36 best books and short stories for 36 years
It's my birthday.
As I get older, it becomes more and more apparent to me that books are really all there is. Outside of maybe marble sculpture or hand-drawn animation, there is no higher form of art than fiction. Reading (good) books, specifically novels and short stories, can expand consciousness, advance empathy, and connect you to different cultures, generations, and political views. We should all be reading more!
For my 36th birthday, here are 36 novels, novellas, and short stories that have significantly impacted my growth as a human, made me a better artist, and simply entertained me immensely.
1. A Dark Corner - by Celia Dale
A black man in London rents a room from an elderly white couple. Racial prejudices are confronted as the three characters uncomfortably entangle themselves.
This is a perfectly short novel about the mask of good intentions and London’s own brand of racism, one laced with economic strife, class jealousy, and housing paranoia. Nobody is ever exactly "in the wrong" until the unthinkable happens and suddenly a line has been crossed. A great representation of London in a horror novel.
2. A Strange Room - by Damon Galgut
Three key moments in a gay man's aimless travels around the world.
This is my favorite Galgut novel. He writes beautifully about forlorn lost connections and painful reconnections. In the last section of the novel, the main character reluctantly takes care of a struggling friend on vacation and it’s written so vividly you feel like you’re intruding on something personal. This is top-tier, masterful writing.
3. Amphibian - by Christina Neuwirth
A company decides to motivate its workers by slowly filling their office with water.
This novella captures corporate melancholy better than anything I’ve read. Capitalism is a sloppy evil. Neuwirth’s satire is so well done, you start to wonder if maybe this would actually be a good idea?
4. Anna Karenina - by Leo Tolstoy
Unhappily married woman embarks on a doomed love affair in late-1800s Russia. The greatest book ever written.
I mean, this is the only novel there ever was. The novel to end all novels. The ultimate book. I’ll never forget the first time I read this and how easily I was swept up into its world. I return to it when I need to remind myself how a novel is actually supposed to function, what it can do. Nothing escapes Anna Karenina, it’s all in there.
5. Confessions of a Mask - by Yukio Mishima
Gay man ponders his unrequited crushes on straight men in 1930s Japan.
Gorgeous writing and the most accurate depiction I’ve ever read of the unspeakable subconscious realizations that happen in a young gay man’s mind. Everything by Mishima has this operatic grandeur that can sometimes come off as, for lack of a better term, classically emo, but it works really well in this book. There’s a humorous sense of self-awareness here—I think. Or maybe not, given Mishima’s life story. But either way this book is moving, violent, and beautiful.
6. Freedom - by Jonathan Franzen
Generational travails of a suburban family of strivers in Midwest, book club America.
Apex of the airport novel? Oprah’s kraken in its final form? With the right timing, this book can wallop you pretty well with its suburban malaise. Better than The Corrections. Franzen will always be a grouchy man over the fence, but like everything he writes, he has a point.
7. Giovanni’s Room - by James Baldwin
Gay (?) American falls for Parisian prostitute right before his (straight) wedding in the 1950s.
Another book that captures longing and unrequited love so well. Baldwin is good at threading into the story the wider implications of class and exoticism. This is a case study of an American in Paris and all the grief and cringe that entails.
8. Heaven - by Mieko Kawakami
Bullied schoolboy strikes a quiet friendship with schoolgirl in Japan.
Depictions of violence in schools run the risk of getting schlocky, but Kawakami embraces cruelty with unrelenting honesty. The body horror of being a teenager feels so real in this book that its quiet moments—the friendship between the two main characters—are a true refuge and feel more poignant. You really understand why these two characters are drawn to each other.
9. How To Be A Writer - by Lorrie Moore (from the collection Self-Help)
Lifespan of a woman's comically destitute writing aspirations.
This short story was my introduction to Moore and is ironically what made me want to be a writer. Moore removes all sense of nobility, there is only shame. She says no, there’s actually nothing decent and pretty about this process
10. Ice - by Anna Kavan
A woman is stalked by two men across a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape.
This book will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the book that introduced me to my beloved book club. This book is a weird, semi-plotless gem that pulls you along with its haunted, alien vibe. Everyone is an antagonist. The world is out to get you. There’s nothing more exquisitely depressing than reading this in the middle of January.
11. Kafka on the Shore - by Haruki Murakami
Angsty teenager runs away to live in a magical library. In a parallel plot, a middle-age man gets caught up in a sinister cat-murder plot.
My second-favorite Murakami. It’s grand and epic, and while there’s plenty of thrills and mysteries, you’re never compelled to do more than just dwell in this surreal world and let the characters reveal what they want to you.
12. Leave Society - by Tao Lin
Novelized non-fiction (I refuse to say autofiction) about Lin’s removal of himself (whether by choice or not, pharmaceutically-assisted or not) from the world around him.
The death-knell of American alt lit if there ever was such a thing, this is a quietly beautiful and sublime book that rejects irony, sincerity, and new-sincerity, opting for a nakedly sparse way of embracing family and the divine. Lin has a thousand imitators but this book proves no one has ever been able to pull it off like him.
13. My Phantoms - by Gwendoline Riley
A woman's tumultuous relationship with her mother.
This feels like what the contemporary novel is right now—or at least what it should strive for. There’s a forensic, uncomfortable realness in Riley’s writing that sets a new bar. You’ll realize things about your own mother when you read this.
14. My Struggle - by Karl Ove Knausgaard
A symphonic autobiography of the Norwegian author that stretches across six books.
I’ve read four of these so far. Like Anna Karenina, the grandeur is too much to neatly sum up other than to say it’s a milestone book(s) you’ll think about for the rest of your life. A strange magic happens once you've read a few of these where you’ll start remembering new things from your own childhood.
15. Never Let Me Go - by Kazuo Ishiguro
Twisty-McTwisty book about kids trapped in a private boarding school.
The most YA-feeling not-YA book. A great book to read in high school and feel like you’re graduating into something more substantial in your reading life.
16. Oranges and Apples - by Alice Munro (from the collection Friend of my Youth)
Silent turmoil bubbles between husband and wife when an attractive European moves in next door.
This is one of my favorite Munro short stories. She writes so well about the unsettling stagnation of a good-life plateau. Nothing can ever really be perfect, there’s always something lurking. There’s a passage in the middle of the story where she describes a simple summer evening in the neighborhood that floors me with its beauty every time I read it. There is no question she's the greatest writer in the English language and it's a privilege to read anything by her.
17. Ordinary People - by Judith Guest
Teenager struggles with dumb parents, depression, and the death of his brother.
I remember this as one of those books, like Catcher in the Rye, that’s meant to be read at a certain age in your youth, then never again. This book’s luckier than Catcher in the Rye in that it doesn’t have any cheesy online discourse surrounding it, so it can be enjoyed largely without a peanut gallery. I remember this was the first book to make me think "Wait, you’re allowed to write that?" Books are amazing. Never seen the movie.
18. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - by Annie Dillard
Memoir, essay, testimony about the author's sojourn in the woods.
When religion works, it works like this book.
19. Salvage the Bones - by Jesmyn Ward
Siblings weather the dueling wraths of poverty and Hurricane Katrina.
The novel as oil painting. Riveting, monumental artistry on display, all while being propulsive and thrilling to read.
20. Savage Gods - by Paul Kingsnorth
A roaring polemic against climate destruction.
This makes an interesting, more cynical companion piece to Annie Dillard. Where Dillard is hopeful and enraptured, Kingsnorth is in the mire of mankind’s hypocrisy and cannot quite climb out of it.
21. Seeing Is Forgetting The Thing That One Sees - by Lawrence Weschler with Robert Irwin
An oral history of Irwin's artistic journey from painting to grand installation work, as told by the artist himself.
I recommend this book to any artist, no matter the medium. Irwin speaks in plain, practical language that’s hard to find in the art world today, and because of that, you get a highly detailed roadmap into his evolution as an artist. Even though his work is abstract and highly conceptual, his process is described with so much logic and precision that his artistic decisions feel valid and correct no matter your taste. It will improve your ability to look at art.
22. Silence - by Alice Munro (from the collection Runaway)
Third in a trilogy of short stories. The main character is now middle-aged and an accomplished media personality when her daughter disappears.
The only short story I would take on a deserted island instead of a novel. I re-read this once every few years. There is simply no better writer than Alice Munro. No one has a better command of language than her. On its surface this is an epic portrait of a woman’s spiritual foibles; spend enough time with it and you’ll be swept up in its dark heart, it’s dissection of the human soul—it will stay with you forever.
23. Solenoid - by Mircea Cărtărescu
The surreal rants and confessions of a Romanian school teacher.
A book that should come with a health warning and t shirt that says I READ SOLENOID AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS T SHIRT. Another book that sweeps you up in such a whirlwind you forget where you’re going. It’s hallucinatory, hilarious, and often disgusting.
24. So Long, See You Tomorrow - by William Maxwell
Two friends grow up on opposite sides of the wealth divide. Sadness and mystery aplenty.
Maxwell is another of my all-time favorite writers. He writes in that austere way where you can tell every sentence has been chiseled down to its absolute perfect form. This is a slow, rich novel, which is all the more surprising given its short length. They don’t make writers like Maxwell in America anymore and it’s a tragedy!
25. Sputnik Sweetheart - by Haruki Murakami
An existential love triangle between a writer, a salaryman, and a wealthy older woman.
This is the perfect entry point for someone wanting to read Murakami. All his hallmark surrealism is here, but more accessible and with a compelling mystery at its core. The ferris wheel scene near the end remains one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever read.
26. The Artist’s Way - by Julia Cameron
Self-help book for rediscovering your creative spark.
An excellent guidebook for getting yourself out of any rut, not just for writers. This book teaches self-discipline and personal accountability more than anything else, which are the only real tools an artist needs to have mastery over if they want to improve their craft.
27. The Broom of the System - by David Foster Wallace
For the life of me I cannot sum up the plot of this one…
A minor slapstick “Great American Novel” too into its own schtick, but it works! Sweeping satire, cynical Americana, eat it up. Probably only good if read in your 20s.
28. The Folded Leaf - by William Maxwell
Friendship between two boys is chronicled from childhood to adulthood, interrupted by unrequited love.
The one book I would run back into a burning building for. No one writes about men better than Maxwell and this book is devastating. Every character is so enigmatic, written so perfectly you can practically hear them breathing next to you. A nice companion piece to Confessions of a Mask, and it’s remarkable to think that these two landmark masterpieces of gay fiction were both published in the 1940s.
29. The Girls - by Joy Williams (honestly not sure this was ever published in a formal Williams collection, just The Idaho Review and The Best American Short Stories 2005, which is crazy because it’s one of her best!)
Two young sisters invade the privacy of their houseguests to hilarious and disturbing effect.
Writing is amazing because you can literally do whatever you want. This story rocks.
30. The Gloaming - by Melanie Finn
A woman commits an unforgivable crime in Switzerland, then flees to Africa.
Finn is the kind of genre-blending writer I love. Elements of thriller, magical realism, kitchen-sink melodrama all meld together to create this tragic whirlwind of a novel. There are notes of the divine here.
31. The Magic Mountain - by Thomas Mann
Hans Castorp (always first and last name) visits his sick cousin in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps and ends up staying there for a looooong time.
Another hefty book you get to live inside of for a long time. This is my comfort book, best read in winter or during a lazy vacation. The plot is anti-propulsive, it’s a slow lather of a book that will put you to sleep and you should let it because it’ll be the best sleep you’ll ever get and you’ll wake up feeling like you are Hans Castorp. I love this book.
32. The Pedersen Kid - by William H. Gass
A family saves a boy from a blizzard. When he wakes up, he has some bad news to share.
This is a dense, atmospheric, and at times abstract novella about the cycle of dysfunction in an isolated family. There’s a very straightforward, Shirley Jackson-esque buildup of dread from the start, but Gass takes unexpected detours into beautiful vignettes of the narrator’s childhood memories, all edged with danger and despair. You’ll immediately want to reread it.
33. The Vegetarian - by Han Kang
Korean woman decides to stop eating meat. And then some.
A great entry point for Kang, who tackles human psychology (and psychosis) with a sweeping, global brush. I joke that this is a great diet book and nobody laughs.
34. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - by Haruki Murakami
Salaryman's cat goes missing, then his wife, spiraling into a mystery involving psychic detectives, war crimes, and pandimensional sex.
The reason I write, the reason I read. I will never forget the electricity of reading this for the first time while working at a call center in the worst state in America. There are things that operate just beyond our understanding and I think most writers are clued into that, spending most of their lives chasing after it, but Murakami seems to write as if he’s already inside that big mystery, or like he’s already unraveled the great big joke it all is.
35. Train Dreams - by Denis Johnson
”I’ve been working on the raaaaailroad. All the live-long daaaaay.”
This type of soulfully sparse American writing is the best of the best. Johnson is as lyrical and moody as Cormac McCarthy, but infused with real aching loneliness, longing, and humility. It will make you want to escape into the desert.
36. Watchmen - by Alan Moore
Retired vigilantes (i.e. superheroes) investigate the murder of one of their own, unraveling a vast conspiracy and demons from their pasts.
Holder of the title 'best graphic novel' for good reason. This is an articulate dissection of American exceptionalism from its pulpy art design and color palette to its layered plot mechanics. A deeply important piece of art and required reading if you want to watch the Watchmen HBO show, which I’ll say is the best TV drama ever made.
And lastly, some honorable mentions for fun:
LaRose by Louise Erdich, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson, The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs, The Quick And The Dead by Joy Williams, Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, The Chateau by William Maxwell, My Mother's Dream by Alice Munro, and The Disassembly of Doreen Durand by Ryan Collett (couldn’t resist!)