MY FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS 1 “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez. Everything I want in a novel: socially astute and entertaining.
2 “The Wanderers” by Richard Price. Full of people I saw around me every day, it made me want to become a writer.
3 “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Now more than 80 years old, it’s as close to a perfect book as there is.
4 “The End of the Affair” by Graham Greene. Blows a hole in my heart every time I read it. My favorite last lines of any novel.
5 “The Last Good Kiss” by James Crumley. The great American crime novel. As beautiful as about anything in American lit.
A CLASSIC YOU REVISITED WITH DISAPPOINTMENT: “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway. I know, I know—heresy! The Old Man just sounds like the Boy and the Boy just sounds like Hemingway and all three of them sound awfully he-man pretentious.
A MUCH-RECOMMENDED BOOK THAT YOU HAVEN’T READ: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. I just never got around to it.
