Looking for something to read? I posted some of this yesterday (stories) but just did a quick scan/update/combine of lists.
Here’s my current full recommended reading list of all types (with the exception of romance, sorry not for me)
Here’s my favorite novels list:
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany
Foundation Trilogy - Issac Asimov
Dune - Frank Herbert
Breathing Lessons - Anne Tyler
Lord of the Rings - J R R Tolkien
City - Clifford D. Simak
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Top 10 SF:
In no particular order after the first two.
Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany
Foundation Trilogy - Issac Asimov
Dune - Frank Herbert
City - Clifford D. Simak
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Ringworld - Larry Niven
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin
The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood
Time Enough for Love - Robert A. Heinlein
Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
My favorite Short Story Anthologies
"You Must Read This"
"The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North American Stories Since 1970"
"The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories" ed. Tobias Wolff
The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories ed. Ben Marcus
Nonfiction:
The Immense Journey - Loren Eiseley
The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan
The Lives of a Cell - Lewis Thomas
My Favorite Essays
(can be found in various books and collections)
Many in:
Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction
Or -
In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction
The Brown Wasps - Loren Eiseley
The Dream Animal - Loren Eiseley
The Slit - Loren Eiseley
The Judgment of the Birds - Loren Eiseley
The Star Thrower - Loren Eiseley
Lives of a Cell - Lewis Thomas
Suspended - Joy Harjo
The Deck - Yusef Komunyakaa
The Fourth State of Matter - Jo Ann Beard
Three Spheres - Lauren Slater
The White Album - Joan Didion
Moving Water, Tucson - Peggy Shumaker
Heaven and Nature - Edward Hoagland
Embalming Mom - Janet Burroway
Visitor - Michael W. Cox
Leap - Brian Doyle
Small Rooms in Time - Ted Kooser
Enough Jam for a Lifetime - Maxine Kumin
Remembering I was not there - Anne Panning
Fury and Grace - Pattiann Rogers
The Indian Dog - N. Scott Momaday
Dogged - Barrie Jean Borich
Work - Kim Barnes
Short story list (sort of in favorite order ???)
available in various collections, anthologies or single author books:
The Prophet from Jupiter - Tony Earley
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursala K LeGuin (Incredible Story)
The Story of Your Life - Ted Chiang (also Hell is the Absence of God…and others he is an excellent short story writer)
Wild Horses - Rick Bass
Frost and Fire - Ray Bradbury
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall - Katherine Anne Porter
Rescue Party - Arthur C Clarke
The Star - Issac Asimov
A Rose for Ecclesiastes - Roger Zelazny
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cathedral - Raymond Carver
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes.
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe
A Boy and His Dog - Harlan Ellison
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
The Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway
The End of Something - Ernest Hemingway
A Clean Well Lighted Place - Hemingway
A Rose for Emily - Faulkner
Chicxulub - T.C. Boyle
Bullet in the Brain - Tobias Wolff
Where are you Going, Where Have you Been, - Joyce Carol Oates
The Ceiling - Kevin Brockmeier
Widow Water – Frederick Busch
A worn Path – Eudora Welty
Adds 7/13/2022:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
So Much Water So Close to Home” - Raymond Carver
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
The Hunter’s Wife – Anthony Doerr
The Caretaker – Anthony Doerr
The Deep – Anthony Doerr (almost perfect story!)
I need to add flash/micro fiction to the list also maybe prose poetry maybe poetry… hmmm
