Andrew Solomon's Reading List

"I’m rereading “The Portrait of a Lady,” which I do every few years to remind myself that there really is such a thing as elegance, in life and in prose — and to remember how much devastation can unfold around it."

"Christian Caryl’s “Strange Rebels” argues convincingly that the problems of the 21st century were all hatched in 1979, and looks particularly at the move away from secularism and the welfare state; it’s a bold and illuminating take on our time, and its analysis of militancy seems particularly relevant as we look to Syria."

"On a lighter note, I loved Cécile David-Weill’s “Suitors,” a charming comedy of manners set at a country estate in the South of France, apparently one of the few places in the world where anyone still has enough manners to make a comedy about."

"She achieves scope without ever sacrificing her devastating precision. Her psychological insight accumulates through perfectly observed details, without a trace of pomposity."

"I feel as if she is writing not simply about the mind, but about my mind. Her books are as visceral to me as music."

"Rose Macaulay, for her wistful humanity and her glorious sense of humor."

"There is a scene in “The Towers of Trebizond” in which the narrator realizes that she has copied the wrong sentence out of her Turkish phrase book and has accidentally been soliciting the attention of a hotel guest when she merely wished to explain that she didn’t speak the language; it ranks among the best comic scenes in fiction."

"Emma Lazarus, for her humanitarian passions. She wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor”), but we’ve largely forgotten the sedate beauty of her other work, including the prose poems “By the Waters of Babylon.”"

"we’ve largely forgotten the sedate beauty of her other work, including the prose poems “By the Waters of Babylon.”"

"Rumer Godden, who is incorrectly categorized as a children’s writer, and who writes with so much understatement that readers can miss the depth of her insight and her vivid grace."

"“An Episode of Sparrows” was reissued, and I find it quietly transporting."

"The book that influenced me the most was Rozsika Parker’s “Torn in Two,” published in the U.S. as “Mother Love, Mother Hate.”"

"Every “Peanuts” anthology ever. I played Linus in my summer camp production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” and have been addicted to the comic strip ever since."

"For a delicious analysis of the extremely unhelpful self-help industry, see Jessica Lamb-Shapiro’s forthcoming “Promise Land.”"

"Jennifer Finney Boylan’s endlessly witty “Stuck in the Middle With You” made me laugh out loud over and over again; it’s about her experience as a transgender parent, who started off as her children’s father and ended up as their “Maddy” — not quite a mom, but definitely no longer a dad."

"Louise Erdrich’s “Painted Drum” made me cry: “And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”"

"It would behoove the president to read “Random Family,” Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s searing masterpiece of relentless close-up journalism."

"We’ve been reading “Winnie-the-Pooh,” and I am trying to nail the voices of Pooh and Eeyore and Owl half as winningly as my father did."

"We have a bit of a Moomintroll addiction."

"And then there are Carl Sandburg’s “Rootabaga Stories,” by which I remain as wholly captivated in adulthood as I was in childhood."

"We’re entranced by Tim Egan’s recent Dodsworth series about a nattily dressed indeterminate animal (badger? woodchuck?) traveling the world with his hapless, ill-behaved duck."