I was thinking about books that had an affect on me, lingered for a while, sometimes a long while. One by one they came back to life like old friends.
If you have had similar books in mind, maybe you would like to share some of your favorites, too.
Below are some of mine.
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
It was one of the first books I ever read and I missed the satire on American racism, but it inspired me for adventure on a raft down the Mississippi River.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac circa 1958
I loved reading this book when I was fourteen- years-old. How I dreamed of traveling down the highway with a bunch of anti-conformist guys from the Beat Generation.
Mad Magazine
Hysterically funny and it taught me it was okay to be absurd.
Albert Camus
Taught me that human life was absurd from the beginning and our job was to simply get on with it as best you can.
The Poetics of Space
Taught me the creative importance of finding meaning in dark places.
The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller
It was the only book about Greece by a non-Greek who captured Greece’s real feelings and emotions. Picasso said Henry Miller did the same thing when he wrote about Paris and the Parisians. Miller was a giant of literature and life and wrote the way he lived.
Nikos Kazantzakis
The man who was up for the Nobel Prize for Literature seven times but never won. He traveled the world in search of meaning and never found it. He taught me how to write with real emotion and feeling. He is my favorite writer of all time.
Elena Ferrante
The entire series that led to the filming go My Brilliant friend. Elena is masterful with all her characters. A brilliant writer.
A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry
Also wrote the inspiring Old God’s Time.
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
A fabulously imaginative story of dementia patients taken to places of their past, a retrieval of memory.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Australian greatest living novelist.
In the coming weeks I will do something similar with music, art and thinkers that made a difference.
