Recommended Reading
Also: The Ten Favorite Books
O’BRIAN
• The Unknown Shore
• Master and Commander
• The Far Side of the World
• The Reverse of the Medal
• The Letter of Marque
• The Commodore
(and the entire Aubrey-Maturin series of novels — a masterwork ideally suited to my preferences and peculiarities as a reader of fiction)
WATKINS
• Stand Before Your God
• The Story of My Disappearance
• The Forger
• Night Over Day Over Night
• Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn
• The Promise of Light
• In the Blue Light of African Dreams
• The Ice Soldier
• The Fellowship of Ghosts
• Eye of the Red Tsar
(as Sam Eastland)
• The Red Coffin
(as Sam Eastland)
CLAVELL
• Shogun
• Tai-Pan
• GaiJin
• King Rat
• Noble House
• Whirlwind
TOLSTOY
• War and Peace
• The Cossacks
• Hadji Murat
• Master and Man
• Happy Ever After
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich
KIPLING
• Kim
• The Jungle Book
• The Man Who Would Be King
• The Miracle of Purun Bhagat
ECKERT
• The Frontiersmen
• The Conquerers
• A Sorrow in My Heart
• Wilderness Empire
• The Wilderness War
ROBERTS
• Northwest Passage
• Lydia Bailey
• Arundel
• Rabble In Arms
RENAULT
• The King Must Die
• The Bull From the Sea
RAND
• The Fountainhead
• Atlas Shrugged
JUNGER
• Fire
• War
• The Perfect Storm
RICHTER
• The Awakening Land
The Trees
The Fields
The Town
• The Sea of Grass
• The Light in the Forest
WOLFE
• The Right Stuff
• The Painted Word
• A Man in Full
• I Am Charlotte Simmons
WOLFE
• The Wizard Knight
The Knight
The Wizard
• The Book of the New Sun
The Shadow of the Torturer
The Claw of the Conciliator
The Sword of the Lictor
The Citadel of the Autarch
• The Urth of the New Sun
• The Fifth Head of Cerberus
• The Devil in a Forest
• Soldier of the Mist
• Pirate Freedom
HEMINGWAY
• The Sun Also Rises
• In Our Time
BERRY
• Jayber Crow
• Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work
BIOGRAPHIES / AUTOBIOGRAPHIES / DIARIES / MEMOIRS
• Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard
• Sam Houston by James Haley
• The Raven by Marquis James
• N.C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis
• If They Move…Kill ’Em — The Life and Times of
Sam Peckinpah by David Weddle
• In the Arena by Charlton Heston
• Charlton Heston: Hollywood’s Last Icon by Marc Eliot
• Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of
Joseph Cornell by Deborah Solomon
• Nature’s Engraver — A Life of Thomas Bewick by Jenny Uglow
• How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell
• Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
• Between Worlds: The Autobiography of Leo Lionni
• The Diaries of Paul Klee
OTHER WORKS
• I Ching or Book of Changes (The Wilhelm-Baynes Translation)
• The Odyssey by Homer (The Robert Fitzgerald Translation)
• Essays by Michel de Montaigne
• The Conduct of Life by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
• The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• Appaloosa by Robert B Parker
• The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses by Robert W Service
• Taras Bulba by Nicolai Gogol
• The City in the Dawn by Hervey Allen
• The Islands of Unwisdom by Robert Graves
• The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
• The New Landscape by Gyorgy Kepes
• Drawing Life by David Gelernter
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
• The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas
• Levels of Knowing and Existence by Harry L Weinberg
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• We Die Alone by David Howarth
• Brave Companions: Portraits In History by David McCullough
• Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by James Webb
• Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
• Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
AND SHORT STORIES BY
• Ernest Hemingway
• Leo Tolstoy
• Rudyard Kipling
• W. Somerset Maugham
• James Thurber
• Irwin Shaw
• Stephen Crane
• Jack London
• Bret Harte
• Robert M. Coates
• Walter Van Tilburg Clark
• Paul Horgan
• Flannery O’Connor
• Gene Wolfe