25 Books Every Writer Should Read

From Flavorwire:

The hard work, the MFA vs. NYC debate, the negativity, the importance of a good Twitter account, the parties you have to go to, the readings you have to do, people you should meet, the agents you need to impress — amid all the different ways writers have found to obsess over what it takes to be successful, we sometimes forget the most important thing of all: great writers need to be great readers.

You can’t read everything, but once you’ve moved past all of the totally obvious titles, considering adding these 25 titles to your TBR pile. They’re excellent examples of so many different ways that novels, short stories, poems, essays, and creative nonfiction can be done. For writers, this list could serve as something of a syllabus; for those who just want something new to read, it offers a chance to step out of your comfort zone and try a few new ideas and formats on for size.

Here’s the list:

The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin

The Collected Stories, Grace Paley

Portrait Inside My Head, Phillip Lopate

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The White Album, Joan Didion

The Beautiful Struggle, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Working, Studs Terkel

A Bolt From the Blue and Other Essays, Mary McCarthy

How Fiction Works, James Wood

Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Norman Mailer

The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright

Varieties of Disturbance, Lydia Davis

The Dead Father, Donald Barthelme

Collected Poems: 1948–1984, Derek Walcott

Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker

Out of the Vinyl Deeps, Ellen Willis

Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald

Kill All Your Darlings, Luc Sante

The Chairs Are Where People Go, Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti

Critical Mass, James Wolcott

The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems 1950–2001, Adrienne Rich

Would you add any books to the list? Share your thoughts. Click on Reply and I’ll see you in comments.

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