The following books are some of my favorites. All will
help improve your writing ability. I chose each for its style, content and possible unique
subject matter (or handling of same). Pay attention to the writers, for these are some on
the cutting edge of our time. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do.
Follow the links to author biographies and book reviews.
FICTION:
Ernest Hemingway - The Old
Man and the Sea
Dennis Potter - Black
Eyes, Ticket to Ride
Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose,
The Island of the Day Before, Foucault's Pendulum
Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities
John Steinbeck - The
Pearl, The Winter of Discontent
Tom Robbins - Jitterbug
Perfume, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Edward Rutherford - Sarum, Russka, London
Kurt Vonnegut - Galapagos
James Salter - A Sport and a Pasttime, Burning the Days
Wallace Stegner - Crossing to Safety
Vilhelm Moberg - The Emmigrants
Robin Cook - Sphinx
Thomas Pynchon - Vineland
Jim Harrison - Warlock, Legends
of the Fall, The
Road Home
Clive Barker - Weaveworld, Imagica
Ann Rice - The
Mummy, Interview with the Vampire, The Feast of All Saints
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:
James Salter - Dusk
Barry Lopez - Winter Count
Daphne du
Maurier - Don't Look Now
John Updike - Problems, Museums
and Women
Truman Capote - The
Collected Works of Truman Capote
Ernest Hemingway - Hemingway
Stories
Edgar Allan Poe - The
Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe
David Lida - Travel Advisory
NONFICTION:
Truman Capote - In Cold
Blood
John Berendt - Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil
Farley Mowat - Never Cry
Wolf
Barry Lopez - Arctic Dreams,
Of Wolves and Men
Izak Dinesen - Out of Africa
Gay Talese - The Overreachers
Norman Mailer - Armies of the
Night
Joan Didion - Slouching
Towards Bethlehem
Tom Wolfe - Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the
Flak Catchers
Bruce Feiler - Under the Big Top
Tony Horwitz - Confederates
in the Attic
You can add to this list. Look for writers who present the world in
an unusual way.
Send your additions to Bob Brooke.
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