Contemporary (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) . 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
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)
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 Card Card (Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow)
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)
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)
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)
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 (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)
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 Firl with the Dragon Tatoo, 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)
Susan Minot (Evening)
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
Patrick Modiano (Voyage de Noces)
Rick Moody (Purple America)
Marta Morazzoni (The Invention of Truth)
James Michener (Tales of the South Pacific, Hawaii)
Zak Mucha (The Beggar's Shore)
Harry Mulisch (The Assault)
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
Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient, Anil's Ghost, In the Skin of
a Lion)
Ruth Ozeki (A Tale for the Time Being)
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 (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)
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)
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
Rebecca Wells (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood )
Jeanette Winterson (PowerBook)
Herman Wouk (Youngblood Hawke, Marjorie Morningstar, Inside-Outside)
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)
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)
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 (The Order of Time)
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)
