Last month I asked you
you to recommend a book or two for me to read, specifying that it be “short, intelligent, amusing, reasonably easy to find, and no more than modestly demanding.” Here are the recommendations I received in return:
– The Beginning of Spring, by Penelope Fitzgerald
– Berlin Noir, a trilogy by Phillip Kerr
– Billie Dyer, by William Maxwell
– The Birth of the Modern, by Paul Johnson
– The Book Against God, by James Wood
– A Chance Meeting, by Rachel Cohen
– The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor
– The Dalkey Archive, by Flann O’Brien
– The Diary of Helena Morley (translated by Elizabeth Bishop)
– Dwarf Rapes Nun; Flees in UFO, by Arnold Sawislak
– Evenings with the Orchestra, by Hector Berlioz
– The Feud, by Thomas Berger
– Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig
– Hooking Up, by Tom Wolfe
– Journey to the Land of the Flies, by Aldo Buzzi
– Love and War in the Appenines, by Eric Newby
– Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels
– A New Life, by Bernard Malamud
– O, My America!, by Johanna Kaplan
– The Old Man at the Railroad Crossing, by William Maxwell
– An Old Man’s Love, by Anthony Trollope
– An Open Book, by Michael Dirda
– The Provincial Lady in Soviet Russia, by E.M. Delafield
– The Pushcart War, by Jean Merrill
– Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation, by William Gass
– The Rebbetzin, by Chaim Grade
– The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, by Gary Shteyngart
– A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby
– Tempest Tost, by Robertson Davies
– Thursday Next, a series of novels by Jasper Fforde
– The Total View of Taftly, by Scott Morris
– The Tunnel, by William H. Gass
– Wakefield, by Andrei Codrescu
– What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel Pool
For the record, one of the books on this list is an all-time personal favorite, and I’m mentioned at length (not favorably, either!) in another one. The really great thing about the list, though, is that I’ve only read six of the books on it, if you count the dozen-odd Maigret novels I’ve read over the years as one superbook. I’m amazed and delighted (if not surprised) by the wide-ranging taste of the readers of “About Last Night,” and I plan to take advantage of it in the coming weeks and months. Thanks to you all.
P.S. To the comedian who recommended The Birth of the Modern, I ask, what’s your idea of a long book?