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Chang Rae Lee's Reading List

The author of “On Such a Full Sea” has been rereading the classics he tackled in college — “big, complex works which I found arresting and difficult then and find arresting and difficult now.”

By the Book: Chang Rae Lee (2014)

NYT By the Book column (2014-01-23).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Mr. Peanut

Adam Ross · Buy on Amazon

""Mr. Peanut" is a hybrid wonder, being at once a detective story, an arch gloss on that genre and a bravura romance, totally upended. All this is driven by the edgy sparkle of the prose."

Battleborn

Claire Vaye Watkins · Buy on Amazon

"Watkins's "Battleborn" is equally potent even though the stories range widely in setting, time and voice, the modalities coming at you with a ferocity and intelligence that seems like a magic trick."

Lord Jim

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"Lately I've been rereading books that I hadn't read since high school and college, novels like "Lord Jim" and "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Women in Love," big, complex works which I found arresting and difficult then and find arresting and difficult now."

The Brothers Karamazov

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"Lately I've been rereading books that I hadn't read since high school and college, novels like "Lord Jim" and "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Women in Love," big, complex works which I found arresting and difficult then and find arresting and difficult now."

Women in Love

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"Reading Lawrence, for example, is sometimes cringe-inducing, for a certain gaseousness ... And yet there's an irrepressible life-force and iconoclastic urge that's artistically inspiring."

Dubliners

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"In high school, when I was just beginning to realize how much I loved literature and was earnestly writing my first poems and stories, I adored "Dubliners" and "A Farewell to Arms""

A Farewell to Arms

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"I adored "Dubliners" and "A Farewell to Arms" as well as "Leaves of Grass" and "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.""

On the Road

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"I was perhaps most taken and inspired by Kerouac's "On the Road." I loved the ecstatic riffs of that novel, the sense of wild possibility and bohemian grittiness."

Julius Caesar

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"Shouldn't every leader read Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," for its studies in the dangers of tyranny and betrayal and hubristic ambition, as well as the power and limits of rhetoric?"

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