She told The Week magazine about her six best books. One title on the list:America and the World by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent ScowcroftRead about the other books on Brzezinski's list.
In a 2008 dialogue moderated by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, two former national security advisors—my father and Brent Scowcroft—tell you what you need to know about America and its place in the world. Any administration should study this book.
One novel on the list:Lord of the Flies by William GoldingRead about the other pairs of glasses on Mullan's list.
Perhaps the most famous pair of glasses in literature belongs to Piggy in Golding's novel. They are used as "burning glasses" to start a fire (physically impossible as Piggy is short-sighted). Then nasty Jack breaks one of the lenses. Later the specs are stolen, leaving Piggy almost sightless as a prelude to his murder.
For the Daily Express, she named her six best books. One title on the list:The Age of InnocenceRead about the other books on Blackman's list.
by Edith Wharton
I love Wharton’s writing and this book fully portrays the difficulties some women faced when conducting any kind of love life in the 19th century. Women had such a tough time because there were so many restrictions and Wharton highlights these difficulties so well in this sexy, powerful story set in 1870s New York.
For the Guardian, she named her top ten rock'n'roll novels. One title on the list:High Fidelity by Nick HornbyRead about the other books on the list.
Self-confessed "arsehole" and record-shop owner, Rob, shares his life of lists – girlfriends, break-ups, dream jobs, variously documented favourite songs – and tells us, "In Bruce Springsteen songs, you can either stay and rot, or you can escape and burn … but nobody ever writes about how it is possible to escape and rot … That's what happened to me; that's what happens to most people."
She recently told The Daily Beast about her favorite books. One novel on the list:MiddlemarchRead about Elizabeth Kostova's other favorite books.
by George Eliot
Like Anna Karenina and The Portrait of a Lady, this book plays on the magnificent 19th-century theme of a woman trapped in unhappy marriage (a problem solved more easily by widowhood or even murder, in those days, than by divorce; see also Tess of the D’Ubervilles. Actually, this book is about money. I read it every 10 years because it is completely different each time. The heroine is so flawed and lovable and courageous that I wish she were one of my sisters.
She told O, The Oprah Magazine about a few books that made a difference to her. One title on the list:A Short History of Tractors in UkrainianRead about the other books on Farmiga's list.
by Marina Lewycka
Why she chose it: Being the eldest daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, I was charmed by the title, but I'm also interested in family dynamics, particularly generational rivalry. Reading this, I had the sense that I'd moved in with this insane family—an extremely difficult old man and his combative daughters, who have to care for him, defend him, and help him. They reminded me a lot of my own family: Stories of the past are told and retold by people who had to build a new life, even though the old one never entirely disappeared.
How she found it: I think I was tipped off by a fellow nationalistic Ukrainian.
Memorable passage: In the first few sentences, I became totally smitten: "Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside."
Pete Dexter, whose novel Paris Trout (1988) won the National Book Award, is the author, most recently, of Spooner.EdistoRead about the other books on Dexter's list.
by Padgett Powell
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984
Here's why—I imagine—J.D. Salinger has never come out of hiding. From the moment "Catcher In the Rye" was published in 1951, every novel written about a precocious kid found some critic erroneously calling it the best book about precocious youth since "Catcher in the Rye." Then one day in 1984 Salinger—again, I'm imagining—had the bad luck to pick up "Edisto," by a young man called Padgett Powell, who hadnever written a novel before, and the next day the old recluse woke up feeling like Floyd Patterson the morning after his first fight with Sonny Liston. What Salinger would have seen when he opened "Edisto" was what Patterson saw when he looked across the ring into Liston's baleful eyes: the real thing. It's not just anybody, after all, who can write a believable novel about youthful brilliance. "Edisto" is the story of a 12-year-old named Simons Everson Manigault, whose sophisticated-beyond-his-years tone can't disguise how unfathomable he finds the adult world. The mysteries begin with his mother—or "the Doctor," as he thinks of this haughty college teacher—and his father, or "the Progenitor," who is no longer with the family. A mysterious stranger soon becomes the boy's surrogate father, teaching him about life using "one ounce of suggestion and pounds of patience." Padgett Powell is a writer of strange and original gifts. I just can't get over how little attention he receives from the thumb-suckers who sit around bemoaning the state of the arts in America.
For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best visits to Venice in literature.The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwanRead about the other literature on Mullan's list.
Venice is an unnamed city of menace in McEwan's slow-building shocker. A dully contented English couple, Mary and Colin, get lost in the city and are rescued by Robert, an over-friendly type who takes them home to meet his wife. An invitation to a lovely Venetian apartment is an intro to a nasty game of domination and submission.
Duff McDonald is the author of Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase (Simon & Schuster, 2009).The House of MorganRead about the other books on McDonald's list.
by Ron Chernow
Atlantic Monthly, 1990
Can a bank actually be heroic? Ron Chernow suggests as much in his exhaustive history of J.P. Morgan and its instrumental role in the development of theindustrial Western economy from the late 19th century to the end of the 20th. But the clear-eyed Chernow does not ignore the less-than-heroic in this National Book Award-winning title, which is as much a social and political history as it is the story of the Morgan dynasty. Of the fallout from the Crash of 1873, Chernow writes: "Not for the last time, America turned against Wall Street with puritanical outrage and a sense of offended innocence." When World War I erupted: "Wall Street, which prided itself on its prescience, was once again caught napping by a historic event." Both tendencies remain in place today. What we do not have is a Wall Street king like John Pierpont Morgan, the man who built the banking dynasty and who had the power to intervene personally in the Panic of 1893 and save the U.S. Treasury by launching a syndicate to replenish the nation's gold supply.
One title on the list:The Comedians, by Graham Greene, (1966, Bodley Head, $37.95)Read about the other books on the list.
An evocative introduction to the Haiti of Papa Doc Duvalier and the Tontons Macoute, his secret police. Over time this book becomes more and more important and meaningful. It helps explain the fervor of expats who've chosen Haiti as a second homeland. Add to this Mark Kurlansky's wonderful short story, "The White Man in the Tree," and you'll understand a lot about the romance of this place, and why people are pouring their own money and energy into helping out at this moment of grave crisis.
One book on the list:Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places by Bill StreeverRead about the other books on the list.
This book may consist of tales of frostiness, but the author’s poetic storytelling style won’t leave you cold. After deciding to examine the world’s frozen places before it’s too late, the author begins his journey by plunging into Prudhoe Bay, an icy mass 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle and continues by masterfully linking the history, myth, geography and ecology of bone-chilling temperatures. Reading Cold is guaranteed to give you goose bumps — the good kind.
One title on the list:Kitchen Confidential, Anthony BourdainRead about the other books on the list.
This was a favourite with the restaurant critics on our panel. "Rarely has a single book been seized upon by a profession as the true gospel in such a manner. Kitchen Confidential, with its shameless, no-bodily-fluid-spared approach to the slippery business of kitchen life, managed exactly that," said Jay Rayner, while Marina O'Loughlin wrote: "Like a bodice-ripper heroine, I don't know whether I love 'Tony' or want to smack him in the chops. Especially since this snake-blood drinking, pig-killing memoir [A Cook's Tour] launched a whole host of inferior, extreme-eating imitators. Drenched in testosterone, it may be, but it was the original and the best." For Fuchsia Dunlop, "this exposé of life in the 'culinary underbelly' of the restaurant industry is gruesome and hilarious."
Alex Renton was amazed "to think this sweltering account of life and death beyond the swing doors is only 9 years old - Bourdain put the rock (and the speed and the coke and the smack) into chefs' memoirs, and started a legend of knife-fighting, hard-drinking, Ramones-loving psycho-cooks that Gordon, Marco and co continue feebly to exploit. Brand me with a red-hot skillet, I still love this book."
"Reading Kitchen Confidential for the first time was an unalloyed joy," says Tim Hayward. "Bourdain spoke honestly about the kind of kitchens I'd grown up in - the visceral thrill, the camaraderie, the sheer rock and roll excitement, the fire and the knives. Nothing could have been further from the Elizabeth David books I was stuck with at the time and nothing could have been more appropriate. For me, Bourdain rescued food from the writing of women's magazines and made it muscular, tattooed and ripped to the gills on cheap speed."
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