Doug’s Reading List
In August 2005, no doubt dazed by my latest literary allusion, Doug asked me for a list of what he should read. So by God, I gave him one. What writer wouldn’t?
In honor of Doug’s 50th, I’ve decided to share it with you, too. It’s still called “Doug’s Reading List,” even though Doug didn’t draw it up and has proved immune to its wisdom. Don’t let that stop you, though. Sadly lacking in a college degree in literature, but determined to hold your own at fancy-schmanzy wine-and-cheese events? Then this is the list for you!
Click here for the page hosting the list.
Wanna pick a fight on the contents of the list? Please do. Post a comment. I eagerly await it.
December 1st, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I got rid of my copy of Hunger. Why? I don’t know. Wish I hadn’t.
I kept my copy of Post Office. It’s on the shelf with all my other Bukowski, except that PO is the only title that’s battered. I’m a mail carrier and I loaned it to ONE co-worker. Who passed it to another. Who in turn had to share it with one more. I was happy to find how much they liked and appreciated it. Talk about Buk reaching his true audience.
I’m going to think about what I would add to Lee’s nicely balanced list. Anybody else want to put in their two volumes worth?
December 1st, 2006 at 6:52 pm
As per the Bush administration the title “Hunger” needs to be changed to “food insecure”.
Paul
December 2nd, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I thought about it and my addition to the list is “The Cornish Trilogy” by Robertson Davies, the late Canadian newspaper editor/writer, playwright, and novelist. The first novel, “The Rebel Angels”, mixes art, history, morality and magic to tell the story of a group of fascinating characters. Davies’s prose is a pleasure to read. Go buy the single edition of the trilogy so you won’t have to put down one book to pick up the next.
My choice for graphic novel is “Batman: The Killing Joke” by the British writer Alan Moore. It pits the Caped Crusader against his longtime foe, The Joker, and conveys the latter’s insanity while showing that Bats isn’t exactly Mr. Normal himself. Moore gave plentiful notes to his artist, Brian Bolland, and the pictures convey as much as the words. He also wrote “Watchmen”, which is excellant, but that one works best if you’re already familiar with comics conventions.
Finally, here’s a quote from Bill Richardson’s novel, “Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book”.
“Lists, which are arbitrary and idiosyncratic, should irritate and annoy as much as they inform and entertain. The reader should be provoked to raise a voice of protest, to exclaim, “Wait! You’ve forgtten so and so! Why have you included thus and which, when you’ve left out such and why?”
So respond. React. Otherwise, I’ll list ALL my favorites.
December 3rd, 2006 at 12:45 am
As the Richardson quote states, a list such as this is a jumping-off point. I wrote “Doug’s Reading List” 15 months ago; in reviewing it earlier this week I was surprised to see that Sam Shepard’s “True West” wasn’t on the list even though it’s become the one play I consistently teach from. In a similar vein, while I still love Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” I increasingly feel that “The Homecoming” is his strongest play. (Perhaps because it seems the most personal, which deepens the anger.) So even I can’t agree on my own list.
It’s also worth remembering that “Doug’s Reading List” is in actuality five separate lists, with five different intentions. The base list is intended to be a primer — a brief list of books one could actually get through and thereafter sound knowledgeable at a cocktail party. The five lists aren’t meant to be comprehensive and never could be.
I haven’t read Robertson Davies, but given that you’ve been talking about him for 18 years, and even once went so far as to send me a book of his, I guess I should give him a go.
December 3rd, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Interesting list, Lee! Makes me want to curl up in my rocking chair with a good book.
I haven’t read Bartleby, but I read Moby Dick in high school, and it’s probably the book I read in high school that I continue to think about most. Don’t know why, exactly, but it hooked me.
I’ve read the Wasteland, but the Eliot I continue to go back to is Four Quartets. It lives on a handy shelf.
I like Stephen King for a good yarn. “It” is my favorite. And his audiobooks are awesome for road trips — they’re always issued unabridged, and make the miles zoom by. He often fails to nail his endings, though.
I adore Carver. His short stories are brilliant. His poems generally are not — but there are a couple in his last book, “A New Path to the Waterfall,” that I love.
Have you ever read the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien? It rivals Carver’s stories for my favorite short story ever.
Thanks for sharing Doug’s list with the rest of us.
~Ellen
January 16th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
[…] Remember my good friend Doug, of “Doug’s Reading List“? Yesterday, a year and a half after the creation of The Reading List, and six weeks after my posting it here, he sent a broadcast email with his version of how the list came to be created: Back when we were planning to go out via sailboat, I asked a well read friend of ours, Lee Wochner, to give me a list of his “take to the desert island” books. I expected him to spend a few minutes banging out his top-of-the-head top ten list and leave it at that. But to Lee, books are the essential currency of our humanness, the primary record of our civilization and any personal list of favorites to be the ultimate opening of the kimono – the baring of the ultimate soul – the absolute and total revelation of who you are as a person. […]
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:57 pm
[…] Newsweek has a great little sampler of the books some noted writers say are most important to them. Here’s Walter Mosley’s list, which seems closest to my own reading — you’ll note that in addition to Camus, Garcia Marquez, and Freud (all represented by books I read, and some of which wound up on Doug’s Reading List), it includes Fantastic Four issues 1-100 (also a prominent suggestion to Doug — and to you). Mr. Mosley is a man of taste. […]