John Waters's Reading List
The film director and author of "Make Trouble" says that when a publisher asked him for a blurb for "Transit," he sent back, "Rachel Cusk is too smart for her own good."
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: John Waters (2017)
NYT By the Book column (2017-04-20).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Philipp Meyer · Buy on Amazon
"'American Rust,' by Philipp Meyer, because his last historical novel, 'The Son,' was such an amazingly well-written, violently beautiful page-turner that I have to read what came before."
Gertrude Stein · Buy on Amazon
"the ultimate bedside book — 'The Making of Americans,' by Gertrude Stein. I enormously respect its impenetrability. Maybe this is the best novel ever written, because you can't read it."
Charlie Fox · Buy on Amazon
"Good God, where did this wise-beyond-his-years 25-year-old critic's voice come from? His breath of proudly putrefied air is really something to behold. Yep. Mr. Fox is the real thing."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"I had never read Lydia Davis's translation, so I did recently because I loved her collection of short stories 'Can't and Won't' so much. Can a translator have groupies? If so, I am hers."
Lydia Davis · Buy on Amazon
"I loved her collection of short stories 'Can't and Won't' so much. Can a translator have groupies? If so, I am hers."
James Blake · Buy on Amazon
"'The Joint,' by James Blake. A sexy, funny gayly-incorrect prison memoir that Genet might have liked."
Joy Williams · Buy on Amazon
"'The Visiting Privilege,' by Joy Williams. 'The dead just forget you,' a character reasons, and boy, that is a sobering, ego-crushing thing to tell someone."
Pamela Newkirk · Buy on Amazon
"'Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga,' by Pamela Newkirk. The true story of a Congolese man who is held captive and exhibited next to an orangutan in the Bronx Zoo in the early 1900s."
Ottessa Moshfegh · 2015 · Buy on Amazon
"I gave Ottessa Moshfegh's novel 'Eileen' to everybody as a Christmas present last year."
Ottessa Moshfegh · Buy on Amazon
"her new collection of short stories, 'Homesick for Another World,' will scorch you like a blowtorch."
Anne Tyler · Buy on Amazon
"'Ladder of Years' is my favorite of hers, and it perfectly describes what it is like to be a Baltimorean; unpretentious, impervious to the outside world and layered in eccentric family traditions."
Rachel Cusk · Buy on Amazon
"When her English publisher asked me for a blurb for 'Transit,' I sent back, 'Rachel Cusk is too smart for her own good,' and I meant this as the ultimate compliment. She doesn't suffer fools, and I like that in a writer."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"Ignatius J. Reilly in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' is pretty hard to beat."
Karl Ove Knausgaard · Buy on Amazon
"Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle: Book 6.' Hurry up, you lazy English translators. It seems like I finished Volume 5 ages ago!"