Amy Tan's Reading List

"Richard Ford’s “Canada.” I’ve loved all his books, from the characters to the parenthetical sentences. His voice always sounds so casual, as if the narrator is working it out in his head for the first time."

"“Jing Ping Mei” (“The Plum in the Golden Vase”). The author is anonymous. I would describe it as a book of manners for the debauched."

"He gave me an advance reading copy of “On Writing.” A couple of years before, we had talked about the question no one asks us in interviews: language. He had been thinking of doing a book on writing, and I had said, “Do it.”"

"Books were luxuries. We had the World Book Encyclopedia, donated Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, inspirational books by Billy Graham, Bibles in foreign languages and my favorite, a book on a high shelf called “Psychopathia Sexualis.”"

"I crossed a threshold of reader pride after finishing “To Kill a Mockingbird.”"

"And I made it a point to read banned books, like “The Catcher in the Rye,” which led to counseling sessions with a youth minister, who told me such books would give me sinful feelings. That incident solidified feelings I have about the power of books and one’s helplessness without them."

"Jane Eyre remains a favorite. Her truthfulness sometimes made me laugh. And her loneliness and need to make her own way mirrored my feelings."

"The Little Prince is another lost soul I clung to."

"And then I read Louise Erdrich’s “Love Medicine,” with its strong multiple voices. The stories were bound by community and mutual loss. That later became a model for the structure of “The Joy Luck Club.”"

"Coetzee’s “Disgrace” made me feel the latter [I should give up writing]."

"The other is more hopeful: “My Beloved World,” by Sonia Sotomayor. I’m grateful for her wisdom and compassion on the Supreme Court."

"I first savored these stories in Hawaii and nearly fell out of my hammock with the sheer pleasure of them. They are told in the distinct voices of family, friends and old adversaries in a Chippewa community, some soft-hearted, others hard-knuckled, as they recall the deep rifts and repaired shreds of their common history. Erdrich’s stories reminded me of the kind of stories my mother told me—the tragedies, grudges, and secrets. When I returned home from Hawaii, I started to write the stories..."

"To understand ravens, Heinrich becomes the raven. He is heroic in the lengths he goes to conduct his scientific research, and relentlessly curious in pursuing the reasons behind raven behavior. He causes us to reflect on what we mean by morality, intelligence, and emotion in animals and humans alike. This book made me fall in love with wild birds, and those who know me also know how huge birds have become in my life."

"I remember reading this memoir some twenty years ago and thinking I had found a long lost childhood friend. With the language of a poet—both incandescent and glaringly fluorescent—Karr recounts sexual abuse, the charm and unreliability of her alcoholic father, and the emotional chaos of her brilliant, beautiful, and mentally ill mother. What emerges in memory is a meditation on truth found in love and self-knowledge."

"Davis is the ultimate prose stylist and this collection of short fiction proved addictive on many a late night. Her narrators are quirky, self-conscious, and sometimes humorously obsessive. Many of the stories are only a page or two long. But within those pages are observations that reveal the precise tics and nuances that make us indelibly who we are."

"The breathtaking beauty of Alameddine’s prose alone makes this compulsive reading. Its true genius, however, lies in the sacrosanct ideas that the narrator—a translator of books that will never be read—lays bare with humorous irreverence, wry insouciance, or intellectual outrage. She is fearless in looking at aging and death, the morality of war and survival, and the true meaning of a meaningful life. She also gives advice on not dying your hair blue in bad light."

"I was stunned when I read this book in 1976, and not just because it was the first book I read by an Asian American woman. Hong Kingston wraps family history around myth and discovers the ghosts of woman who have traveled through time into her own life. I felt those ghosts and went looking for mine."

"This wildly imagined story of a slave boy mistaken to be a girl takes us on rollicking ride with the abolitionist John Brown on his way to Harper’s Ferry. The voice of the narrator is genuine and pitch perfect, hilarious in musing on the mistakes, accidents and opportunities he took to find freedom, and a meditation on the choices in life."

"This novel is cited by many of my author friends as the best in the English language. I, too, am awed by its beauty and intelligence, so much so that I sometimes feel I should stop writing. (I won’t.) The narrator of this story has been bestowed with telepathic powers by virtue of the time of his birth. This proves useful in recounting his life, which is coincidentally wrapped around historical events in India. Rushdie injects much political criticism of the powers that came to be, and this t..."

"Mary Oliver’s poems give us solace and perspective. They provide the companionship of like-minds and thus have the power to instantly remove loneliness. Her poetry is the little lamp in the window that guides us home when we are in love or in trouble. When you read the last line of each poem, you’ll understand. It will take your breath away."

"I’ve read this book several times. As a writer, I am in awe of Márquez’s genius. The first sentence reveals the gist of the entire novel, and yet everything in this love story is surprising. I would count this as the most romantic novel I’ve read. It is the family legend of undying love we all wish we had."