Dave's Faves

Dave's Faves

David Long
Feb 12, 2024
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These are the books I esteem. Some are close to my heart, others loitering nearby. Some are flat-out masterful and wondrous and indelible. Some you’ll agree with me about, some not.

But ranking is dicey. Do I like The Road more or less than The Great Gatsby? Slaughterhouse-Five more or less than Beloved? Ridiculous questions. So here’s how I made these lists: The novels in the first couple of batches are my inner circle, but after that the order isn’t significant. They’re in piles of ten, newest to oldest, each pile spanning no less than a hundred years.

This page will continue to be a work-in-progress. I hope my vouching for some of the classics might tempt you to try one you’ve not read. But, really, the classics can take care of themselves. My even keener hope is that you see books you don’t know, and feel moved to take a shot at one or more—not necessarily the oldest ones, but those on the cusp of not being read anymore. Do you know William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle? I listed Ironweed (1983), a beautifully written story—sad, sad, but so evocative and precise and tight. Kennedy, I just discovered, is still alive, age 96. Many of you will find your way to So Long, See You Tomorrow and The Bell Jar and Labyrinths and As I Lay Dying . . . but what about Fools Crow, Great Granny Webster, The Street of Crocodiles, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant?

Finally, many of the books listed here were footnoted in earlier posts—I’m going to mostly skip notes on this page. Except maybe for . . .1

Dave's Faves/Novels [1]

  • All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews (2014)2

  • The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)

  • Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)

  • Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)1983)

  • So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell (1980) 

  • Suttree, Cormac McCarthy (1979) 

  • Winter in the Blood, James Welch (1974) 

  • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) 

  • Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton (1911)

  • Bleak House, Charles Dickens (1853)

Daves's Faves/Novels [2]

  • The War for Gloria, Atticus Lish (2021)

  • Normal People, Sally Rooney (2018)

  • The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth (2014)

  • Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell (2006)

  • The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (1992) 

  • Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson (1981) 

  • Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1969)

  • On the Beach, Nevil Shute (1957) 

  • Portrait of a Lady, Henry James (1881)

  • Tristram Shandy, Lawrence Sterne (1760-66)

Dave's Faves/Stories [1]

  • All Alice Munro stories (1968-2014)

  • All John Updike stories (1959-2013)

  • All Raymond Carver stories (1976-2009)

  • All William Trevor stories (1967-2018)

Dave's Faves/Stories [2]

  • Two Nurses, Smoking [stories], David Means (2022)

  • Twenty Stories, Jack Driscoll (2022)

  • A Manual For Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin (2015)

  • Ecstatic Cahoots, Stuart Dybek (2014)

  • The Tenth of December, George Saunders (2012)

  • The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (2008)

  • Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)

  • Billie Dyer and Other Stories, William Maxwell (1992)

  • The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)

  • Nebraska, Ron Hansen (1989)

  • The Assignation, Joyce Carol Oates (1988)

Dave's Faves/Stories [3]

  • Dusk and Other Stories, James Salter (1988)

  • Scenes from the Homefront, Sara Vogan (1987) 

  • We Are Not in This Together, William Kittredge (1984)

  • Sixty Stories, Donald Barthelme (1981)

  • Ellis Island and Other Stories, Mark Helprin (1981)

  • In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, William Gass (1968) 

  • Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges (1964)

  • The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1938) 

  • The Street of Crocodiles, Bruno Schulz (1934)

  • The Garden Party and Other Stories, Katherine Mansfield (1922)

  • Dubliners, James Joyce (1914) 

  • The Open Boat and Other Stories, Stephen Crane (1898)

Dave's Faves/Memoir [1]

  • Love and Trouble, Claire Dederer (2017)

  • The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (2015)

  • Townie, Andre Dubus III (2011)     

  • Live Through This, Debra Gwartney (2009)

  • Mary Karr's memoirs: Lit (2009), Cherry (2000), The Liar's Club (1995)

  • Nothing To Be Frightened Of, Julian Barnes (2008)

  • The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)

  • Planet of the Blind, Stephen Kuusisto (1998)

  • Homestead, Annick Smith (1995)

  • Those Days, Richard Critchfield (1986)

  • Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1854)

Dave's Faves/Memoir [2]

  • This House of Sky, Ivan Doig (1978)

  • The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston (1975)

  •  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig (1974)

  • Because I Was Flesh, Edward Dahlberg (1964)

  • A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (1964)

  • Instead of a Letter, Diana Athill (1963)

  • Exile’s Return, Malcolm Cowley (1934)

  • Tent Life in Siberia, George Kennan (1870)

  • Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs (1861)

  • Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana (1840)

Dave's Faves/Novels [3]

  • Stella Maris, Cormac McCarthy (2022)

  • Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell (2020)

  • Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (2015) 

  • My Struggle [Min kamp], 6 vol., Karl Ove Knausgaard (2009-2011)

  • Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann (2009)

  • The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)

  • Ironweed, William Kennedy (1983) 

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)

  • The Horse’s Mouth, Joyce Cary (1944)

  • House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1905)

  • Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847)

Dave's Faves/Novels [4]

  • Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr (2021)

  • Commonwealth, Ann Patchett (2016)

  • All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (2014)

  • The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004)

  • Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)

  • The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa (1994) 

  • Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992) 

  • The World According to Garp, John Irving (1978) 

  • Mrs. Bridge (1959), Mr. Bridge (1969), Evan S. Connell

  • Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell, 1866

Dave's Faves/Novels [5]

  • My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh (2018) 

  • Preparation For the Next Life, Atticus Lish (2014)

  • Fools Crow, James Welch (1986)

  • The Lover, Marguerite Duras (1984)

  • J R, William Gaddis (1975)

  • Fat City, Leonard Gardner (1969)

  • The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (1963) 

  • Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos (1925)

  • Nana, Émile Zola (1880)

  • L'Assommoir, Émile Zola (1877)

Dave's Faves/Novels  [6]

  • Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

  • Tinkers, Paul Harding (2009)

  • Elena Knows, Claudia Piñeiro (2007)

  • Mr. Pip, Lloyd Jones (2006)3

  • A Time for Everything, Karl Ove Knausgaard (2004)

  • The Windup-Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1994)

  • Great Granny Webster, Caroline Blackwood (1977)

  • Something Happened, Joseph Heller (1974)

  • Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake (1946)

  • Les Misérables, Victor Hugo (1862)

Dave's Faves/Novels  [7]

  • The Ministry For the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)

  • Black Wave, Michelle Tea (2017)

  • Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)

  • Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’Nan (2007)

  • Blindness, José Saramago (1995)

  • How Late It Was, How Late, James Kelman (1994)

  • The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides (1993)

  • Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler (1982) 

  • As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (1930)

  • The Lady of the Camillias, Alexandre Dumas, fils (1848)

Dave's Faves/Novels [8]

  • Matrix, Lauren Groff (2021)

  • The Eighth Life, Nino Haratischvili (2014)  

  • A Perfect Spy, John le Carré (1986)

  • Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985)

  • Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)

  • In Cold Blood [nonfiction novel], Truman Capote (1966)

  • Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West (1933) 

  • New Grub Street, George Gissing (1891)

  • Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (1857)

Dave's Faves/Novels [9]

  • Fight Night, Miriam Toews (2021)

  • Stillicide, Cynan Jones (2019)

  • Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017)

  • The Young Bride, Alessandro Baricco, 2015

  • Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’Nan (2007)

  • The Cider House Rules, John Irving (1985)

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera (1982)

  • Sula, Toni Morrison (1973)

  • The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark (1963)

  • A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe (1722)

Dave's Faves/Novels  [10]

  • White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000)

  • A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James (2014)

  • This Is Not Novel, David Markson (2001)

  • Wonderful Women By the Sea, Monika Fagerholm (1994)

  • Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart, Joyce Carol Oates (1990)

  • Norma Jean, The Termite Queen, Sheila Ballantyne (1975)

  • Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan (1967) 

  • Time Will Darken It, William Maxwell (1948)

  • Castle Rackrent, Maria Edgeworth (1800)

  • Hamlet [play], William Shakespeare (1600) 

Dave's Faves/Novels [11]

  • On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (2007)

  • The Restraint of Beasts, Magnus Mills (1998)

  • The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks (1991)

  • The Death of Artemio Cruz, Carlos Fuentes (1962)

  • Ceremony in Lone Tree, Wright Morris (1960)

  • The Price of Salt [aka Carol], Patricia Highsmith [as Claire Morgan] (1952)

  • The Locusts Have No King, Dawn Powell (1948)

  • Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy (1891)

  • War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (1869)

  • Can You Forgive Her? Anthony Trollope (1865)

Dave's Faves/Novels  [12]

  • 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak (2018)

  • Reservoir 13, Jon McGregor (2017)

  • The Natural Way of Things, Charlotte Wood (2016)

  • The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Louise Erdrich (2001)

  • The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell (2001)

  • The Siege of Krishnapur, J. G. Farrell (1973)

  • A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes (1929)

  • The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West (1918)

  • The Small House at Allington, Anthony Trollope (1864)

  • The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Henry Fielding (1749)

Dave's Faves/Novels [13]

  • If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor (2002)

  • Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (1972)

  • Billiards at Half-Past Nine, Heinrich Böll (1962)

  • The Quiet American, Graham Greene (1955)

  • The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles (1949)

  • The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (1948)

  • Every Man Dies Alone, Hans Fallada (1947)

  • Winter Wheat, Mildred Walker (1944)

  • Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner (1936)

  • All Passion Spent, Vita Sackville-West (1931)

    Leave a comment

1

Thing is, if you visit this page and you find a book, read it and like it, then I can view this Substack as a worthwhile endeavor . . . and therefore get to feel like a worthy elder (as opposed to, you know, another old guy flapping his gums).

2

Finally learned how to say her name: Tay-vz.

3

A very tough novel—not the writing, which is fluid, but the events in the story. Not widely know in the States. My thanks to writer Cate Kennedy for steering me to it. Here’s Wiki on Lloyd Jones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Jones_(New_Zealand_author)