Just returned from a stimulating and productive Independent Book Publishers Association board meeting in foggy Redondo Beach.
During dinner at the Fritto Misto in Hermosa Beach Tuesday, I passed around my iPhone and asked that each of the board members and staff add a note listing a book they thought I should read. This may have translated to their favorite book, the one that, in the words of an old friend “did them most” or it may be they listed the book they thought I would most enjoy or benefit from. Here’s the list:
- The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (two suggested The Kite Runner)*
- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
- The Blessing Stone, Barbara Wood **
- The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope **
- To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee*
- The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester **
- The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski **
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey *
- Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies **
- A Movable Feast, Ernest Hemingway *
- The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy *
- The Cripple and His Talismans, Anosh Irani **
- A Peoples History of the United States, Howard Zinn
- The Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi wa’Thiong’o **
It is interesting to note that all but one are fiction.
* I’ve read it but probably should again.
** I’d never heard of it, but probably should have.
I just ordered the ones I don’t have.
4 Responses to “IBPA Board Book Recommendations”
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Thanks Steve–great to see you at the board meeting and I appreciate the list. And if I need lessons in blogging, I know who to ask!
Steve,
Either your cell phone never got to my end of the table or I was in the library when it did, so I didn’t get to recommend “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. It and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” were probably the 2 most moving books I’ve read this decade.
It was a good board meeting and apparently a literary one, too! Now the fun part is trying to figure out who recommended what book!
Hey Bob,
“The Road” is the most depressing book I couldn’t put down. I’ll order Didion’s book. Sorry the iPhone passed you by.
That’s a good way to describe it. To my knowledge, no one has ever called “The Road” a “fun read” or a “romp.” I imagined myself in the father when my son was the age of the child. I still cry when I reread the end of the book…really.
Didion isn’t exactly uplifting either. But she is a terrific writer. I don’t believe I have ever read anyone who was better able to capture feelings in words.