Last month we shared Stephen King’s Reading List for Writers, a collection of 96 books recommended by King in his acclaimed guide, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
When a tenth anniversary edition of On Writing was published in 2010, King included a new reading list. It was published in the afterword with the following introductory note:
At the end of the original edition of On Writing, I listed about a hundred books which entertained and taught me. The publisher’s suggested I update the list for this new edition, so here are eight-plus more – the best things I’ve read between 2001 and 2009. As I said in the 2000 edition of the book… you could do worse.
- Peter Abrahams, End of Story
- Peter Abrahams, The Tutor
- Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
- Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn
- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
- Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork
- Benjamin Black [pseudo.], Christine Falls
- Peter Blauner, The Last Good Day
- Roberto Bolaño, 2666
- David Carr, The Night of the Gun
- John Casey, Spartina
- Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
- Lee Child, The Jack Reacher novels, starting with Killing Floor
- Michael Connelly, The Narrows
- Mark Costello, Big If
- Michael Cunningham, The Hours
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
- Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- Richard Dooling, White Man’s Grave
- David Downing, Zoo Station
- Andre Dubus, The Garden of Last Days
- Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
- Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes
- Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End
- Jonathan Franzen, Strong Motion
- Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
- Neil Gaiman, American Gods
- Meg Gardiner, Crosscut
- Meg Gardiner, The Dirty Secrets Club
- William Gay, The Long Home
- Robert Goddard, Painting the Darkness
- Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
- Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts
- Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War
- Charlie Huston, The Hank Thompson Trilogy
- Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke
- Garrison Keillor (ed), Good Poems
- Sue Monk Kid, The Secret Life of Bees
- Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
- Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- John le Carré, Absolute Friends
- Dennis Lehane, The Given Day
- Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey’s Room
- Jonathan Letham, The Fortress of Solitude
- Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know
- Bentley Little, Dispatch
- Bernard Malamud, The Fixer
- Yann Martel, Life of Pi
- Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
- Ian McEwan, Atonement
- James Meek, The People’s Act of Love
- Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
- Patrick O’Brian, The Aubrey/Maturin Novels
- Stewart O’Nan, The Good Wife
- Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys
- George Pelecanos, Hard Revolution
- George Pelecanos, The Turnaround
- Tom Perrotta, The Abstinence Teacher
- Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
- DBC Pierre, Vernon Little God
- Annie Proulx, Fine Just the Way It Is
- Michael Robotham, Shatter
- Philip Roth, American Pastoral
- Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
- Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs
- Richard Russo, Empire Falls
- Dan Simmons, Drood
- Dan Simmons, The Terror
- Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
- Tom Rob Smith, Child 44
- Scott Snyder, Voodoo Heart
- Neil Stephenson, Quicksilver
- Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
- Joseph Wambaugh, Hollywood Station
- Robert Warren Penn, All the King’s Men
- Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger
- Mark Winegardner, Crooked River Burning
- Mark Winegardner, The Godfather Review
- David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
- Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
For more books to add to your reading list, here’s what Ernest Hemingway recommends.
As in any list there are some great works, some good works, and some so bad I’m shocked that they’re included (not too many of the latter, actually). And some shocking omissions. Maybe he hasn’t yet discovered Jeffrey Lent and Peter Matthiessen, but then, ya cain’t read everthang.
Certainly Peter Matthiessen is a serious omission and, if Jeffey Lent’s absence from Stephen King’s list is also to be regarded as unfortunate then my own ignorance of that writer’s works is to be lamented. But, thanks to F. Armstrong Green (and Amazion) I now have a penny copy of ‘Lost Nation’ on its way to me.