Bunkobons

← All curators

Dean Koontz's Reading List

The author, most recently, of “The City” is a fan of Marilynne Robinson and Cormac McCarthy: “Both offer voluptuous yet highly controlled language and profound moral purpose.”

Open in WellRead Daily app →

By the Book: Dean Koontz (2014)

NYT By the Book column (2014-07-24).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Cover of The Wild Iris
The Wild Iris
Louise Glück · Buy on Amazon
"I'm especially charmed by the lyrical expressions and well-wrought cadences of poetry — currently, "The Wild Iris" and "Ararat," by Louise Glück, and "New & Selected Poems," by Donald Justice, all of which I've read many times."
Cover of Ararat
Ararat
Louise Glück · Buy on Amazon
"I'm especially charmed by the lyrical expressions and well-wrought cadences of poetry — currently, "The Wild Iris" and "Ararat," by Louise Glück, and "New & Selected Poems," by Donald Justice, all of which I've read many times."
Cover of New & Selected Poems
New & Selected Poems
Donald Justice · Buy on Amazon
"I'm especially charmed by the lyrical expressions and well-wrought cadences of poetry — currently "New & Selected Poems," by Donald Justice, all of which I've read many times."
Cover of The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man
C. S. Lewis · Buy on Amazon
""The Abolition of Man," by C. S. Lewis, serves this purpose"
Cover of At the End of an Age
At the End of an Age
John Lukacs · Buy on Amazon
""At the End of an Age," by John Lukacs; one of Andrew Roberts's excellent histories; or a good book on quantum mechanics or chaos theory."
Cover of The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame · Buy on Amazon
"The first book to enchant me was Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows.""
Cover of Intellectuals
Intellectuals
Paul Johnson · Buy on Amazon
"His portraits of Rousseau, Sartre, Edmund Wilson and others are sharply pointed but accurate, and at times darkly humorous."
Cover of The Complete Stories
The Complete Stories
Flannery O'Connor · 1971 · Buy on Amazon
"No one has written better about the reality of evil. Few have written as well, with such sharp-edged compassion, about the weaknesses and follies of humanity, about the operation of grace in our lives."
Cover of My Life Among the Deathworks
My Life Among the Deathworks
Philip Rieff · Buy on Amazon
"I'm rereading "My Life Among the Deathworks," by the cultural theorist Philip Rieff."

Favorite books (2021)

Favorite books recommended by Dean Koontz's 5 Best-Loved Books, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/dean-koontz-favorite-books/.

Source: radicalreads.com

In Sunlight and in Shadow
Mark Helprin · Buy on Amazon
The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Alice Hoffman · Buy on Amazon
"This tale of early-20th-century New York City is rich with engaging detail. Raised by a sinister father who owns a freak show, Coralie falls for Eddie, who is from an Orthodox Jewish family. The polished, luminous prose serves well a wonder-filled story that goes over the top with the kind of authority Ray Bradbury would have adored."
Hide Me Among the Graves
Tim Powers · Buy on Amazon
"This genre-defying historical novel–thriller-fantasy is set in 1962 London. Poet Christina Rossetti, her beloved brother, and others must thwart the malevolent spirit of John Polidori, former doctor to the poet Lord Byron. Exhilarating, imaginative, dark, lunatic, the story is ultimately about love that surpasses all understanding."
The Color of Light
William Goldman · Buy on Amazon
"Chub Fuller is an acclaimed writer by the time he leaves college for New York City. He takes too seriously the advice to write what he knows. In his headlong pursuit of love, he fashions for himself material darkly comic and tragic. This exploration of a writer’s mind, heart, and ambition has an ending as stunning as it is right."
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens (also rec’d by Christopher Hitchens & Maya Angelou ) · Buy on Amazon
"Both cities in this classic are portrayed with Dickens’s talent for detail. His Paris in revolution is chilling. Madame Defarge is one of the great monsters of literature. The last scene and final sentence are deeply moving, as is the author’s insistence that totalitarian politics doesn’t have the power to eradicate love from the world."

Suggest an update?