surprised The Sun Also Rises isn't on here! You recommending me that, The Sound and the Fury, Pale Fire, and The Third Policeman were in retrospect legit life-changing. Those were the books that ultimately made me get into reading literature. Reading those four books in a row blew my 18 year old mind back in the day lol.
Colin this seriously makes me so happy! Now I know I did at least one good thing as a shitty degenerate teenager.
Sun Also Rises should probably be on here. Also realized I left off Moby-Dick, which exploded my conception of what a novel could be when I read it at 21. Too many life-changing books to fit into my artificial constraints for this list lol.
Cool! I was sweating over which sci-fi to include because some books like Dune and Androids? made direct lasting impacts on my personal development while for others I think there was a cumulative effect from reading a ton of Asimov Clarke and Bradbury as a kid, but not sure which of them I’d single out…
Thanks! It’s actually probably closer to 11 or 12 times, because I’ve re-read a couple of times since I was 18–just not on the annual schedule anymore. It’s lost some of the original magic for me but still a nostalgic fave. I only made it through 4 of the original series (stopped after God Emperor) but I think I’ve read most of the prequels written by his son— trashy but fun.
Amazing list, To the Lighthouse and The Dispossessed are inner circle favorites of mine. Really stoked to see The Third Policeman which I LOVED and i don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else talk/write about that book on here.
The Third Policeman is so underrated. It’s one of the few books that has ever made me literally laugh out loud. I have no idea how I heard about it originally but I’m glad I did. It’s one of those books I recommend to everyone but only one person has ever actually read it, to my knowledge.
I read it first when I was 15, same year I read Pale Fire. I remember wondering if Nabokov stole the idea of endnotes from the footnotes in TTP.
Hello fellow weirdo who read DUNE at way too young an age! I have a lot of overlap with these books, but I read a lot of them at a much older age. I think just about all of the rest are on my TBR.
Also: enjoy normal age! Statistically speaking you'll be middle aged in about 6 years.
Hello! I’d argue that I read Dune at the exact right time in my life because I read it in 2003, the year we invaded Iraq, and it gave me a framework to understand the world.
Middle age is still normal age! It’s just a subset of normal age. Until you become old (~70). Old is abnormal.
(I reserve the right to revise this taxonomy as I age.)
Nowadays, 70 is more like "extended middle age," a category which didn't really exist until quite recently, but now does as a result of medical, technological and lifestyle advances. I would put the onset of old age around 75-80, realistically.
Cool to see Flann O'Brien on this list! "At Swim-Two-Birds" is one of my all-time favorites. There was a time when I had large chunks of it memorized. But "The Third Policeman" was the first thing I read by him.
As with Anthony Burgess (good to see "Clockwork" on there too), he gave me a real virtuosic display of what you could do with language. "Clockwork" also got me interested in Slavic languages, something that I'm still using on a near-daily basis!
The Third Policeman is still the funniest book I’ve ever read. I tried At Swim-Two-Birds but couldn’t get through it—felt like I was missing some critical understanding of Irish folklore that would bring it all together. It’s been a decade since I picked it up, though, so I’ve been thinking I should try again.
Yeah, reading A Clockwork Orange was one of those “whoa, you can DO that with language?!” experiences for me. Totally blew my mind. That’s a cool origin story for your chosen field!
Since you're reading "Ulysses" now, I recommend trying "At Swim" again after that. Why? Because O'Brien basically adapted Joyce's techniques for his own goofy storytelling purposes - particularly, what some scholars have called the "Arranger" portions of the text. "At Swim" is not so much a story as a giant "arrangement" of the material.
I admit that "Policeman" has a lot of humor, but it struck me as especially dark humor at the time. Anyway, I'm due for a re-read.
As a person who is not so sure about Faulkner, any tips for how I can go about enjoying his writing? I read a few of his books a few years ago and generally sort of felt like my ass had been kicked by the books, which was not a great feeling.
Sound and the Fury definitely kicked my ass when I first read it at 16. My shameful secret: when I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, I read the SparkNotes. THEN I went back to the book, and with a basic handle on the plot and structure and character names it became so much more enjoyable to read. I mean, come on, there are like 3 different timelines and two characters in different generations of different genders both named Quentin Compson, like wtf.
Happy birthday! I'd be interested to know how To the Lighthouse broke your internalized misogyny. I haven't read it but if it can do that, it must be potent!
Thanks! I read To the Lighthouse when I was 20, the summer before my junior year of college. In my reading of classic literature up to that point, I had mostly read male authors, and I wasn’t moved by the female authors of literary fiction I did read (like Jane Austen, Willa Cather). I read a lot of hypermasculine Lost and Beat Generation novels, and really internalized this idea that women are only good for supporting the genius of men or serving as muses. But when I first read Woolf, it was so obvious that here was a virtuosic talent, a writer so completely in control of her craft; she is undeniably a literary genius, and I saw how silly it was to think that a woman couldn’t be that.
Another thought: I was thinking about what my list of books would be like, and it occurred to me that you don't include anything you read as a small child. You have His Dark Materials, but even that isn't an early-reader kind of book. Is there nothing you read in your earliest years that merited a place on your list?
I would guess that you started reading more grown-up books at an early age (I did too), but my list will probably at least have Dr Seuss's "The Sneetches and Other Stories", which was my favorite book of his. It's probably at least partly because of that book that I have never taken status symbols seriously.
I very seriously considered listing Where The Red Fern Grows, which I read at 7. I learned to read when I was 6 (slightly late bloomer). My favorite picture book growing up was about a mixed-race family called How My Parents Learned to Eat. I don’t remember loving books until after I started reading chapter books, though. I have fond memories of Eloise and Madeline books, but I don’t feel like they made me who I am today. I think my reading really took off in 3rd grade, when I started reading stuff like The Once and Future King and began choosing sci-fi books by how thick the spine was. There was one memorable occasion at that age when I picked out a thick fantasy novel for the cool cover that ended up being a very *adult* kind of fantasy book.
I never read Dr. Seuss books as a kid. My mom explained that, as an immigrant, she found them creepy rather than beloved classics haha.
Oh SHIT just realized a huge omission. Hatchet by Gary Paulson and My Side of the Mountain were hugely influential on me. I think I read those at age 7 or 8.
And then Ender’s Game at age 8 or 9 was also a big one for me. What I’m realizing here is that I should’ve given myself two books for every year of my life for this list 😅
“ until around the age of 25. I was shy and insecure and needy. I was convinced that I was somehow smarter than everyone and yet also painfully uninformed, ignorant, uncool, inferior.”
surprised The Sun Also Rises isn't on here! You recommending me that, The Sound and the Fury, Pale Fire, and The Third Policeman were in retrospect legit life-changing. Those were the books that ultimately made me get into reading literature. Reading those four books in a row blew my 18 year old mind back in the day lol.
Colin this seriously makes me so happy! Now I know I did at least one good thing as a shitty degenerate teenager.
Sun Also Rises should probably be on here. Also realized I left off Moby-Dick, which exploded my conception of what a novel could be when I read it at 21. Too many life-changing books to fit into my artificial constraints for this list lol.
Moby-Dick definitely would be on my list too, probably my favorite American work of fiction period as pretentious as it is to say it.
Jeez, no mention of all the Harry Potter books I read to you before you were 6….Happy Birthday and keep reading and writing, love, Dad
That should be item no. 0!
very cool list. we seem to have a bit in common. very slanted toward sci-fi and sci-fi adjacent.
Cool! I was sweating over which sci-fi to include because some books like Dune and Androids? made direct lasting impacts on my personal development while for others I think there was a cumulative effect from reading a ton of Asimov Clarke and Bradbury as a kid, but not sure which of them I’d single out…
I have copies of most of the rest of them.
They know I am out there, and they are waiting for me.
Ursula K. Le Guin supremacy 👏🏾🙌🏾
She changed my life at age 9 and again at 26 🖤
Awwww ❤️
Some dark stuff and some heavy-hitters--and Dune 9 times?! I've read it twice, and think I'm probably good for the rest of my life...
Happy birthday!
Thanks! It’s actually probably closer to 11 or 12 times, because I’ve re-read a couple of times since I was 18–just not on the annual schedule anymore. It’s lost some of the original magic for me but still a nostalgic fave. I only made it through 4 of the original series (stopped after God Emperor) but I think I’ve read most of the prequels written by his son— trashy but fun.
Amazing list, To the Lighthouse and The Dispossessed are inner circle favorites of mine. Really stoked to see The Third Policeman which I LOVED and i don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else talk/write about that book on here.
The Third Policeman is so underrated. It’s one of the few books that has ever made me literally laugh out loud. I have no idea how I heard about it originally but I’m glad I did. It’s one of those books I recommend to everyone but only one person has ever actually read it, to my knowledge.
I read it first when I was 15, same year I read Pale Fire. I remember wondering if Nabokov stole the idea of endnotes from the footnotes in TTP.
Hello fellow weirdo who read DUNE at way too young an age! I have a lot of overlap with these books, but I read a lot of them at a much older age. I think just about all of the rest are on my TBR.
Also: enjoy normal age! Statistically speaking you'll be middle aged in about 6 years.
- a "middle aged" man
Hello! I’d argue that I read Dune at the exact right time in my life because I read it in 2003, the year we invaded Iraq, and it gave me a framework to understand the world.
Middle age is still normal age! It’s just a subset of normal age. Until you become old (~70). Old is abnormal.
(I reserve the right to revise this taxonomy as I age.)
Nowadays, 70 is more like "extended middle age," a category which didn't really exist until quite recently, but now does as a result of medical, technological and lifestyle advances. I would put the onset of old age around 75-80, realistically.
Cool to see Flann O'Brien on this list! "At Swim-Two-Birds" is one of my all-time favorites. There was a time when I had large chunks of it memorized. But "The Third Policeman" was the first thing I read by him.
As with Anthony Burgess (good to see "Clockwork" on there too), he gave me a real virtuosic display of what you could do with language. "Clockwork" also got me interested in Slavic languages, something that I'm still using on a near-daily basis!
The Third Policeman is still the funniest book I’ve ever read. I tried At Swim-Two-Birds but couldn’t get through it—felt like I was missing some critical understanding of Irish folklore that would bring it all together. It’s been a decade since I picked it up, though, so I’ve been thinking I should try again.
Yeah, reading A Clockwork Orange was one of those “whoa, you can DO that with language?!” experiences for me. Totally blew my mind. That’s a cool origin story for your chosen field!
I had a Russian girlfriend when I was reading that. When I was done I handed it to her, and she would scream with laughter at the Russified NadSat.
The glossary in the back helped.
Since you're reading "Ulysses" now, I recommend trying "At Swim" again after that. Why? Because O'Brien basically adapted Joyce's techniques for his own goofy storytelling purposes - particularly, what some scholars have called the "Arranger" portions of the text. "At Swim" is not so much a story as a giant "arrangement" of the material.
I admit that "Policeman" has a lot of humor, but it struck me as especially dark humor at the time. Anyway, I'm due for a re-read.
That’s a badass list for a lifetime. Idea that you’ve taken down all those by 32 is inspiring and highly respectable. Well done!
Thank you! I always feel like I'm behind, so this is a nice thing to hear.
Happy Birthday!
As a person who is not so sure about Faulkner, any tips for how I can go about enjoying his writing? I read a few of his books a few years ago and generally sort of felt like my ass had been kicked by the books, which was not a great feeling.
Sound and the Fury definitely kicked my ass when I first read it at 16. My shameful secret: when I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, I read the SparkNotes. THEN I went back to the book, and with a basic handle on the plot and structure and character names it became so much more enjoyable to read. I mean, come on, there are like 3 different timelines and two characters in different generations of different genders both named Quentin Compson, like wtf.
Happy birthday! I'd be interested to know how To the Lighthouse broke your internalized misogyny. I haven't read it but if it can do that, it must be potent!
Thanks! I read To the Lighthouse when I was 20, the summer before my junior year of college. In my reading of classic literature up to that point, I had mostly read male authors, and I wasn’t moved by the female authors of literary fiction I did read (like Jane Austen, Willa Cather). I read a lot of hypermasculine Lost and Beat Generation novels, and really internalized this idea that women are only good for supporting the genius of men or serving as muses. But when I first read Woolf, it was so obvious that here was a virtuosic talent, a writer so completely in control of her craft; she is undeniably a literary genius, and I saw how silly it was to think that a woman couldn’t be that.
Another thought: I was thinking about what my list of books would be like, and it occurred to me that you don't include anything you read as a small child. You have His Dark Materials, but even that isn't an early-reader kind of book. Is there nothing you read in your earliest years that merited a place on your list?
I would guess that you started reading more grown-up books at an early age (I did too), but my list will probably at least have Dr Seuss's "The Sneetches and Other Stories", which was my favorite book of his. It's probably at least partly because of that book that I have never taken status symbols seriously.
I very seriously considered listing Where The Red Fern Grows, which I read at 7. I learned to read when I was 6 (slightly late bloomer). My favorite picture book growing up was about a mixed-race family called How My Parents Learned to Eat. I don’t remember loving books until after I started reading chapter books, though. I have fond memories of Eloise and Madeline books, but I don’t feel like they made me who I am today. I think my reading really took off in 3rd grade, when I started reading stuff like The Once and Future King and began choosing sci-fi books by how thick the spine was. There was one memorable occasion at that age when I picked out a thick fantasy novel for the cool cover that ended up being a very *adult* kind of fantasy book.
I never read Dr. Seuss books as a kid. My mom explained that, as an immigrant, she found them creepy rather than beloved classics haha.
Oh SHIT just realized a huge omission. Hatchet by Gary Paulson and My Side of the Mountain were hugely influential on me. I think I read those at age 7 or 8.
And then Ender’s Game at age 8 or 9 was also a big one for me. What I’m realizing here is that I should’ve given myself two books for every year of my life for this list 😅
“ until around the age of 25. I was shy and insecure and needy. I was convinced that I was somehow smarter than everyone and yet also painfully uninformed, ignorant, uncool, inferior.”
Wow, she’s literally me
I hope you, too, have found/will find peace in normal-age 🙏🥲
Having a child instantly advances you into normal-age, so now very much in the 'you can just do things' era of my life
Happy bday!
I also had a big PKD and RAW phase when I was younger. It may or may not have coincided with trying LSD. Who’s to say?
There was a pretty definite causal relationship in my case. Books are the real gateway drugs.
Hahaha for real
Really great thoughts about being “normal aged.” Honestly, I can’t wait to get there.
My list would definitely also include The Left Hand of Darkness, Crime and Punishment, and The Dispossessed. The rest, I’ll have to read someday soon