Jeremy Denk's Reading List

“‘Peanuts Vol. 3’ (I think) … made it cool to be excited about Beethoven’s birthday,” says the musician Jeremy Denk, whose new memoir is “Every Good Boy Does Fine.”

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By the Book: Jeremy Denk (2022)

NYT By the Book column (2022-03-17).

Source: www.nytimes.com

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

George Saunders · Buy on Amazon

"Each story more brilliant and uncanny than the last. Plus unpretentious unpackings of their craft. Works with so much misery and difficulty and death, and Saunders showing how alive they are, extracting the joy held within the gloom."

Proxies

Brian Blanchfield · Buy on Amazon

"I enjoy art that antagonizes you, and then, slowly, in an emotional striptease, reveals a gooey, loving center. Blanchfield's sentences have incredible rhythm."

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen · 2001 · Buy on Amazon

"The book saw into my soul. It was the novel-length rant I would have composed about my family if only I hadn't been so busy practicing the piano!"

Pnin

Vladimir Nabokov · Buy on Amazon

""The dishwashing scene," he said, with a tiny quaver in his voice, and that was it. This pierced me right through the heart. How Nabokov manage to make the prosaic act so luminous?"

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

David Foster Wallace · Buy on Amazon

""A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is one of my favorite books: the long essay on TV and irony, and those two virtuosic comic-journalistic pieces (Illinois State Fair, Cruise)."

The Possessed

Elif Batuman · Buy on Amazon

"I adored Elif Batuman's book/memoir/essay about studying Russian literature, "The Possessed.""

Feminine Endings

Susan McClary · Buy on Amazon

"Right now I'm deep in, re-re-reading and thinking through Susan McClary's great, controversial work of feminist musicology: "Feminine Endings." She takes no prisoners, dismantling the mantles of Western classical narratives."

Notes of a Pianist

Louis Moreau Gottschalk · Buy on Amazon

"My favorite musician memoir is Louis Moreau Gottschalk's "Notes of a Pianist." He was at once a genius, a narcissist and a con man — the true artist trifecta."

Finn Family Moomintroll

Tove Jansson · Buy on Amazon

"My deepest affection was Tove Jansson's "Finn Family Moomintroll" — even at 7 years old, I thought nostalgia was the best emotion."

Pictures From an Institution

Randall Jarrell · Buy on Amazon

"The pianist Richard Goode (my idol) gave me a worn, used copy of Randall Jarrell's "Pictures From an Institution.""

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf · Buy on Amazon

"I'll reread "Mrs. Dalloway," because I remember that book giving me so many shivers."

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