Best books … chosen by Ed Park
Ed Park is co-editor of The Believer and author of the new office-culture novel Personal Days. Here he touts six of the more obscure titles among his all-time favorite novels.
Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky (Lindesfarne, $15). If you were able to live your life again, determined to make the “right” decision at a crucial moment, you would. Or would you? Ouspensky’s short, strange fable has the most potent use of repetition I’ve ever encountered in a work of fiction.
Thieves’ Nights by Harry Stephen Keeler (out of print). Talk to me for more than five minutes and I start raving about Keeler, America’s great unsung experimental writer, who masqueraded as a mystery novelist. It’s hard to choose a single example of his genius, but lately I like this shape-shifting palace of a book from 1929. It drops you through trapdoor after trapdoor until you’re not sure which way’s up.
The Scorpions by Robert Kelly (Barrytown, $11). This list of favorites could have comprised only novels by poets. Kelly’s singular creation brims with tantalizing fragments, esoteric graphics, and unsettling laughter—the sweet but venomous residue of late-’60s counterculture, or maybe of history itself. The narrator is so effortlessly sinister, one nearly forgives Kelly for never again writing another novel, as if for fear of the voice getting lodged in his head.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell (out of print). I bought Powell’s first novel, on a whim, on vacation, in a store evenly divided between abandoned ex-library volumes and Western gear—a not inappropriate habitat for a British comic novel par excellence that seems to have Hemingway in its DNA.
Speedboat by Renata Adler (out of print). Along with Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, this is a book I’ve bought repeatedly and given away, in the hopes of expanding the cult. I don’t even have a copy at the moment, but it doesn’t matter: I’ve established permanent residency under Adler’s cool, hypnotic spell.
Amazons by Cleo Birdwell (out of print). Don DeLillo’s reputation as a novelist of ideas overshadows his comic gifts. In 1980, DeLillo and Sue Buck collaborated under the Birdwell pseudonym, and their raunchy, relentlessly silly fabrication has its way with Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, erectile dysfunction, support groups, and most of all, hockey—my favorite sport, and one woefully underrepresented in 20th-century fiction.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Gandhi arrests: Narendra Modi's 'vendetta' against India's opposition
The Explainer Another episode threatens to spark uproar in the Indian PM's long-running battle against the country's first family
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK
-
How the woke right gained power in the US
Under the radar The term has grown in prominence since Donald Trump returned to the White House
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK
-
Codeword: April 24, 2025
The Week's daily codeword puzzle
By The Week Staff
-
Susan Page's 6 favorite books about historical figures who stood up to authority
Feature The USA Today's Washington bureau chief recommends works by Catherine Clinton, Alexei Navalny, and more
By The Week US
-
Ione Skye's 6 favorite books about love and loss
Feature The actress recommends works by James Baldwin, Nora Ephron, and more
By The Week US
-
Colum McCann's 6 favorite books that take place at sea
Feature The National Book Award-winning author recommends works by Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, and more
By The Week US
-
Max Allan Collins’ 6 favorite books that feature private detectives
Feature The mystery writer recommends works by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and more
By The Week US
-
John McWhorter’s 6 favorite books that are rooted in history
Feature The Columbia University professor recommends works by Lyla Sage, Sally Thorne, and more
By The Week US
-
Abdulrazak Gurnah's 6 favorite books about war and colonialism
Feature The Nobel Prize winner recommends works by Michael Ondaatje, Toni Morrison, and more
By The Week US
-
Elliot Ackerman’s 6 favorite books on war and duty
Feature The Marine veteran recommends works by Robert A. Heinlein, John le Carré, and more
By The Week US
-
Xochitl Gonzalez’s 6 favorite books that shaped her storytelling
Feature The best-selling author recommends works by Stephen King, Julian Barnes, and more
By The Week US