Tom Perrotta's Reading List
The author of “Little Children,” “Election” and “The Leftovers” had to force himself to finish “Lolita”: “All that sparkling wordplay just got exhausting after a while.”
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Tom Perrotta (2013)
NYT By the Book column (2013-11-27).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Nathaniel Hawthorne · Buy on Amazon
"I reread “The Scarlet Letter” over the summer and was completely blown away. … the novel itself is shockingly strange and beautiful, with a narrative momentum and emotional intensity that caught me completely by surprise."
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · Buy on Amazon
"Its only real competition is “The Great Gatsby,” another short, nearly perfect book that illuminates something essential about the American character."
James Kelman · Buy on Amazon
"losing myself inside James Kelman’s “How Late It Was, How Late,” a peculiar novel about a small-time criminal slowly adjusting to blindness, written in a thick Scottish dialect. The book is amazing."
Sherwood Anderson · Buy on Amazon
"Suburban novels are really just small-town novels in contemporary clothing, and my favorite small-town book is “Winesburg, Ohio,” by Sherwood Anderson, a heartbreaking collection of stories about thwarted dreamers and lost souls."
John Updike · Buy on Amazon
"For my money, the great contemporary suburban epic is John Updike’s monumental sequence of novels about Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, four books that illuminate the social and sexual history of post-World War II America through the microcosm of one deeply flawed man."
Alison Bechdel · Buy on Amazon
"I’m a big fan of Alison Bechdel (“Fun Home” is a masterpiece), Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar, in particular."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"I have to give a particular shout-out to “Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth,” which is an illustrated biography of Bertrand Russell and his failed attempt to create a purely logical system of mathematics."
Richard Hofstadter · Buy on Amazon
"I’m sure the president has read Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” but it might be worthwhile for him to revisit it."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"At some point in my childhood I read a book called “Strange but True Football Stories” that I’ve never forgotten."
John Irving · Buy on Amazon
"I read “The World According to Garp” when I was 16, and it changed my life. I was an avid reader at the time and a would-be guitar player, but “Garp” allowed me to articulate a new ambition: I wanted to be a writer."
Katherine Boo · Buy on Amazon
"I’ve been meaning to read Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” for a long time. I’m saving it for my next plane trip."