Myla Goldberg is the author of Bee Season (Knopf, $13). She is currently at work on her next novel, Wickett’s Remedy.
USA: The 42nd Parallel/1919/Big Money by John Dos Passos (Library of America, $40). This guy is every inch as important as Faulkner and Steinbeck and all those other canonical dead guys. These books tell a great story, and they do it in a way that is still inventive almost 70 years after the fact, creating an epic and memorable portrait of early-20th-century America.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Perennial Classics, $14). I avoided this book forever because it was perpetually assigned in English lit classes, but then I finally picked it up and had the top of my head blown off by the power of its language. Beautiful prose and a keen eye and ear for the way people talk, think, and act make it an indelible read.
The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin (Penguin USA, $12). It’s about insects, who are people, who are insects, and if anyone but Pelevin had tried to write it, it would have probably been really awful, but instead it’s a brilliant and often comic allegory about human nature and life in postcommunist Russia.
Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (Vintage Books, $16). Mitchell had an incredible knack for tracking down and then capturing on paper the personalities and places of old New York. Each piece in this collection presents such a vivid portrait you’ll finish up half convinced you drank beers with these characters yourself.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Bantam Classics, $5). I picked this up out of a postcollegiate English major’s guilt for never having cracked it, and told myself I was allowed to stop after 50 pages. Instead I found myself in for one of the rides of my life. It’s innovative, smart, by turns funny and thrilling, and I have absolutely no idea how the guy was able to pull it off.
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‘The worry is far from fanciful’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
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How are Americans bracing for the end of SNAP?TODAY'S BIG QUESTION Millions depend on supplemental federal food funds that are set to expire this month, as the government shutdown begins to be acutely felt
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Book review: ‘Joyride: A Memoir’Feature A journalist’s story of how she chased and accomplished her dreams
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Gilbert King’s 6 favorite books about the search for justiceFeature The journalist recommends works by Bryan Stevenson, David Grann, and more
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Elizabeth Gilbert’s favorite books about women overcoming difficultiesFeature The author recommends works by Tove Jansson, Lauren Groff, and more
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Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imaginationFeature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
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Jessica Francis Kane's 6 favorite books that prove less is moreFeature The author recommends works by Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie-Helene Bertino, and more
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Keith McNally's 6 favorite books that have ambitious charactersFeature The London-born restaurateur recommends works by Leo Tolstoy, John le Carré, and more
