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MY FAVORITE CONTEMPORARY BOOKS
Post WWII books that I have
enjoyed and recommend.
Where did this come from? I'm a compulsive list maker and have
kept a running tally of all the books I've read since the
seventh grade (1958) -- over 3500. Along the way, I've
highlighted books that I particularly enjoyed. For a list of
all the books I've read since 1958, see www.seltzerbooks.com/readall.html
For reviews of some of these books, see www.seltzerbooks.com/reviews.html For brief notes on others, see www.seltzerbooks.com/readrev.html
Richard Seltzer seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
NOVELS
Richard Adams (Watership Down)
Kate Atkinson (Life After Life, A God in Ruins)
Nicholson Baker (Room Temperature,U
and I, Fermata, Vox, The Mezzanine)
Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog, A Single Rose)
Julian Barnes (History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters,
Staring at the Sun, Flaubert's Parrot, Arthur and George)
Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)
Frederick Busch (The Night Inspector )
A. S. Byatt (Possession)
Albert Camus (The First Man)
Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Xenocide)
Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring)
Susan Clarke (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell)
James Clavell (Shogun, Tai-Pan)
Frank Conroy (Stop-Time, Body and Soul))
Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One)
Louis de Bernieres -- (Corelli's
Mandolin)
Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We
Cannot See, Cloud Cuckoo Land)
John Dufresne (Louisiana Power and Light, The Way that Water
Enters Stone, Love Warps the Mind a Little)
David Duncan (The Brothers K, The River Why)
Dikkon Eberhart (Paradise)
Dave Eggers (The Circle)
Tan Twan Eng
(The Garden of Evening Mists, The Gift of Rain)
Louise Erdrich (Tracks, Love Medicine, Beet Queen, Bingo
Palace, Tales of Burning Love)
Steve Erickson (Days Between Stations, Rubicon Beach, Tours of
the Black Clock, Arc d'X, Amnesiascope, The Sea Came in at
Midnight)
Jenny Erpenbeck (The End of Days)
Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)
Penelope Fitzgerald (The Beginning of Spring, Human Voices,
The Blue Flower)
David Foenkinos (Le Mystere Henri
Pick, La Delicateesse, Charlotte,
Deux Soeurs))
Richard Ford (Canada)
John Fowles (The Magus)
Tana French (The Likeness, Faithful Place, The Secret Place,
In the Woods, The Trespasser)
William Gaddis (JR)
Neil Gaiman
(The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies)
Gail Godwin (The Good Husband)
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
Francisco Goldman (The Ordinary Seaman, The Long Night of the
White Chickens)
Michael Gruber (The Forgery of Venus)
Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants)
David Guterson (Snow Falling on
Cedars, East of the Mountains)
Brian Hall (The Saskiad)
Linda Hall (Margaret's Peace, Island Refuge, Katheryn's
Secret)
Lisa Halliday (Asymmetry)
Jane Hamilton (A Map of the World, The Book of Ruth)
Brooks Hansen (The Chess Garden)
Joanne Harris (the Girl with No Shadow)
Paula Hawkings (The Girl on the
Train)
Oscar Hijuelos (Mambo Kings Sing
Songs of Love, Empress of the Splendid Season, The Fourteen
Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien)
Russell Hoban (Turtle Diary, Riddley
Walker, Pilgermann)
Peter Hoeg (Smilla's
Sense of Snow, Borderliners)
James Hogan (Paths to Otherwhere, Multiplex Man, Inherit the
Strs)
Khaled Hosseini (And the Mountains Echoed, A Thousand Splendid
Suns)
John Irving (A Widow for One Year, Prayer for Owen Meany,
Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, A Son of the
Circus, Hotel New Hampshire Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, In One
Person)
Kazuo Ishiguro (Klara nd the Sun,
When We Were Orphans , Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, Never Let Me Go)
Sebastian Japrisot (A Very Long
Engagement, The Sleeping Car Murders, Trap for Cinderella ,
The Lady in the Car, One Deadly Summer)
Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son)
Jonas Jonasson (The 100-Year-Old
Man)
Tayari Jones (An American Mariage)
Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar (The Map of Salt and Stars)
Racehl Joyce (The Unlikely
Pilgrimage of Harold Frye, Perfect, The Music Shop, Miss
Benson's Beelte)
Rachel Kadish (The Weight of Ink)
Roberta Kalechofsky (Bodmin, Anonymities)
William Kennedy (Very Old Bones, Ironweed, Billy Phelan's
Greatest Game)
Stephen King (11/22/63)
W.P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe)
Milan Kundera (Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality,
Slowness)
Allen Kurzweil (A Case of Curiosities)
Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who
Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest)
Chang-Rae Lee (A Gesture Life)
Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island)
Stanislaw Lem (The Invincible,
The Investigation, A Perfect Vacuum )
Alan Lightman (The Diagnosis)
Clarice Lispector (the Chanelier)
Jim Lynch (The Highest Tide)
Gregory Maguire (Wicked)
Bernard Malamud (The Natural, The Fixer)
Gabriel Marquez (Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time
of Cholera)
Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin)
Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, The
Crossing, Cities of the Plain)
Ian McEwan (Sweet Tooth, On Chesil Beach, Saturday, Atonement)
James Michener (Tales of the South Pacific, Hawaii)
Susan Minot (Evening)
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
Patrick Modiano (Voyage de Noces)
Rick Moody (Purple America)
Marta Morazzoni (The Invention of
Truth)
Zak Mucha (The Beggar's Shore)
Harry Mulisch (The Assault)
Alice Munro (Runaway, Lives of
Girls and Women, Who Do You Think You Are?)
Jo Nesbo (The Snowman)
Sandra Newman (The Heavens)
Joyce Carol Oates (We Were the Mulvaneys)
Tea Obreht (The Tiger's Wife)
Patrick O'Leary (Door Number Three, The Gift
Riku Onda (Honeybees and Distant
Thunder)
Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient, Anil's Ghost, In the
Skin of a Lion)
Ruth Ozeki (A Tale for the Time Being, The Book of Form and
Emptiness)
Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago)
Ann Patchett (State of Wonder)
Milorad Pavic (Dictionary of the
Khazars)
Matthew Pearl (The Dante Club)
Iain Pears (The Dream of Scipio)
Victor Pelevin (Buddha's Little
Finger)
Arturo Perez-Reverte (The Club
Dumas, The Flanders Panel, The Seville Communion)
Elliot Perlman (Seven Types of Ambiguity)
Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
Lila)
Richard Powers (Bewilderment, Gain, The Goldbug Variations,
Prisoner's Dilemma, Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance,
Galatea 2.2, Gain, Plowing the Dark, Generosity, The Time of
Our Singing, The Overstory)
Annie Proulx (The Shipping News)
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49)
tom Rachman (The Imperfectinoists)
Frederick Reuss (Horace Afoot)
Tom Robbins (Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Skinny Legs and All,
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates)
J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban , Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the
Casual Vacancy)
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
Edward Rutherford (Paris)
Geoff Ryman (Was)
Thomas Sanchez (Rabbit Boss, Mile Zero)
Jose Saramago (Blindness , The History of the Siege of Lisbon,
the Cave, All the Names))
W. G. Sebald (The Emigrants)
Bob Seltzer (Cynk)
Jan-Philipp Sendker (The Art of
Hearing Heartbeats)
Rex Sexton (Desert Flower, Time Hotel)
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrow (The Guernsey Literary and
Potato Peel Society)
Elena Mauli Shapiro (13 Rue
Therese)
Carol Shields (The Stone Diaries)
Jane Smiley (Thousand Acres, Greenlanders, Some Luck, Early
Warning, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel)
Alexander McCall Smith (The First Ladies' Detective Agency)
J. Courtney Smith (Engagements)
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Cancer Ward, First Circle)
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Zodiac, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Seveneve,
Reamde, Anathem,
Termination Shock)
J. Courtney Sullivan (The Engagements)
William Styron (Sophie's Choice)
Graham Swift (Waterland)
Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter, Hundred Secret Senses, The
Kitchen God's Wife, Joy Luck Club)
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
D. M. Thomas (The White Hotel, Pictures at an Exhibition,
Eating Pavlova)
Jeffrey Thomas (Punktown)
Colm Toibin (Brooklyn)
Olga Tokarczuk (The Books
of Jacob)
John Updike (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit
at Rest, The Centaur, Gertrude and Claudius)
Simon Van Booy (The Illusion of
Separateness)
Abraham Verghese (Cutting for
Stone)
Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse 5, Timequake)
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews with
Hideous Men, The Pale King
Jo Walton (Thessaly)
Rebecca Wells (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya
Sisterhood )
Jeanette Winterson (PowerBook)
Herman Wouk (Youngblood Hawke, Marjorie Morningstar,
Inside-Outside)
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Young Jane
Young, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow)
NON-FICTION
Eric
Auerbach (Mimesis)
Alain de Botton (How Proust Can
Change Your Life, The Consolations of Phliosophy,
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, The Architecture of
Happiness, The Romantic Movement
Tim Berners-Lee (Weaving the Web)
Harold Bloom (The Western Canon)
Bruce Chatwin (Songlines)
Eugenia Cheng (Beyond Infinity)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience)
Daniel Dennet (Consciousness
Explained)
John Dewey (Human Nature and Conduct)
Jared Diamond (Guns Germs and Steel, Collapse)
Tom Dykstra (Hallowed Be Thy Name)
Joyce Maynard (At Home in the World)
David Quammen (Song of the Dodo,
Spillover)
Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos,
The Hidden Reality, Until the End of Time)
Kyle Harper (The Fate of Rome)Douglas Hofstadter (Godel, Escher, Bach)
Ray Kurzweil (the AGe of
Spiritual Machines, How to Build a Mind)
Claude Levy-Strass (Tristes Tropiques)
Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm)
Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works, The Language Instinct, The
Sense of Style)
David Quammen (Song of the Dodo,
Spillover, The Tangled Tree)
Lisa Randall (Warped Passages, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs,
Knocking on Heaven's Door)
Eric Raymond (The Cathedral and the Bazaar)
Howard Rheingold (Virtual Reality, The Virtual Community,
Smart Mobs)
Carlo Rovelli (Helgoland, The
Order of Time, White Holes)
Oliver Sacks (An Anthropolotics
on Mars, Musicophilia)
Richard Selzer (Mortal Lessons, Down from Troy, Imagine a
Woman, Raising the Dead)
H. R. Shapiro (The Bureaucratic State)
Barbara Tuchman (A Distant Mirror)
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