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Three works of genuine mastery.
From his early bestseller The Soul of a New Machine, a groundbreaking chronicle of the birth of the computer, Tracy Kidder has brought both broad cultural perspective and intense human interest to his studies of the rapidly changing contexts of modern life. His newest book, Strength in What Remains, traces one man's journey from war-torn Burundi to the U.S., and back again, with characteristic concentration and compassion. What are his three favorite books?
By Richard Todd
"Wit is a word that a number of contemporary artists inaccurately apply to their own work. For an example of the real thing, I suggest The Thing Itself, a haunting and often very funny meditation on authenticity. The author, Richard Todd, taught me how to write a book, but I don't think this fact has colored my admiration for the one that he has written. If anything, I ought to feel reluctant to praise it, since I wouldn't want him to give up editing. "
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
By Ernest Hemingway
"At some point during my first year at college, I discovered Hemingway, and began ardently trying to imitate him. I don't re-read his novels now, for fear of finding they have aged as gracelessly as I have. I do re-read his short stories, though, with pleasure and admiration, and also with nostalgia. Even today, I believe, aspiring writers could find much worse places to begin."
By Herman Melville
"My favorite novel, which resembles no other novel I've ever read. A very funny and haunting book. But, I believe, no one under forty ought to attempt it."
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"The moral and philosophical questions that Henry wrote up as fiction and William as science," Jean Strouse writes of her subject's more famous brothers, "Alice simply lived." It took a biographer of sensitivity and brilliance to give that "simply" the profundity it deserves, and the resulting book, now reissued in the peerless NYRB Classics series, is one of the richest life stories you'll ever read.
The world of Jane Austen's fiction has long been an imaginative playground for writers and readers of a certain stripe. Shannon Hale's Austenland wittily took the next step, setting comic romance in a faux-Pemberly resort for the Darcy-smitten. Her latest returns for more Regency fun, but with a twist: does murder stalk Pembrook Park?
Childlike retreat? Arts and crafts challenge? Frugal and eco-friendly living option? The notion of the "tiny house" has the surprising potential to fire the imagination. In this exuberant volume of sketches, plans, and commentary, the artist Derek Diedricksen shares his infectious enthusiasm for the idea of the micro-mansion.
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