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Edna Obrien's Reading List

The author, most recently, of “The Love Object” says Joyce staked his claim on Dublin, and it was left to Yeats, J. M. Synge and Beckett “to give us the landscape of the country in all its beauty, savagery, ghostliness and loneliness.”

By the Book: Edna Obrien (2015)

NYT By the Book column (2015-05-21).

Source: www.nytimes.com

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy · Buy on Amazon

"From the first moment, one is totally drawn into that world. It has a calmness, a spaciousness, and yet it is a book one cannot put down."

The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann · Buy on Amazon

"Hans Castorp in "The Magic Mountain" is one of my abiding heroes."

Dubliners

James Joyce · 1914 · Buy on Amazon

"First it was "Dubliners," those tender, seemingly simple stories, set in the city I had come to work in and to be able to identify with the lonely, marginal people that he wrote about."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce · Buy on Amazon

"Then it was "Portrait of the Artist," that depiction of Stephen the embryo poet, caught in strained and thwarting circumstances, defying church and state, forging his own freedom, deliverance through language."

Ulysses

James Joyce · 1922 · Buy on Amazon

"Lastly, that citadel that is "Ulysses," "a strife of tongues" — he put down all the people, "the great talkers . . . and the things they forgot." He put down a lot more than that."

Out of Africa

Isak Dinesen · Buy on Amazon

""Out of Africa" — a book I return to again and again."

The Rings of Saturn

W. G. Sebald · Buy on Amazon

""The Rings of Saturn" — a book I return to again and again."

Disgrace

J. M. Coetzee · Buy on Amazon

""Disgrace" — a book I return to again and again."

Ariel

Sylvia Plath · Buy on Amazon

""Ariel," by Sylvia Plath — a book I return to again and again."

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