Katherine Boo's Reading List
As a child, the author of “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” appreciated books in which “the weak were rarely bullied for long, and the bad guys didn’t get away.”
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Katherine Boo (2013)
NYT By the Book column (2013-02-07).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Alejandro Zambra · Buy on Amazon
"I’m currently reading “Ways of Going Home,” by the Chilean novelist and poet Alejandro Zambra. If it’s only half as good as his novella, “Bonsai,” it’ll still be a fine way to lose a weekend."
Alejandro Zambra · Buy on Amazon
"If it’s only half as good as his novella, “Bonsai,” it’ll still be a fine way to lose a weekend."
George Saunders · Buy on Amazon
"George Saunders’s “Tenth of December,” ... “Tenth,” in addition to being funny and stylistically cunning, contains some of the best writing about the psychological toll of inequality that I’ve read in years."
Ben Fountain · Buy on Amazon
"Among recent happy diversions were Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” Junot Díaz’s “This Is How You Lose Her,” Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” and the poet Jeet Thayil’s first novel, “Narcopolis,” about the drug-hazed Bombay of the 1980s."
Jeet Thayil · 2012 · Buy on Amazon
"the poet Jeet Thayil’s first novel, “Narcopolis,” about the drug-hazed Bombay of the 1980s."
Alaa Al Aswany · Buy on Amazon
"I paid particular attention to novels where points of view shifted quickly, among them “The Yacoubian Building,” by Alaa Al Aswany."
Aman Sethi · Buy on Amazon
"Aman Sethi’s “A Free Man,” about an itinerant laborer in a Delhi slum, is one of my recent favorites — an original sensibility joined to a passion for reported fact."
Naresh Fernandes · Buy on Amazon
"I’m also eagerly awaiting Naresh Fernandes’s “The Re-Islanding of Mumbai,” which should be out by the end of the year."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"My sister and I loved Encyclopedia Brown, the fifth-grade nerd/observer who seldom took more than a day to unravel the nefarious conspiracies of childhood."
David Finkel · Buy on Amazon
"Finkel’s first book, “The Good Soldiers,” followed a battalion charged with carrying out George W. Bush’s “surge.” The new book follows some of those veterans as they struggle to reintegrate themselves into American life, and it’s devastating."
Chico Buarque · Buy on Amazon
"“Spilt Milk,” by the Brazilian novelist Chico Buarque. A deathbed monologue about class, race, love and political history has no right to be this funny."
William Shakespeare · Buy on Amazon
"Shakespeare’s underrated “Troilus and Cressida,” a story of flawed people in a transactional historical context that renders notions of pure love absurd. It’s a love story for our time that just happened to be written at the turn of the 17th century."
Roberto Bolaño · Buy on Amazon
"First among my contemporaries would have to be the late Roberto Bolaño. “The Savage Detectives” and “By Night in Chile” double-handedly yanked me out of a depression several years back, and reading “2666” while reporting in the slums was like a little miracle."
Roberto Bolaño · Buy on Amazon
"“The Savage Detectives” and “By Night in Chile” double-handedly yanked me out of a depression several years back"
Roberto Bolaño · Buy on Amazon
"reading “2666” while reporting in the slums was like a little miracle... That section of the book undid me so thoroughly that I’ll probably never reread it, even though I surely grasped only a sliver of what Bolaño was trying to say."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"And I suppose that’s the built-in sorrow of my life’s most profound encounters with books, beginning with “A Wrinkle in Time” in third grade."
Rebecca West · Buy on Amazon
"Rebecca West’s “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”; Anna Funder’s “Stasiland”; Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea”; Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s “Random Family”"
Anna Funder · Buy on Amazon
"Anna Funder’s “Stasiland”"
Barbara Demick · Buy on Amazon
"Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea”"
Denis Johnson · Buy on Amazon
"Denis Johnson’s nonfiction collection “Seek,” mainly for the piece about trying to meet Charles Taylor during the Liberian civil war."
Kathryn Schulz · Buy on Amazon
"Kathryn Schulz’s “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.” It’s about the animating power of doubt and correction, and a lack of self-certainty is something my favorite nonfiction writers seem to have in common."