, 182–85 Some Desperate Glory (Vaughan), 164 Song of Ice and Fire, A (Martin), 23 Song of Solomon (Morrison), 98, 115–16 Song of the Loon (Amory), 382 Sorrows of War, The (Ninh), 303–4 Soulless (Carriger), 398–99 Soul of a New Machine, The (Kidder), 287 Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois), 117 Southern Gates of Arabia, The (Stark), 77 Spang, Rebecca L., 63 Spanish Adventure (Lewis), 79 Sparrow, The (Russell), 332, 349–50

Speak Memory (Nabokov), 50–51, 67–69 Speed (Burroughs Jr.), 167 Spencer, Irene, 13 Spencer, Scott, 4, 25–26 Sportsman’s Sketches, A (Turgenev), 186 Standage, Tom, 287 Stark, Freya, 77 Stars My Destination, The (Bester), 147 Starting Out in the Evening (Morton), 277 Stead, Christina, 99, 122–23 Steele, Shelby, 172, 197–99 Stein, Gertrude, 64 Steinho , Johannes, 324 Stendhal, 256 Stephenson, Neal, 205 Sterling, Bruce, 398 Stevens, Jay, 135, 165–66 Stone, Robert, 236, 267, 302 Stories (Chekhov), 186 Storming Heaven (Stevens), 135, 165–66 Stranger Beside Me, The (Rule), 368, 385–86 Streeter, Sabin, 325 Street Without Joy (Fall), 301 Su s, The (Shah), 353–54 Sum (Eagleman), 368, 403–4 Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Feynman), 50, 65–67 Susann, Jacqueline, 266 Swimming-Pool Library, The (Holling-hurst), 35 Swimming to Cambodia (Gray), 51, 87–90

T Tailor’s Daughter, The (Graham), 41–42 Talented Mr. Ripley, The (Highsmith), 252, 257–58 Tale of Genji, The (Murasaki), 163 Tales from a Traveling Couch (Akeret), 220 Tales of the City (Maupin), 35 Tales to His Grandson (Gurdjie ), 341 Tartt, Donna, 226–27, 375 Taylor, Irene, 163 Tea, Michelle, 35 Tender Bar, The (Moehringer), 106 Tepper, Sheri, 361 Terkel, Studs, 324–25 Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Hardy), 29 Tevis, Walter, 237, 361 Tey, Josephine, 226 Thackeray, William, 29, 256 Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston), 117 Them (Gray), 107 There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby (Petrushev-skaya), 187 Theroux, Paul, 71–72 Three Trapped Tigers (Cabrera Infante), 127 They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, 86 Things Fall Apart (Achebe), 85 Third Policeman, The (O’Brien), 213, 227–28 Thirteen (Morgan), 236 This Land Is Their Land (Ehrenreich), 179

Thompson, Craig, 101 Thompson, Hunter S., 168 Thompson, Jim, 226 Three Musketeers, The (Dumas pere), 6 Thurber, James, 213, 215–17, 277 Thus Was Adonis Murdered (Caudwell), 213, 224–25 Time of Gifts, A (Fermor), 76 Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (Delany), 34 Tipping the Velvet (Waters), 13 Tiptree, James, Jr. (Sheldon pseud.), 148 Tobacco Road (Caldwell), 374 Today I Wrote Nothing (Kharms), 187 To Each His Own (Sciascia), 226 To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee), 373 Toklas, Alice B., 64 To Live (Hua), 71 Tolstoy, Leo, 256 Tomine, Adrian, 102 Tom Jones (Fielding), 255 Toole, John Kennedy, 373–74 Toomer, Jean, 117 Towers of Trebizond, The (Macaulay), 331, 338–39 Tower Stories (DiMarco), 325–26 To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Farmer), 147–48 Tram, Dang Thuy, 303 Travels with Herodotus (Kapuściński), 76 Travels with My Aunt (Greene), 13–14 Travels with Myself and Another (Gell-horn), 76 Tree of Smoke (Johnson), 302

Tremain, Rose, 41 Trick Is to Keep Breathing, The (Gallo way), 219 Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (Morris), 76 Trillin, Calvin, 63 True Grit (Portis), 368, 379–81 Tuchman, Barbara, 134, 143–45, 293–94, 306–7 Tummy Trilogy, The (Trillin), 63 Tunnel (Sabato), 126 Turgenev, Ivan, 186 Tutuola, Amos, 85 Twain, Mark, 382 Two Kinds of Decay, The (Manguso), 336 2666 (Bolaño), 128 U Unbelievable (Horn), 391–92 Underground America (Orner), 325 Under the Banner of Heaven (Krakauer), 332,355–57 Under the Skin (Faber), 368, 393–94 Unferth, Deb Olin, 60 Updike, John, 61 Utopia (More), 203 V Vagina Monologues, The (Ensler), 197 Valente, Catherynne M., 24

Valenzuela, Luisa, 126 Valley of the Dolls (Susann), 266 VanderMeer, Je , 24, 399 van der Post, Laurens, 76 van Gulik, Robert, 71 Vanity Fair (Thackeray), 29, 256 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 127 Vaughan, Edwin Campion, 164 Victorian America (Schlereth), 134, 156–58 Victorian Internet, The (Standage), 287 Video Night in Kathmandu (Iyer), 77 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A (Wollstonecraft), 196 Vineland (Pynchon), 172, 200–201 Visser, Margaret, 63 Voices from the Third Reich (Steinho , Pechel, and Showalter), 324 Voices of 1776 (Wheeler), 324 Voltaire, 134, 151–54 Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr., 74, 172, 190–92, 333, 359–60 W Wachtel, Chuck, 391 Wagner, Bruce, 267 Waldman, Ayelet, 105 Wallace, David Foster, 246–48 Waller, Robert James, 391 Walls, Jeannette, 105–6 Wang, Shuo, 72–73

Warlock (Hall), 383 Warlord of the Air (Moorcock), 398 Waters, Sarah, 13 Watership Down (Adams), 281 Watson, James, 286 Waugh, Evelyn, 214, 244–46 Weatherford, Jack, 134, 140–42 Wedding of Zein, The (Salih), 86 We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Jack-son), 368, 375–77 Weinberg, Steven, 285 Wellstone, Paul, 179 Welty, Eudora, 374 West, Nathanael, 266–67 West with the Night (Markham), 84 Wharton, Edith, 29, 252, 253–55 What Every Person Should Know About War (Hedges), 293, 295–96 “What I Believe” (Forster), 319 What I Saw at the Revolution (Noonan), 179 What Makes Sammy Run? (Schulberg), 252, 264–66 What’s the Matter with Kansas? (Frank), 178 What the Dead Know (Lippman), 226 What Was Asked of Us (Wood), 294, 322–23 Wheeler, Richard, 324 When Everything Changed (Collins), 197 When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Hayslip), 303 When Skateboards Will Be Free (Sayra ezadeh), 106–7 Where I’m Calling From (Carver), 336 White Bone, The (Gowdy), 281

Whitehead, Colson, 118 White Mughals (Dalrymple), 13 Widower’s House, The (Bayley), 346 Wilcox, James, 375 Wild Swans (Chang), 51, 69–70 Will, George, 173 Williams, John, 383 Willis, Connie, 134, 145–46 Willocks, Tim, 235 Will the Boat Sink the Water? (Chuntao and Guidi), 72 Wilsey, Sean, 106 Wilson, A. N., 345–46 Wilson, Robert Charles, 362 Winshaw Legacy, The (Coe), 172, 181–82 Winsor, Kathleen, 40 Winterson, Jeanette, 332, 342–44 Winter’s Tales (Dinesen), 276 Wise Blood (O’Connor), 333, 363–64 Wittgenstein’s Nephew (Bernhard), 368, 386–88 Wodehouse, P. G., 214, 230–31 Wolf, Naomi, 176, 197 Wolfe, Gene, 147 Wolfe, Tom, 168 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 196 Woman at Point Zero (El Saadawi), 355 Wonder Boys (Chabon), 276–77 Wood, Trish, 294, 322–23 Woods, Thomas E., Jr., 178–79

Woolf, Virginia, 196, 219 World War Z (Brooks), 326 Worm Ouroboros, The (Eddison), 24 Wozencraft, Kim, 167–68 Wrangham, Richard, 64 Wright, Richard, 117 Written on the Body (Winterson), 343 Wuthering Heights (Brontë), 29 Wyndham, John, 147 X Xinran, 72 Y Year of Magical Thinking, The (Didion), 106 Years with Ross, The (Thurber), 277 Your First Hamster (Smith), 337 Z Zimmer, Carl, 286 Zinky Boys (Alexievich), 324

Acknowledgments Thanks to our editors, Stephanie Meyers and Georgina Lay-cock, and our agent, Julia Lord. Thanks to Marianne R. Petit for the fantastic animations, and to Jacqueline Bronner for all the help with the Web site. Thanks for book suggestions go to Matthew Foley, Helen Trickett, Leonie Gombrich, Rhodri Hayward, Mark Simmons, Tim Paulson, Marisa Bowe, Barry Malzberg, Phyllis Kisch Schwindt, and Stacy Horn. Thanks for general support and suggestions to Lewis Mittelmark, Emily Mittelmark, and everyone at echonyc.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS SANDRA NEWMAN is the author of the novels Cake and The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, which was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, and a memoir, Changeling. She is the coauthor of How Not to Write a Novel. Her professions have ranged from academia to gambling. She currently lives in New York. HOWARD MITTELMARK is the author of the novel Age of Consent, and coauthor of How Not to Write a Novel. He has reviewed and written about books for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Hollywood Reporter, Kirkus Reviews, and other newspapers and magazines. He works as an editor in New York. “Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark” is the penname of Barrington Hewcott, the richest man in the world. Hewcott was born to a wealthy, eccentric father, who engaged the world’s nest experts as his tutors. By ten, he was versed in all the arts and sciences. He speaks all the world’s languages, and is trained in the ancient ghting techniques of the Orient. Hewcott is equally at home dining with royalty in a castle on the Amal Coast, shooting pool in a Bourbon Street dive, and ghting dinosaurs at the center of the Earth. He has been known by many names. During the years he devoted to ghting crime, he was known as “Batman and Robin.” He has published scienti c work as “Watson and Crick.” For a brief period in the seventies, he recorded as “Hall and Oates.” He maintains a palatial home on the top six oors of the Chrysler Building, with laboratory and gymnasium facilities, indoor waterfall, quarters for his men, and a jungle habitat. Read This Next is his second book.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

ALSO BY SANDRA NEWMAN AND HOWARD MITTELMARK How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide ALSO BY SANDRA NEWMAN Changeling, a Memoir Cake The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done ALSO BY HOWARD MITTELMARK Age of Consent

Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman have distilled their decades of experience in teaching, editing, writing, and reviewing ction into this smart, funny, casual, and completely authoritative guide. By combining humor and straightforward advice, they provide expert trouble-shooting that can be immediately put into practice to get any manuscript out of the slush pile and into the bookstores. “The teaching of creative writing just entered a whole new era…. Heavens, what a joy this book is.\" —Lynne Truss, bestselling author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Copyright HARPER READ THIS NEXT. Copyright © 2010 by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non- transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-02022-2 FIRST EDITION Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data     Newman, Sandra, 1965–    Read this next : 500 of the best books you’ll ever read / Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. – 1st ed.       p.    cm.    ISBN 978-0-061-85603-7    1. Best books. I. Mittelmark, Howard. II. Title.    Z1035.A1N49 2010    081—dc22 2010038510 10 11 12 13 14  OV/RRD  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1



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