We’ve been asking writers “What’s on your Damn Good Writing syllabus” during their My Reading Life questionnaires. Here are five of those writers sharing the books they consider to be out of this world.
Manuel Betancourt, author of Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies
I’ll offer no commentary, since I find every one of these (in chronological order) requires no introduction:
- George Eliot’s Middlemarch
- Virginia Woolf’s The Waves
- Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency
- Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
- Toni Morrison’s Beloved
- Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen
- Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies
- Ian McEwan’s Atonement
- Justin Torres’s We The Animals
- Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City
Amy DeBellis, author of All Our Tomorrows
Beloved by Toni Morrison. It’s a classic for a reason, and it’s more than simply a narrative. Morrison’s writing is so good that she makes you experience the full weight of the book’s events, the full horror of its history. Every paragraph is a stunner. That last page—the last few sentences in particular—still wallop me in the chest every time.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. It’s hard to believe this is a debut novel! The slow unraveling of the plot is so masterful. I was fascinated by the characters and their inner lives, their desires, their secrets.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. The contrast in these pages is impeccable: such gorgeous prose that describes such hideous actions. Nabokov himself said it’s not a love story. The problem is, he was such a skilled writer—so good at making you view things through the narrator’s twisted point of view—that even today, some readers find themselves believing Humbert Humbert’s version of events.
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. This book is over 600 pages long, but it didn’t feel like a slog at all. I didn’t want it to end! I love how he blends the best parts of fantasy (the worldbuilding, the magic and the intrigue, the fact that it’s such an escape) with the best parts of literary fiction (the beauty of the sentences, the lyricism of the writing). I also love his Magicians trilogy. Unlike many series, it doesn’t get worse as you go along. It might even get better.
Mariam Rahmani, author of Liquid: A Love Story
Some Rushdie, some Sebald. Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. Comparative translations of the mid-century poet Forugh Farrokhzad’s magnum opus whose Farsi title I’d render, Let Us Trust in the Coming of the Cold Season. Rumi, once I found a translation I liked, maybe the old RA Nicholson versions of some lines alongside various contemporary translations that could be triangulated. There are other living writers whose novels have hooked me—Raven Leilani, Kaveh Akbar, Benjamin Labatut—but I rarely assign what I’ve only read once. (To take this question far too literally!)
Meredith Turits, author of Just Want You Here
If I went straight down the middle, the first picks would be Lolita and Rebecca, which are two of my very favorite books. But since I continue to find my footing in contemporary fiction, I’d assign some more-recent books in hopes I’d be able to move students the same way: What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offil, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I don’t claim to know short story as a form, but I’d also add Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty—there’s too much good happening on the page to leave off.
Justin Haynes, author of Ibis
Probably no craft books and very few novels. I would love to include quality daily newspapers or good weekly magazines to demonstrate concision. When I moved to Brooklyn as a teenager, the Village Voice was essential reading although I had to go into the City to land a copy. If novels are a must, one cannot go wrong with the impressive scope and ambition of Morrison’s Song of Solomon, as well as discussing the shift of Bulkagov’s The Master and Margarita from samizdat to umpteen translations.