"Show me what you read, and I will show you who you are." ---attributed on Facebook to Martin Luther King Jr.
Forget those wussy-ass memes about a mere ten or fourteen or twenty important books. That's not enough to wet the back of my throat on the way down, in terms of explaining the stories and stupidities, the histories and biographies and tracts and miscellaneous printed matter that has enriched my delightful romp of a life over the years. I'm posting a full hundred!
This post is inspired by a similar post made by Seanan McGuire a year or so ago on LiveJournal, about 100 books that rocked her world. My criteria are a little different from hers: I am focusing, not merely on delight and learning that I got from books, but on those books that most contributed to making me the magnificent bon vivant and specimen of laughing, thinking, rollicking, pensive, intellectual, snarky, epicurean, modest humanity whose posts you've come to enjoy and benefit from over the course of three generations. If you’ve known me at any point in my life, you’ve seen me enthralled by at least a couple of these. Have a look at the books on the menu below, and you'll have a pretty good idea of who I am, much more than you'd get from a list of music or movies or celebrity role models or things I've put on toast or whatever else is making the rounds these days. Enjoy, and good reading to you!
100. Monsieur Pamplemousse, by Michael Bond
Undercover Michelin Guide restaurant critic gets entangled in mysteries and naughty situations. The perfect trifecta of food, sex and crime. And the chapters from the point of view of the critic's dog are priceless!
99. The Penny Ferry, by Rick Boyer
You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only option you have. Part domesticated, nebbishy everyman, part testosterone fantasy, Boyer's Boston oral surgeon has the most thrilling mid-life crises ever. This one, the best in the series, involves a hunt for what may or may not be photographic proof that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.
98. American Gothic by Robert Bloch
This may not be Bloch's best known work, but it's one that got me at an impressionable age, and that sent chills down my spine. Bloch pretty much introduced me to the horror genre.
97. A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter Miller
One of the strangest and most eerie dystopian futures I've found to date. It made me put the book down to think frequently.
96. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
If Bloch introduced me to horror, Christie introduced me to classic detective stories where (unlike in Sherlock Holmes) the reader has all the information needed to solve the case. Ackroyd is one of the greatest mysteries ever written.
95. Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin
I'm white. I've read plenty of fiction and nonfiction about the evils of racism, but it took Griffin's true account of tinting his skin and traveling in the deep south at the height of Jim Crow, to really make me feel it.
94. Keys to the INNER Universe by Bill Pearl
93. Seasoned America, by Chef Paul Prudhomme
That's right, I included a workout book and a cookbook on the list. Shuttup. These books shaped my approach to cooking and exercising, two activities that definitely did a lot to make me who I am today.
92. Bitter Gold Hearts, by Glenn Cook
Cook's Garrett series was my introduction to urban fantasy, at a time when I was already addicted to hard boiled PI books. It's half past Garrett's hangover, and the day is only going to get worse--he just learned he's going to have to go to the Elf Quarter of Los Angeles to solve the case.
91. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume
The only good thing my Evil 4th Grade teacher ever did for me was to read this book out loud. It helped me survive what, even today, I consider to be the single most painful year of my life so far.
90. The Jungle Books, by Rudyard Kipling
Not only a great set of stories, only about half of which have to do with Mowgli, but the spoken-word record was my first lesson in storytelling.
89. Go East, Young Man, by William O. Douglas
The autobiography of America's greatest Supreme Court Justice, part one, consisting of his years before he was put on the court. I wanted to be like him.
88. The Chill, by Ross MacDonald
Lew Archer is like Phillip Marlowe, only better. My favorite classic trenchcoated-detective-in-old-Los-Angeles tale.
87. The House With a Clock in its Walls, by John Bellairs
A children's thriller I used to beg my dad to read to me. The scene where the kid tries to impress his peer by proving it really is possible to raise the dead is just creepy.
86. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
Wonderful on many levels. Had me pointing at random things and saying “That is a hat”, “Please draw me a sheep”, and imperiously commanding people to do what they were about to do anyway for several days afterwards. They made an opera about it that my kid loved.
85. The Phantom Banjo by Elizabeth Scarborough
A novel about the importance of folk music as a force for fighting the devil, who pretty much takes the forms I always suspected he took.
84. Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card
Card before he went crazy. I've turned to it for comfort often, simply as a guide to dealing with horrible people, from bad teachers to bad church ladies to bad employers. there's a bigger plot, but the central family's skills at coping with everyday nastiness is what this is about as far as I'm concerned.
83. An Artificial Night, by Seanan McGuire
October Daye, investigator to the court of the Fae, takes on Blind Michael's Hunt. The third in a series, chosen for the incredible courage shown by the heroine, and the unbearable creepiness of the villain. Mess with October, if you’re brave and stupid, but whatever you do, don’t mess with children under her protection!
82. What's the Worst that Could Happen?, by Donald E. Westlake
Part of the most brilliant series of crime caper books ever written. I've taken to reading Dortmunder books on Christmas day, because I can think of few things that make me feel better than the adventures of a gang that fears Murphy's Law more than the criminal code. The parts with the man-mountain Tiny are the best.
81. The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights), by Bill Pullman
I'd never heard of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy until the movie came out. Then I was like, OMG, where has this been all my life?
80. Miss Manners Rescues Civilization, by Judith Martin
America needs this book. The more people who read it (and who read Miss Manners' etiquette column), the better we'll all get along. She eats Dear Abby and Ann Landers for breakfast, and then says “Excuse me”.
79. The Specialty of the House, and Other Stories, by Stanley Ellin
Some of the most masterful short, dark tales I've ever seen. The everyday real horror is the creepiest.
78. The Oz Books, by L. Frank Baum
One of few cases in which I feel like I have to name the set, not one book in a series. They're all one to me. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is definitely not the best, maybe because it was eclipsed by the movie. The later ones are much better.
77. The Hamlet, by William Faulkner
The first in the trilogy about the Snopes clan. It was so much easier to understand the Deep South, once I understood the Snopes clan, especially now that Mississippi has started sending Snopeses to Congress. They make the supporting cast of "Deliverance" look downright genteel.
76. The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstien Veblen
Together with my grandfather's IWW background, this describes most of the reasons I will never vote Republican. Or think of the little asshole on the Monopoly board as "cute".
75. Someplace to be Flying, by Charles deLint.
To this day, when I'm at my most exuberant, I can be heard to joyfully yell, "Peaches with bacon! Biscuits and jellybeans!"
74. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
It is to comic book superheroes what "The Waste Land" is to naughty limericks. I was lucky enough to read it cold, with no idea what it was about. It knocked me off my feet.
73. Death Qualified, by Kate Wilhelm
One of the weirdest court thrillers I've ever encountered. Chaos theory and "Flowers for Algernon" meet the criminal defense bar. And it's set in Eugene, Oregon!
72. The Completely Mad Don Martin
the list wouldn't be complete without a reference to Mad Magazine, savior of my sanity during my troubled childhood and early adolescence. Don Martin's sound effects alone are worth the price of the anthology.
71. Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley
One of the great horror anthologies of all time. Includes works by many great writers, some of them not normally associated with horror. Edward Gorey, Robert Bloch, and Stephen King, who are on this list elsewhere, contributed to it.
70. Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt
A fascinating, true, look into the face of evil, personified here in the form of a poor dumb schmuck who says he was just following orders, and who probably never figured he had any other choice.
69. Vendetta, by Michael Dibdin
Second in the series about Aurelio Zen, Italian police detective who has the entire resources of the government arrayed...against him. Incredible character and atmosphere, and an ingenious whodunnit that WILL fool you.
68. Rumpole of the Bailey, by John Mortimer
Between the books and the equally wonderful Leo McKern TV series, Rumpole is one of my oldest friends in fiction. During crises of conscience, I have therapeutic imaginary conversations with him over a (thankfully) imaginary bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment.
67. The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Not a Vorkosigan book, but with an equally wonderful role model of a hero, in a fantasy world with magic, plotters of intrigue and no fewer than five Gods. If you ever find me just staring at a pebble I found, you’ll know why.
66. The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew, by Robert Bolt.
A play. A delightful romp with knights, dragons, sorcerers, impossible quests, and a baron who is equal parts Snidely Whiplash and Squire Western. I directed it twice and succeeded once.
65. Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo
A play. An Arlecchino prototype takes on the corruption of a modern fascist police state in a role I was BORN to play. They do everything but whale on each other with sausages and baguettes.
64. Growing Up Absurd, by Paul Goodman
One of the nonfiction books that kept me sane during the early part of my adolescence. It proved to me that there did exist grownups who understood what I was going through and how fisked up the crazy world out there was.
63. The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon
One of the most serious, compelling and accurate treatments of a person with autism I've encountered so far. And it does not even devolve into a Very Special Episode.
62. The Innocence of Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton
Chesterton and C.S. Lewis are the two Christian writers who have come closest to making me understand in a positive way what all the fuss is about. Every Father Brown story is not only a clever puzzle but a mouthful of spiritual food for thought. The only detective I know of who actually gets away with the use of "spiritual insight into the human condition" to solve crimes.
61. Growing Up, by Russell Baker
My only complaint about Russell Baker's autobiography is that he completely spoiled me for Garrison Keillor, by doing every aspect of it so much better. All the folksy charm, the down home miracles, the erudite humor that gains power by being restrained--it's all here, without the heavy syrup.
60. 'Salem's Lot, by Stephen King
I still read all of King's books, and I've loved many of them. I feel like I’m required to represent him with The Stand, or It or The shining, like everyone else does, but really, this one, warts and all, had a bigger effect on me than those epics. I got more out of the panorama and individual vignettes of this one small town's destruction than I did out of the equally panoramic destruction of Jack Torrance, or the larger town of Derry, or of the entire United States. This was simply the right scale. Plus, it came first.
59. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Little nuggets of wisdom from the greatest of the Roman Emperors. I come back to it for sustenance again and again (baby back ribs for the soul, with plenty of sauce) He really felt what the ostentatious Christians of today only pretend to feel.
58. The Long Lavender Look by John D. MacDonald
I could have picked any in MacDonald's Travis McGee series. They're almost all the same story, with a different plot. The phenomenal thing about the McGee books is not the crimes but McGee's digressions on everything good and bad about American society.
57. Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren
What could be better than a girl with her own house, a pet monkey, a large supply of gold, endless capacity for playing, and superpowers? I used to long for a friend like Pippi, and probably first got my affinity for strong women from this book.
56. The Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler
This one sent chills down my spine and hope back up, sometimes on the same page. This is where America could be heading, if we don't do something to reverse course soon. If it heads there, I'm going to do everything I can to be like Lauren.
55. The Thurber Carnival, by James Thurber.
Cartoons, unmitigated silliness, and stories that give voice to a subculture of American Beta males too shy to speak for themselves. Another great writer who put Lake Wobegon to shame before it was even invented.
54. Farewell, my Lovely, by Raymond Chandler
OK, I lied. Ross MacDonald doesn't really kick Chandler's ass in the LA trenchcoat department. A book like Farewell, my Lovely operates on too many levels for that. Beneath the decent mystery puzzle is some of the best common-English prose-poetry this side of Robert Penn Warren, a damning commentary on the sociology of rich and poor, and a demonstration of what real courage and integrity mean.
53. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
Yes, it's dauntingly long, but worth it. From Marcus Aurelius to the last gasp of Constantinople is over 1200 years, with a ton of useful information on almost every subject there is in between. The dystopian actual past can warn and inform at least as much as several dystopian imaginary futures.
52. The Library Policeman, by Stephen King
Booga-Booga, kiddies! Always return your library books on time! Too short to be an actual novel, this one appears in King's Four Past Midnight along with three other novellas. The other three range from forgettable to irritatingly bad; The Library Policeman is the single scariest piece of fiction I have ever read. I envision the movie version starring an actor known mostly for nebbishy comedy, like Rick Moranis or Albert Brooks. The audience wouldn't even know what hit them.
51. Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett
Much more than an interlocking set of great mystery puzzles set in a Montana mining town many miles from nowhere, Hammett's underrated masterpiece of ham-fisted philosophy is the definitive refutation of the notion of pure capitalism and the virtue of unmitigated self-interest and competition as some sort of ideal.
50. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
As far as I'm concerned, Goldman's book invented a new genre shared by Stardust and a handful of other tongue-in-cheek romances that satirize and glorify themselves simultaneously. The movie is more often quoted by geeks than anything else this side of Monty Python and Star Wars.
49. Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Excellent undercover journalism. The author goes undercover and gets jobs as a waitress, a cleaning lady, and a Wal-Mart worker, to find out if it is even possible to make ends meet on minimum wage. A canary in the coal mine for anyone concerned about the New Feudalism.
48. The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein
Klein exposes how the assholes at the top have manipulated economic disasters all over the world to keep populations in desperate poverty and reform-oriented governments helpless. Written during the second Bush Administration, it accurately predicted Bush’s TARP bank bailout, the emasculation of the Obama Administration, and the take-no-prisoners behavior of Republicans following 2010.
47. A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
American history as told from the perspective of Native Americans, slaves, women, the working class, and other people deemed not to really count in traditional history books. We’re not in “George Washington never told a lie, and the South was all about sovereignity” territory here.
46. Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
Vowell is, of all living writers I have not yet met, the one I would most like to have cocktails and conversation with. Klein, Gibbon and Zinn make history important and relevant; Vowell makes it cool. This book is her trek across America in search of quirky facts about three assassinated Presidents and their killers, but consider this a recommendation of her entire set of writings.
45. London: The Biography, by Peter Ackroyd
From Buckingham Palace to Stepney, and from ancient times to the present, Ackroyd knows every age and corner of one of the most fascinating, centuries-old cities in the world. There are individual chapters devoted to clubs and pubs through history, to beggars and lunatics, to architecture, churches and governments, to prostitutes, cuisines, flowers, noises and stenches, to fires and plagues, roads, monuments, to theaters and buskers. Chapters about every neighborhood in London, and another one devoted to the spaces between them. A chapter about the Thames and a chapter about the fog. A chapter about the darkness and ones about sunrise and sunset. Eight chapters about crime and punishment, from the law courts to Newgate Prison to the sensational murders to the gentlemen outlaws whose escapades made them more loved by the people than the most upright members of Parliament. A chapter comparing the Great Fire of the 17th century with the blitz of WWII. This book is about everything.
44. Amphigorey, by Edward Gorey
This collection is one of the first books I can remember having. Gorey’s stories and illustrations are pretty much one of a kind. I tell people that “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” was my first alphabet book, and they say, “Yeah, that makes sense,” in a way that implies they now understand why I’m a little bit crazy. I used to have endless fun with “The Bug Book” and “The Wuggly Ump” while trying to make sense out of “The Willowdale Handcar”. I remember flummoxing my parents by asking what the vocabulary words in “The Fatal Lozenge” meant, and what exactly was happening in “The Curious Sofa”. Ah, sweet memories...
43. The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
Wonderful, wonderful darkly comic definitions. BORE: One who talks when you wish him to listen. VOTE: The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. It’s like that all the way through. This is another one I had at an early age and had fun and enlightenment asking my parents to explain the joke.
42. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Possibly the world’s greatest funny sci-fi book. I made some great new friends in my mundane school when a version of it was made into a TV series, and a lot of kids who had kept their affinity for Monty Python humor and space adventures to themselves realized they weren’t alone. It’s one of those books I come back to again and again, always finding something new. The last time I looked at it, I was struck by the resemblance of the title character to a Kindle full of downloaded encyclopedias, and the horrifying speculation about the cosmos-threatening results if Eddie and GLaDOS were to somehow mate and have offspring. And yes, I ranked it right here on purpose.
41. Impro, by Keith Johnstone
Of the myriad acting, movement and voice-over training books I’ve read, I picked this one because it’s about much more than what to do on stage. It is about performing at life and about making your world consistently interesting when you don’t have a script and are not in control of what the people you’re with are about to do. The chapters on blocking vs. acceptance and on changing status relative to others can change how you look at anything at all.
40. The Book of Childe Ballads
Corbies, selkies, King Henry and his monster...these are the songs that make up Celtic tradition. Back in the old days, we didn’t have no crack dealers to worry about meeting while going uphill both ways to school. We used to meet the Devil, and we knew it was just a matter of time before he stopped falling for the “Bet you can’t shrink yourself small enough to fit inside this walnut” trick. And when we got home, our stepmothers would kill us and throw our bodies in the wier, where our sisters would find our bones and make harps out of them. Not only do they tell creepy stories, but they’re in public domain and eminently filkable.
39. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
I first learned the concepts of “short shrift” and “jumping to Conclusions”, as well as the magic of words and numbers, from Juster’s wonderful tale of Milo, Tock and the Humbug and their journey from The Doldrums to the Castle in the Air. I don’t think I’ve had a bored afternoon since.
38. The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
The almost nonsensical stream of consciousness spiel of the developmentally disabled brother Benjy is hard to get into, but worth it once you realize what is happening. This one knocked me down in part because the writing style met me on a level I hadn’t seen before, and partly because for once the protagonists were infinitely more complex and compelling than the two-dimensional bad brother. Usually, it’s the other way around.
37. Danny, Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
Sure I loved Willy Wonka, the giant peach, and the fox. But this one was the one I kept begging my dad to read to me, over and over. There’s nothing magic in it, except the imagination of the boy who lives with his father in a gypsy wagon next to a rural gas station. It’s about storytelling, and class warfare, and more than anything, it’s about the perfect father, the kind of father I want to be.
36. Meet Mr. Mulliner, by P.G. Wodehouse
Wodehouse was the first “grownup” author (defined as, the first author whose books I had to go looking for in the regular fiction section of the library) I ever read, inspired by a TV series that was heavily weighted toward the Mulliner stories. Mr. Mulliner has dozens of relatives, all of whom have a bizarre problem standing between them and marriage to the sweetheart of their dreams. I picked this one over Jeeves and Wooster because these stories tend to end happily for everyone, while the Jeeves stories tend to involve getting the protagonist out of (admittedly unsuitable) romantic situations, and Jeeves usually solves the problem by unfairly making Wooster appear to be even more of a dunderhead than he really is.
35. Skinny Legs and All, by Tom Robbins
Tom Robbins is the master of the sentence, and a part of the reason I decided to make the Pacific Northwest my home in the first place. This story takes place mostly in NYC, and involves the conflicts between Arabs and Jews, between man and woman, between football and erotic dance, and between a Greek Chorus that includes an anthropomorphic can of beans, spoon and dirty sock. And that’s one of the more grounded of his plots.
34. The Short Stories of Saki
People joke about Edward Gorey having warped my childhood; to the extent that anything I read at an impressionable age actually warped me, it was Saki. I got it too young. Some tales, like “The Open Window”, are known for a quick twist of an ending and are ingenious and harmless; the collection as a whole can be very bitter and are full of nastier endings than the participants deserve, especially the ones involving vengeful Pan-type nature gods. I lived in a house in the forest at the time, and was skittish around nature for a while, and even more skittish around people.
33. A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt
Both the play and the Paul Scofield movie, about the life of sir Thomas More, fascinated me with the true example of a great man who stuck to his principles and his integrity at the cost of everything he had, including, at the end, his very life. One of the greatest moments in the play, one that significantly changed my political philosophy, is More’s reply to Roper, the man who would cut down all of the laws to get at the Devil: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
32. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
Another one of those not-too-long books that seems to be a whimsical set of vignettes, and turns out to be about everything in the world and can mean a million things depending on how you squint at it. When I was in high school, I read pretty much all that Vonnegut had written up to that point, and won an award for an essay on Cat’s Cradle. My English teacher, who believed that nothing was actual literature that wasn’t at least 50 years old, was furious. To this day, I sigh at Vonnegut’s short poem: Fish got to swim, Bird got to fly, Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why? Fish got to stop, Bird got to land, Man got to tell himself he understand.
31. The Illuminati Papers, by Robert Anton Wilson
Wilson and Robert Shea together wrote the cult classic Illuminatus trilogy, which almost but not quite made my top 100. The Illuminati Papers is a collection of nonfiction essays, poems, interviews and utter nonsense, some of which is ostensibly by and from the point of view of characters from the trilogy. The overall message is one of infinite hope for a world that can get bigger and funnier every day, if you’re smart enough to let it. Literary references inspired me to take my first look at works by James Joyce, Raymond Chandler, Alestair Crowley, John Lilly and Beethoven.
30. Flashman, by George MacDonald Frasier
First in a series. Flashman is the indefensible, cowardly bully in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and Frasier has taken that character as a springboard to write historical novels about almost every major military conflict of the Queen Victoria era, from the Charge of the Light Brigade to Harper’s Ferry to Khartoum to Little Bighorn, with detours into places like Sarawak and Madagascar (I howled in agony when Frasier died, because he never got around to the epic US Civil War adventure referred to in passing in some of the other books). Flashman, whose one redeeming feature is his apparent unabashed willingness to portray himself warts and all as he writes his memoirs in retirement, spends every book lying, wenching, stealing, and quaking in fear when the guns go off, has hair-raising escapes worthy of Indiana Jones, and walks away with praise and honors from a foolishly grateful nation every time. The most despicable antihero I’ve ever loved.
29. Kind and Usual Punishment, by Jessica Mitford
Required reading for anyone involved in the criminal justice system, and especially for anyone involved in prisons and the death penalty. They put on a mask and speak piously about just deserts and deterrence, but Mitford, second only to Molly Ivins as the greatest and most readable muckraker of the 20th century, does her research thoroughly and leaves no reasonable doubt as to the system’s existence as a tool to stomp the poor, the black, and the otherwise unpopular. Given the subject matter, it’s surprising that such an expose can actually be fun to read.
28. Working, by Studs Terkel
Terkel’s books of interviews with ordinary people, telling their stories in their own words, are national and international treasures. This one, about how people (actors, nurses, waitstaff, gravediggers, businessmen, postal workers, hookers, farmers, you name it) talking about their jobs, was the first one I read, having seen the musical and staggered outside to contemplate life, the universe and everything, under the stars. For a long time, whenever the phone would ring, I would say, “If that’s Studs Terkel, tell him I’ve got something to say!”
27. Give Me Liberty, by Gerry Spence
The single greatest political manifesto I’ve ever read. Everyone else in America seems to be intentionally blind to either the soul-sucking effect of spending one’s life in need of a corporate master to pay them wages, or of the dangers of relying on the government to do anything right. Spence, and to my knowledge, only Spence, gets it right, exposes what’s wrong, and has suggestions for creating a civilized America in which people are free to do what they want to do, and to be who they need to be.
26. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Because everybody wants to be like Atticus Finch, and to have a childhood friend like Scout. Almost every attorney I know claims to have been influenced into the profession by either the book or the Gregory Peck movie. Heck, a lot of non-attorneys, too.
25. The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis
See The Innocence of Father Brown, above. Lewis is one of very few Christian theological writers who have come close to selling me on the whole souls and spirituality thing, and Screwtape is the one that gave me the most to think about, in the words of an experienced devil mentoring a young hopeful in the art of soul-corruption and how mortal humans are led to “fall”. Even without religion, it’s an effective warning and a guidebook to care of the soul by negative example. I’m told there exists an audio recording by John Cleese. I would love to hear it if this is true, but have never found it.
24. The Day I Became an Autodidact, by Kendall Hailey
At about the same time I was on the east coast starting my journey of learning what I wanted to learn, a girl on the west coast was doing the same, except that she wrote an autobiography about it. And her love of reading was as quirky as mine! I was alone no longer! Hailey is one of two authors so far who I cared enough to write to via the publisher to tell them what their book meant to me, and the only one who actually responded. We were pen pals for about five years afterwards, and I sent her Christmas cards for a few years after that. And no, she's not on FaceBook or online anywhere, as far as I can tell.
23. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Hands down, this epic satire of the End Times, in which all tapes left in cars eventually transform into "Best of Queen", and biker wannabes decide to become the Four Annoyances of the Apocolypse and fight over which one has to be "No-Alcohol Lager" is my favorite book to read out loud, with the voice of Edmund Blackadder as the minor devil and Graham Chapman in stiff officer mode as the minor angel, who join forces to defeat the foreordained end of the world.
22. The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy
Of all three-hanky tragedies, this one moved me the most. In fact, it still made me cry the fourth time I read it. The main character does something awful in chapter one, spends the next twenty years redeeming himself twenty times over, and still ends up suffering tortures I wouldn't wish on the Koch brothers. as do almost all of the other main characters, none of whom is a villain and yet all of whom keep hurting each other almost by accident. Hardy was a master of tragedy, but Mayor Henchard was almost personal.
21. The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain
Even Twain's novels tended to break down into several self-contained episodes. He was at his biting, satiric best when he kept it short. Some tales, like "Cannibalism in the Cars" might have been among the best SNL sketches, had he wrote at a later time. Others, like "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" and "The Mysterious Stranger" were masterpieces of bitterness that all but forced you to look into a mirror as they said, "No it's not just those other hypocrites I'm talking about, but you too!" The amazing thing is that the best and worst aspects of the American character, that he focused on like a laser, exist even more so today.
20. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the Great American Novel. It has dozens of passages—some on almost every page—that make me stop and pause to contemplate the beauty of language as used even by not-too-bright people and plain-spoken political professionals. The themes stretch to just about every aspect of public and private life, values and ethics. The central theme, to the extent there is one, is of historical interconnectedness and consequences of actions that ripple to the farthest corners of one’s life. Just read it.
19. Free to Be You and Me, by Marlo Thomas and Friends
One of very few social consciousness projects that set out to change the way children thought, and actually worked for most of us who read it. My generation read it because it was fun, and we didn't even realize it was telling us something different from what our parents had been told about how girls and boys, or white and black people were supposed to relate to each other or what we were expected to do because of the way we were born. Some of it took longer to overcome generations of ingrained prejudice than other parts, but compared to what the right wing has been fighting to bring back ever since the 1970s, it's like breathing air vs. breathing methane. I still have my copy to read to my children, and yes, the songs have been a source of parody tunes to this day.
18. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven Covey
17. Awaken the Giant Within, by Anthony Robbins
That's right, I included "self improvement" books. Go ahead and laugh if you must, but if this is about the books that made me who I am, the list would be incomplete without them. I used to read dozens of this kind of book, back in the days when I believed I was a bad person who needed to change everything about me and be like someone else, and these two books had a profound effect on my thinking. Covey made me see human interaction in a new and useful way, and Robbins showed me some ways to change my state of mind and get out of bad places, using some of my favorite toys I already had--words. I also read a whole lot of what I found to be useless and even counterproductive crap, that may have worked miracles for someone else, and so the biggest lesson is that there is no one right answer, but that you need to find what works for you.
16. The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Catcher in the Rye almost made this list, except that, even though I used to carry that maroon paperback around in my pocket, I didn't really get anything from it. In fact, I was being what Holden Caulfield would call a phony. Among the books that got me out of that were Paul Goodman, above, and Emerson, especially the essays on Nature and Self Reliance, which in turn led me to Thoreau and Walt Whitman, and the beginnings of the idea, in my late adolescence, of what it means to be a person with a soul, an American, a citizen, and (in my words), one whose path is that of the Frosted Mini Wheat, not content to take one side when both sides have something good about them. I am large, I contain multitudes. Some books let you walk away thinking you've found the answers. This one at least got me asking the questions.
15. The Essays of Montaigne
This was my father's favorite book of all time (or, at least, tied with the Oxford English Dictionary, which I disappointed dear old dad by never developing a taste for just grazing in at bedtime like he did). He read it like some people read the Bible. It kept him humble and open-minded. I've gone through it over and over and have utterly failed to pigeonhole Montaigne as Liberal or Conservative or Stoic or Epicurean or whatever--he just wrote what he thought, and was known more for the things he wasn't sure he believed than what he did believe. I can't read his words without hearing my father's voice at its most gentle, detached, questioning and wondering; qualities my father persuaded me were worthy of a good person. these days, I think of the essays as the first, offline, blog. Think about it.
14. Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
I lied. All the King's Men is not the Great American novel, so much as it is tied with Heller for the honor. This was the first time I read something that had me laughing and crying and going "OMG I don't believe he wrote that shit", and found myself getting credit for reading "great literature" at the same time. It was also the book that first actually brought home to me, the way "The Emperor's New Clothes" did not, that one of the greatest weapons against war and tyranny was the exposure of the absolutely ridiculous side of it, followed by laughing at the evil until it withers and dies of malnourishment. I've never thought of the military the same way since.
13. Prometheus Rising, by Robert Anton Wilson
Definitely the most novel, original, and mind-bending approach to human psychology I've ever encountered. Wilson described himself as a "guerilla ontologist", by which he meant that he salted most of his writings with hoaxes, jokes and lies, to encourage readers to not just blindly accept what they found in a book. His ideas range from the obvious (Rulers have a burden of omniscience even as they surround themselves with subordinates who feed them only the information they think the rulers want to hear, and SNAFU ensues) to the bizarre (the last few of his eight-circuit model of human consciousness). These days, I find myself wanting to cry when I think back on his optimistic predictions of the ways in which drugs as therapy, sex as therapy, heightened intelligence and space migration were about to make most of the human race evolve exponentially.
12. Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
I hesitated to include a book deep within a series, that depends so much on what came in the books before it, but Mirror Dance is so good I had to do it. Warrior's Apprentice, below, is fun to read. This one is not fun. It is scary, and tragic, and terrifying, and some of the things that happen to Mark early and late in the story, made me put the book down and howl out loud, and then sit twitching before I could continue, because Bujold had found things in my own mind that I was hiding from, and written them into a best-seller. And yet I kept coming back for more. And in spite of all the horror, the overall effect is uplifting and life-affirming.
11. The Lessons of History, by Will and Ariel Durant
The Durants wrote a huge, 11-volume survey-history of Europe/Russia/Middle East/North Africa, with emphasis not just on wars and kings and big events, but on advancements in thought, art, literature and manners. Having gone from ancient Sumeria to Waterloo, imagine an epilogue beginning, "And the moral of this story is...", and you have this small but wisdom-filled volume about what we can learn from a broad look at the way various political, economic and philosophical experiments have worked out whenever and wherever they have been tried. Capitalists, communists, monarchists, egalitarians, militarists, liberals and conservatives will all find their favorite fishbowls shattered. This is just about facts, not ideology.
10. Still Life With Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins
As with most Robbins, the plot is thankfully secondary. This one has a lot to do with the design of a pack of cigarettes, which would hardly be inspirational to anyone but Robbins. The amazing part is the sensuality of language. Lying on the couch with this book, I found my body actually writhing in involuntary spasms of pleasure because the writing was so good. And it wasn't even about sex. Not that part, anyway...
9. Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?, by Molly Ivins
The journalist who best combined readability and thoroughly accurate muckraking, ever. Her introduction to Texas essay alone is one of the best journalistic pieces I've ever seen, and I'm still not sure whether it's grounds for amusement or horror. Probably both. Ivins was one of very few nationally recognized American columnists who did something other than parrot conservative beltway spin fiction as truth, and she had fun doing it and coined a quotable phrase with every column. She made me realize that certain limitations the profession imposes on itself are better off gone, and in fact only exist if we let them...and now that she's gone, I've all but lost interest in op-ed pages, and I've had to turn to blogs and The Daily Show for sustenance instead. Ivins completely spoiled me for any others.
8. Lamb (the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal), by Christopher Moore
Moore is a national treasure. This story is a retelling of the Jesus myth focusing on a buddy road trip to the Orient in search of the three Wise Men who might tell Christ what the Son of God is supposed to actually do. The kings are, respectively, a Confucian, a Buddhist and a Hindu, and the two friends' adventures studying under them are not just split-your-sides funny; they also point at the tenets that these eastern belief systems have in common with Christianity by speculating how Jesus might have been influenced by them. This is the only version of the Gospel that had me crying at the death of Jesus.
7. How to Argue and Win, Every Time, by Gerry Spence
This sounds at first like a book on "how to be an asshole". It is not. In fact, the early chapters about arguing in court are almost mere introduction to the real meat, which is about communicating your needs and concerns to your loved ones, especially to children, without being an asshole and losing cherished relationships in the interest of "being right". Winning is about realizing and getting what you really want, which is generally something other than an angry spouse, traumatized children, and a zone of war for your home....and Argument is about effectively showing why these things mean so much to you, which is generally done other than by coming across as a pure-logic robot or an aggressive jerk. Spence shows us the argument as an art form, even a healing art form, instead of the crude weapon we so often see.
6. From Dawn to Decadence, by Jacques Barzun
This is a much different scope of history from what the Durants present, more global, ultimately more pessimistic, and more inclined to digress to certain locations and people who may appear on the fringe at first but which turn out to be representative of something much bigger. From Luther's 95 theses to "Western Civ has got to go", with sidebars on Brillat-Savarin, Dorothy Sayers, 18th Century London and 19th Century Chicago, we see western culture as savored by a real connoisseur, one with a warning that we may have passed our zenith, and a message that it doesn't have to be this way.
5. Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
The first time I read it, in my joyful college days, it was the original literary Delightful Romp, and I followed the adventures of the main character in utter absorption. Several years later, I read it again in an attempt to cheer me up during a period of deep bitterness, in which I felt unloved and unwanted by everybody and felt vague cravings for revenge on the whole world, which was dumping on me. At that time, I was horrified to discover that my feelings had more relation to those of the contemptible character Blifil than with the hero I had loved so the first time. That reading may have helped to inspire me away from a very dark life path and back to a place of relative light and love and whimsical sanity. If the person I've become over the years strikes you even remotely as a contribution toward human goodness, this book is a part of how it happened.
4. Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart
Hughart's adventures of Master Li, the sage with the slight flaw in his character, and his sidekick Number Ten Ox, achieve the wonderful effect of simultaneously satirizing and glorifying his world, "an Ancient China that never was". It has hair-raising adventure, ridiculous situations, tender, heartbreaking romance, and the kind of wisdom only an inscrutable old master with a flying windmill kick and an endless capacity for drink can provide. Read the final chapter on a clear evening, like I did--that's where every episode of the wild and wacky romp comes together with an effect you have to read to experience. I will never forget the long walk I took after reading the last page, contemplating the stars.
3. The Warrior's Apprentice, by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Did this book have an influence on me? Let me think...out of all possibilities, what did I choose for my online identity, again? Who is the only author included three times on this list? Yes, I'd say Warrior's Apprentice had some wee impact. There are earlier plots in the Vorkosigan series, involving Aral and Cordelia, but this is the first book with Miles and Admiral Naismith. Miles, whose growth is stunted by an in utero assassination attempt, whose bones break in strong winds, but who raises everyone around him by never being small. Miles with his multiple identities, faster-than-light mind and heroic women in his life. Miles, the headache of all bureaucrats, whose life is presented over the volumes as both an example and a warning, sometimes for the same thing, and who, as the blurb on my edition points out, "first had to conquer himself. After that, the Universe was easy." If you haven't yet read the Vorkosigan books, I envy you. Because you're going to have the time of your life!
2. A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
To be honest, no individual classic philosopher had that much impact on my thinking. Most of the ones I agreed with, like Aristotle and Spinoza, were too dense and difficult to really incorporate into my thoughts, and most of the really readable ones, like Plato and Descartes, didn't have much to say to me that seemed like an accurate map of the universe. Some, like Rousseau and Nietzche, were amusing to read but dangerous to imitate, and some, like Hegel, were both thick and unpersuasive. Fortunately, Bertrand Russell, one of the most persuasive and readable of the moderns, wrote an amazing book about all of them, and his commentary on 2500 years of philosophical focuses, their achievements and errors, had a profound effect on my views on philosophy, history, and happiness. It's not a substitute for reading the originals, but it's a great help in understanding and evaluating what is considered the greatest thought in world history.
1. Gargantua and Pantagrueal, by Francois Rabelais, translated by Jacques LeClercq
The translation is crucial--read the LeClercq version! Most people, when they read Rabelais at all, are given translations by Urquhardt or other dusty academics who make the all time king of robust Silennic comedy--ridiculous on the outside, deeply enlightening on the inside--about as fun as reading Shakespeare. You're aware that it is "great literature", and you understand the wordplay, but you hardly ever laugh out loud, and the language barrier between old and new English is like breathing low-oxygen air. LeClercq's modern English translation--with pictures!--breathes life into the work! Rabelais has as many different words for sex and flatulence as the Inuit are said to have for snow, and LeClercq translates all of those words, making synonyms up when necessary, resulting in a bawdy, lusty, Big Gulp from the fountain of life, with full credit for reading The Great Books, and important discussions on most scholarly subjects and works up to Rabelais's time, variations on old fables, and satires and affirmations of things you may not have known you knew. It's funnier, of course, if you've actually read the (often obscure) source material, but the first time I read this, all of that went over my head and I loved it anyway. This blending of highbrow and lowbrow culture is the book I want on the table beside my deathbed. I will read something naughty from it out loud to my caregiver, and will die happy.