Recommended Books

Favorite Novelist: Norman Mailer

Most Influential Novelist: Georges Simenon and James T. Farrell

Most influential critic: John W. Aldridge

Most important woman writer: Doris Lessing

Second most important woman writer: Emily Dickinson

Favorite American poet: Philip Levine and Margaret Walker

Top 10 Novels in the Course of my Life

Studs Lonigan (Trilogy) — James T. Farrell

Young Lions — Irwin Shaw

City and the Pillar — Gore Vidal

Cane — Gene Toomer

Emma — Jane Austen

Requiem for a Nun — William Faulkner

Fall (Camus)

Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison

House of the Prophet — Louis Auchincloss

Point of No Return — John P. Marquand

Best Novels Read in 2008

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay — Michael Chabon

Devil in the Woods — Norman Mailer

Close Range — Annie Proulx

Critical Biographies

White Heat Higginson

American Bloomsbury — Susan Cheever

Team of Rivals — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Science Fiction Writers

Poetry

Mysteries

Book reviews

Readings go or not to