FRANCINE PROSE: “BOOKS TO BE READ IMMEDIATELY”
from Reading Like a Writer: a guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them. (Harper Collins, 2006)
Akutagawa, Ryunosuke. M. Kuwata and Tashaki Kojima (translators), Rashomen and other stories
Alcott, Louisa May, Little women
Anonymous. Dorothy L Sayers (translator), The song of Roland
Austen, Jane, Pride and prejudice
Austen, Jane, Sense and sensibility
Babel, Isaac, Walter Morrison (translator), The collected stories
Baldwin, James, Vintage Baldwin
Balzac, Honore de. Kathleen Raine (translator), Cousin Bette
Barthelme, Donald, Sixty stories
Baxter, Charles, Believers: a novella and stories
Beckett, Samuel, The complete short prose, 1929-1989
Bowen, Elizabeth, The house in Paris
Bowles, Jane, Two serious ladies
Bowles, Paul, Paul Bowles: collected stories and later writings
Brodkey, Harold, Stories in an almost classical mode
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering heights
Calvino, Italo, Cosmicomics
Carver, Raymond, Where I’m calling from: selected stories
Carver, Raymond, Cathedral
Cervantes, Miguel de. Tobias Smollett (translator), Don Quixote
Chandler, Raymond, The big sleep
Cheever, John, The stories of John Cheever
Chekhov, Anton. Constance Garnett (translator), Tales of Anton Chekhov: vol 1-13
Diaz, Junot. Drown
Dickens, Charles Bleak house
Dickens, Charles, Dombrey and son
Dostoyevsky, Fydor. Constance Garnett (translator), Crime and punishment
Dybek, Stuart, I sailed with Magellan
Eisenberg, Deborah, The stories (so far) of Deborah Eisenberg
Eliot, George, Middlemarch
Elkin, Stanley, Searches and seizures
Fitzgerald, F.Scott, The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F.Scott, Tender is the night
Flaubert, Gustave. Geoffrey Wall (translator), Madame Bovary
Flaubert, Gustave. Robert Baldick (translator), A sentimental education
Fox, Paula. Jonathan Franzen (introduction), Desperate characters
Franzen, Jonathan, The corrections
Gallant, Mavis, Paris stories
Gaddis, William, The recognitions
Gates, David, The wonders of the invisible world: stories
Gibbon, Edward, Decline and fall of the Roman empire
Gogol, Nikolai. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (translators), Dead Souls: a novel
Green, Harry, Doting
Green, Harry, Loving
Hartley, L. P., The go-between
Hemingway, Ernest, A moveable feast
Hemingway, Ernest, The sun also rises
Herbert, Zbigniew. Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott (translators), Selected poems
James, Henry, The portrait of a lady
James, Henry, The turn of the screw
Jarrell, Randall, Pictures from an institution
Johnson, Denis, Angels
Johnson, Denis, Jesus’ son
Johnson, Diane, Le divorce
Johnson, Diane, Persian nights
Johnson, Samuel, The life of Savage
Joyce, James, Dubliners
Kafka, Franz. Willa and Edmund (translators), The trial
Le Carre, John, A perfect spy
Mandelstam, Nadezdha, Hope against hope: a memoir
Mansfield, Katherine, Collected stories of Katherine Mansfield
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Gregory Rabassa (translator), One hundred years of solitude
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Gregory Rabassa (translator), The autumn of the patriarch
McInerney, Jan, Bright lights, big city
Melville, Herman, Bartleby the scrivener and Benito Cereno
Melville, Herman, Moby Dick
Milton, John, Paradise lost
Munro, Alice, Selected stories
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Russian literature
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita
O’Brien, Tim, The things they carried
O’Connor, Flannery, A good man is hard to find and other stories
O’Connor, Flannery, Collected stories
O’Connor, Flannery, Wise Blood
Packer, ZZ, Drinking coffee elsewhere
Paustovsky, Konstantin. Joseph Bares (translator), Years of hope: the story of a life
Price, Richard, Freedomland
Proust, Marcel. Lydia Davis (translator), Swann’s way
Pynchon, Thomas, Gravity’s rainbow
Richardson, Samuel, Pamela: or virtue rewarded
Roth, Philip, Amercan pastoral
Roth, Philip, Philip Roth: novels and stories 1959-1962
Rulfo, Juan. Margaret Sayers Peden (translator), Pedro Paramo
Salinger, J.D., Franny and Zooey
Shakespeare, William, King Lear
Shteyngart, Gary, The Russian debutante’s handbook
Sophocles. Sir Goerge Young (translator), Oedipus Rex
Spencer, Scott, A ship made of paper
St. Aubyn, Edward, Mother’s milk
St. Aubyn, Edward, Some hope: a trilogy
Stead, Christina, The man who loved children
Steegmuller, Francis, Flaubert and Madame Bovary: a double portrait
Stein, Gertrude, The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Stendhal. Roger Gard (translator), The red and the black
Stout, Rex, Plot it yourself
Strunk, William and E.B. White. Maira Kalman (illustrator),
The elements of style, illustrated
Taylor, Peter, A summons to Memphis
Tolstaya, Tatyana, Sleepwalker in a fog
Tolstoy, Leo. Constance Garnett (translator), Anna Karenina
Tolstoy, Leo. Aylmer Maud (translator), The death of Ival Ilych and other stories
Tolstoy, Leo. David McDuff (translator), The Kreutzer sonata and other stories
Tolstoy, Leo. Rosemary Edmonds (translator), Resurrection
Tolstoy, Leo. Constance Garnett (translator), War and peace
Trevor, William, The children of Dynmouth
Trevor, William, The collected stories
Trevor, William, Fools of fortune
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich. Isaiah Berlin (translator), First love
Twain, Mark, The adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Von Kleist, Heinrich. Martin Greenberg (translator) and Thomas Mann (preface),
The Marquise of O__ and other stories
West, Rebecca, The birds fall down
West, Rebecca, Black lamb and grey falcon: a journey through Yugoslavia
Williams, Joy, Escapes
Woods, James, Broken estate: essays on literature and belief
Woolf, Virginia, On being ill
Yates, Richard, Revolutionary road
P.S. by Mary Katherine Wainwright
Barth, John, The sot-weed factor
Bishop, Elizabeth, The complete poems
Bishop, Elizabeth, One art: letters
Bradbury, Ray, Dandelion wine; Fahrenheit 451
Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre
Dickens, Charles, A tale of two cities
Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield
Didion, Joan, Slouching towards Bethlehem
Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man
Erdrich, Louise, Tracks
Faulkner, William, The sound and the fury
Forster, E. M. Howard’s End; Room with a view
Hanff, Helene, 84 Charring Cross Road
Hurston, Zora Neale, Their eyes were watching god
Joyce, James, Portrait of an artist as a young man
Milosz, Czeslaw, Collected poems
Morrison, Toni, Beloved; Jazz; Love; Song of Solomon; Tarbaby; The bluest eye;
Paradise
Oliver, Mary, At Blackwater pond; New and selected poems; White pines
Pynchon, Thomas, The crying of lot 49
Rilke, Ranier Maria. A. Poulin, Jr. (translator), Duino Elegies and The sonnets
to Orpheus
Rilke, Ranier Maria. M.D. Herter Norton (translator), Letters to a young poet
Salinger, J. D., The catcher in the rye
Shakespeare, William. Everything!
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein
Smith, Dodie, I capture the castle
Tyler, Anne, Back when we were grownups and all others
Walker, Alice, In search of our mothers’ gardens
West, Nathanael, Miss Lonelyhearts
Wharton, Edith. Age of innocence; House of mirth
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of grass
Woolf, Virginia, A room of one’s own; Mrs. Dalloway; Three guineas
