Anonymous asked: I recommend reading Let the Great World Spin by Colum Mcann , East of Eden by John Steinbeck and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. If you read Let the Great World Spin and East of Eden concurrently there's A LOT of really cool connections haha. Interpreter of Maladies I just started reading and it's such a cute book :) but yeah I hope you'll enjoy them if you read them!
Thank you for the recommendations. I’ll try reading these books sometime in the future. Tell me your thoughts about Interpreter of Maladies when you’re done with it (preferably not anonymously)!
thomasheng asked: What are your top ten favorite books? Of any genre.
I don’t hella have a top ten, but the first ten books that come to mind at the moment are:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace (all his works of literature are phenomenal - he’s very pretentious when he writes though, and his footnotes can be hella aggravating), Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (in my opinion, all his books connect with the reader well), The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (all his writings are fantastic), Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (a simple novel written beautifully), A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (written in a very pretentious tone, but the vernacular and story line is great, and the portrayal of today’s rape culture is on point), A Novel Bookstore by Lauren Cossé, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, 1984 by George Orwell, The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka (this is one of many excellent short stories he has written).
A Confession by Leo Tolstoy, On Fiction by Virginia Woolf, The Secret by Charlotte Brontë, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo, The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace, In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway, Coming Up For Air by George Orwell, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dawn by Elie Wiesel, Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut, The Best American Essays 2007 edited by David Foster Wallace, A New Literary History of America edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, May Day by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Dearest Father by Franz Kafka, The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Interview by Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway on Writing.
Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Model Millionaire by Oscar Wilde, Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman, A Mad Desire To Dance by Elie Wiesel, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oblivion by David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace.
Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, and Paris To Die For by Maxine Kenneth. These were recommended to me by a quite a few people. Hopefully these books meet my expectations.
Finally obtained my own copy of Extremely Loud & Incredible Close by Jonathan Safran Foer!
My response is always the same.
“Print will never die. There’s no substitute for the feel of an actual book. I adore physically turning pages, and being able to underline passages and not worrying about dropping them in the bath or running out of power. I also find print books objects of beauty.” —J.K. Rowling
