More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason

by Nancy Pearl

The Broom of the System was David Foster Wallace’s first novel, published when he was just twenty-four, and a clear harbinger of the intelligence and inventiveness that would be manifested in his later books. It takes place in a recognizable but not quite realistic Cleveland, and its main characters include a cockatiel named Vlad the Impaler; his owner, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman; and her boyfriend (and boss), Rick Vigorous.

  Other Ohio novels include Conrad Richter’s trilogy, which must be read in order, The Trees, The Fields, and The Town;Craig Holden’s The Jazz Bird; Dawn Powell’s My Home Is Far Away; the extremely violent mysteries of Jonathan Valin (Final Notice, The Music Lovers, and more); Les Roberts’s detective series set in Cleveland starring private investigator Milan Jacovich, including The Indian Sign; and Robb Forman Dew’s Dale Loves Sophie to Death.

  Pennsylvania

  Native Pennsylvanian John O’Hara fictionalized his childhood home of Pottsville in a series of novels, stories (incidentally, he published more stories in The New Yorker than any other writer), and novellas of unhappy love affairs, long drinking days, and the disappointments of even the best-lived lives. For a good sense of O’Hara’s style,try his first novel, Appointment in Samarra, and then follow up with the three great novellas that make up Sermons and Soda-Water : “The Girl on the Baggage Truck,” “Imagine Kissing Pete,” and “We’re Friends Again.” (The book’s title is from a Byron poem: “Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter / Sermons and soda water the day after”).

  The Valley of Decision by Marcia Davenport is an oldie but goodie. Published in 1942, it follows the ups and downs of a steel mill- owning family in Pittsburgh from 1873 to Pearl Harbor.

  Michael Chabon set his first two books in Pittsburgh—The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,a beautifully written coming-of-age novel, and the hilariously poignant story of a blocked writer, Wonder Boys.

  The teenage hero of Snow Angels by Stewart O’Nan faces two tragedies: his parents’ divorce and the murder of his favorite childhood babysitter.

  Coal country is the setting for several gratifying Pennsylvania novels, including Lauren Wolk’s Those Who Favor Fire;Tawni O’Dell’s sad but ultimately redemptive Coal Run; and K. C. Constantine’s gritty (but not noirish) long-running mystery series featuring policeman Mario Balzic. (Start with The Rocksburg Railroad Murders, which introduced Balzic way back in 1972.)

  The subject of A Good Doctor’s Son, a coming-of-age novel by Steven Schwartz set in suburban Philadelphia, is how one mistake can irrevocably change your life.

  It’s always a pleasure to read the latest in the Amanda Pepper series by Anthony Award-winning Gillian Roberts. Amanda is an English teacher (and amateur detective) at Philadelphia Prep who stumbles across mysterious deaths and suspicious behavior on a regular basis. Twogood ones are The Bluest Blood and How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

  Lisa Scottoline’s series of mysteries featuring attorney Bennie Rosato and her law firm colleagues includes such doozies as Everywhere That Mary Went and Final Appeal, but her best is Killer Smile, in which attorney Mary DiNunzio takes on what appears to be a simple pro bono case concerning Amadeo Brandolini, who allegedly committed suicide while interned as an “enemy alien” during World War II, and whose family now wants to sue the government for reparations.

  Wisconsin

  Fond du Lac is the setting of one of the earliest (1942) and still most moving novels about young love written for young adults, Seventeenth Summer. According to the 1960 copy (thirty-eighth printing!) that my library owns,it won a prize from the Intercollegiate Literary Fellowship, whatever that was. This (just a tad dated, alas) novel was written when the author, Maureen Daly, was herself in college and relates the story of Jack and Angie, who fall in love during the summer after their high school graduation. (Why can’t real life be like young adult novels, anyway? Or at least like young adult novels published before 1980?)

  A. Manette Ansay brings small-town Wisconsin to life in her novels about religious faith and family ties. Take a look at Sister and River Angel, especially.

  Stewart O’Nan’s powerful and beautifully conceived historical novel A Prayer for the Dying is set just after the Civil War, when an epidemic is killing off the townspeople of Friendship at an alarming rate, confounding Jacob Hansen, who is both the sheriff and the undertaker.

  I loved Mona Simpson’s Off Keck Road, a slightly claustrophobic novella that is written with enormous grace and affection for the main character. Simpson explores what Thoreau referred to as a life “of quiet desperation” as that description applies to Bea Maxwell, who spends nearly her entire life in Green Bay,Wisconsin.

  A Map of the World byJane Hamilton explores how Howard and Alice Goodwin’s family is turned upside down and inside out by two calamitous events: the death of a neighbor’s two-year-old in the pond on their farm, and the accusation by one of Alice’s students that she sexually molested him.

  Other Wisconsin novels include Orchard by Larry Watson and Crows over a Wheatfield, a novel of domestic abuse by Paula Sharp, whose author, like her main character, is a criminal defense lawyer.

  THE BOOK LUST OF OTHERS

  I have spent many a happy hour poring over books that detail the book lusts of others. This has always been a great way for me to discover books I may have missed or overlooked, and it’s so interesting to read the favorite books chosen by some of my favorite writers.

  Linda Sternberg Katz and Bill Katz compiled Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries, which was published in 1983 with an introduction by Doris Grumbach. It offers annotated lists of about one thousand books, drawn from suggestions by various writers and divided into fiction and nonfiction sections. It’s particularly heavy on books published in the 1950s and ’60s, which are frequently hard to find, but it’s still a valuable (and thoroughly enjoyable) resource. (I remember running across a library copy that had been [helpfully?] annotated by a previous reader, with check marks and comments of agreement or vociferous differences of opinion with the editors.) I first heard here about later faves of mine: Nigel Dennis’s Cards of Identity; John Ashbery and James Schuyler’s A Nest of Ninnies; George Kennan’s Tent Life in Siberia; and Joanna Field’s On Not Being Able to Paint.

  The subtitle of Lost Classics, edited by Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding, and Linda Spalding, pretty much says it all: “Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission.” This eccentric compendium includes essays by Philip Levine on the poetry of Alun Lewis, focusing on his collection called Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, and Russell Banks’s introduction to Barbara Greene’s memoir of her travels in Liberia, Too Late to Turn Back. She accompanied her more famous cousin Graham, whose account of the same trip,Journey Without Maps, you will surely want to read as well.

  Most importantly, Noel Perrin’s A Reader’s Delight confirmed my delight in Emily Eden’s The Semi-Attached Couple and my great admiration for Diana Athill’s wonderful (and painful to read) memoir Instead of a Letter, since he obviously agreed with me about the pleasures of both.

  David Madden’s Rediscoveries (originally published in 1971) and Rediscoveries II, with a publication date of 1988, are two other great resources for book-lusters. Major writers wrote one- or two-page essays on their favorite works of “neglected” fiction, whatever “neglected” meant to them. It’s from reading Rediscoveries II that I discovered, in an essay by Elmore Leonard, author Richard Bissell’s novel High Water (the cover of the first edition, from 1954, is a hoot; Bissell also wrote 7½ Cents, the novel that became the musical Pajama Game); Dawn Powell’s three New York novels, The Locusts Have No King, The Wicked Pavilion, and The Golden Spur (thanks to Gore Vidal); John A.Williams’s ! Click Song (a novel that’s far less read than his The Man Who Cried I Am), selected by Ishmael Reed; and William Kotzwinkle’s comic novel of the Age of Aquarius, The Fan Man, which is a favorite of novelist Herbert Gold.

  In A History of Reading and A Reading Diary: A Passionate
Reader’s Reflections on a Year of Books, Alberto Manguel displays in most readable prose his deep love of books and reading, and his wide-ranging knowledge of authors and their works.

  BRONTËS FOREVER

  Working in isolation in the village of Haworth, surrounded by the bleak moors of Yorkshire, England, the three Brontë sisters (Anne, Emily, and Charlotte) wrote some of the best novels of their age (and, arguably, any other), so it’s not surprising that the sisters as well as their characters have become talismans for other writers. Whether in reaction to a story line, as a reimagined character, or with one of the authors herself making an appearance, modern fiction is littered with all things Brontëesque.

  If you have not yet read Jane Eyre, rush out and do so now (really, put this book down and go read it). If you haven’t read Wuthering Heights or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, put them at the top of your must-read list. All three are romantic novels of love and freedom set against the strictures of society and class. Jane Eyre is the happiest of the three, while The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is perhaps the most powerful,and Wuthering Heights the most tragic. Here are some Brontëesque books to read as well:Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair (see page 6 in Book Lust)

  Mardi McConnochie’s Coldwater (an imaginativeintertwining of fictionalized biography with literary fact)

  Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (a prequel to Jane Eyre that describes Mrs. Rochester’s childhood in the Caribbean)

  Sharon Shinn’s Jenna Starborn (Jane Eyre in outer space—no kidding)

  Jane Urquhart’s Changing Heaven (doomed lovers and the ghost of Emily Brontë)

  BILL BRYSON: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  I once interviewed Bill Bryson for a radio program, and found him in person to be just like his authorial persona: one of the most affable and downright friendly people I’ve ever met in or out of the pages of a book. Whether he’s recounting his excursions around Britain, in Australia, or on the Appalachian Trail, or talking about words and language and everything else in (and out of) the world, he is always entertaining, informative, and a pleasure to read. Here’s a list of his books, alphabetical by title with the ones that you especially shouldn’t miss marked with an asterisk.

  Bill Bryson’s African Diary

  Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words:A Writer’s Guide to Getting It Right

  I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

  * In a Sunburned Country

  The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

  Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States

  The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

  Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

  Notes from a Big Country

  * Notes from a Small Island: An Affectionate Portrait of Britain (This is the single best book I know of to give someone who is depressed, or in the hospital recuperating [or not] from an illness or surgery.

  The only problem with giving it to friends who had stomach surgery is that they might split their stitches laughing.)

  The Palace Under the Alps: And Over 200 Other Unusual, Unspoiled, and Infrequently Visited Spots in 16 European Countries (This guidebook was published in 1985, so it’s dated, but it’s still fun to read.)

  * A Short History of Nearly Everything

  * A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

  BUILDING BLOCKS

  The stories surrounding the building of buildings—from the dreams of the architects, to the engineers who execute their plans, to the end users—can, in the right hands, make for fascinating reading.

  In City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center, NewYorkTimes reporters James Glanz (who has an advanced degree in physics) and Eric Lipton (who writes for the Metropolitan section of the paper) describe the development of the World Trade Center, from its inception in 1939 (to recycle an unused building from the 1939 World’s Fair), through the political infighting that preceded actual construction, to its shocking collapse on September 11, 2001. Along the way we are introduced to a large number of the women and (mainly) men involved, from steelworkers to Nelson Rockefeller, from the head of the Port Authority to the widow of one of 9/11’s victims, from small-business owners who lost their shops to the architect of the project. This is one compulsive read, intensified because we know the story’s ending; but it also explains, in terms accessible to the layperson, exactly how and why the building fell, and why there was such loss of life.

  It’s especially enlightening to read Glanz and Lipton’s book along with Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center by Daniel Okrent, since many of the same people appear in both. While Nelson Rockefeller was a relatively minor player in City in the Sky, he plays a major role in Okrent’s social and cultural history of the building that bears the Rockefeller family’s name, one of the most famous skyscrapers in the world. Well researched, well written, and an absorbing read, this is a good choice for people who love all things NewYork. (You will no doubt want to read Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York as well, a magisterial study of the man who wielded enormous control over the development of New York for nearly half of the twentieth century.Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and the Parkman Prize for historical writing, Caro’s is the classic book about urban politics and development.)

  In House, his retelling of one family’s house-building experiences in Amherst, Massachusetts, Tracy Kidder presents a literary blueprint of the entire process. You’ll be caught up in the lives of the owners, the architect, and the builder as they work through the myriad complications that arise. By the time you turn the last page, you’ll either be scared of even thinking about building a house (as I was) or psyched to go ahead and do it.

  David Macaulay has written a number of wonderful books for children (which adults will find equally useful and entertaining) about how a particular type of edifice comes to be built. He’s particularly good at explaining various technical terms in language that the layperson (no matter his or her age) can understand. Pyramid, Cathedral,Mosque, and Mill are all excellent, but my favorite is Castle, in which the author looks at the step-by-step process by which a thirteenth-century Welsh castle was created.

  Slightly off the topic (but I couldn’t resist) is a charming little book called There Goes the Neighborhood: Ten Buildings People Loved to Hate by Susan Goldman Rubin. Rubin offers brief histories of these ten buildings (and the reactions they engendered), which include such notables as the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Walker Community Library in downtown Minneapolis, modernist architect Philip Johnson’s glass house, the Washington Monument, and the Eiffel Tower.

  CENTRAL ASIA: CROSSROADS OF EMPIRES, CAULDRON OF WAR

  For several years I’ve been deep in central Asia, or at least deep into books about central Asia. I think I read these books with such interest because I am at heart and at best simply an armchair traveler, and this is one place in the world in which I am almost certain I will never find myself.

  Luckily for me, there are some great novels, biographies, and histories of people who lived, visited, or somehow found themselves caught up in the events of a region that includes Afghanistan and the newly independent countries that were once part of the former Soviet Union (Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the Kyrgyz Republic).

  Fans of historical fiction will love Philip Hensher’s The Mulberry Empire, which makes a wonderful companion read to Susanna Moore’s One Last Look(see “India: A Reader’s Itinerary”). Set in the 1830s, when Britain’s cockiness about its empire-building was at its height, this is a story of the first Afghan War, when Lord Auckland sent fifty thousand British and Indian troops to unseat the amir, Dost Mohammed, the leader of the Afghans, and replace him with someone more acceptable to an important ally, the king of the Punjab.

  In addition to its rousing tale of treachery, bravery, and foolhardy empire-building, Beyond the Khyber Pass: The Roa
d to British Disaster in the First Afghan War by John H. Waller includes this ironic verse describing the deaths of ordinary soldiers, victims of British hubris: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains / And the women come out to cut up what remains / Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains / An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”

  People who don’t read the subtitle of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 bySteve Coll may be forgiven if they think they’re reading a spy thriller written by, say, John le Carré. Coll, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Washington Post, describes (with meticulous attention to detail, buttressed by nonintrusive endnotes) the nature and history of U.S. policy in central Asia.

  Jon Lee Anderson wrote about the Soviet invasion and the mujahideens’ war against the communist-backed government in Kabul for The New Yorker.More than a decade later, he returned to write about life there following September 11, 2001. His essays are collected in The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan.