Dad's books

When I turned 18, my dad wrote me a letter and in it he told me all the books he read when he was 17 through when he was 24; ending the list at the age where he lived in New York City for a couple of months. I've always liked my dad's NYC stories, because they always sound sort of Holden Caulfield-esque, and he had some really interesting experiences that almost sound too fantastical to be real, but I've never doubted him. Anyway, the book list he gave me was as follows:

1. Something Wicked This Way Comes- Ray Bradbury

2. Sweet Thursday, Cannery Row, East of Eden- John Steinbeck

3. World According to Garp- John Irving

4. The Cheerleader- Ruth Doan Macdougall

5. Kinflicks- Lisa Alther

6. Lady Oracle- Margaret Atwood

7. The Razor's Edge- Somerset Maugham

8. This Perfect Day- Ira Levin 

9. Every book by James Kirkwood

10. One Hundred Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

11. Every Stephen King novel until It in 1986

12. Ghost Story and Shadowland- Peter Straub 

13. Catch-22- Joseph Heller 

14. Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions- Kurt Vonnegut 

His commentary on the novels he read when he was a young adult was also pretty interesting; he described This Perfect Day as a great dystopian novel-- "obviously a rewrite of Orwell but who cares," and said that he remembered liking Kurt Vonnegut but turned away from him after he read those three books when he was in college; he said that Vonnegut's writing was okay for college students, but not "real adults." He said that the Garcia Marquez novel was way over his head and he remembered liking Catch-22 a lot but never revisited it after his first reading. 

As I've alluded to in earlier posts, many of my reading choices are directly influenced by my father, and I trust his judgment greatly. Of this list, I've read Catch-22, most of James Kirkwood books, Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and that's it. Some of these books listed I have no desire to read: I think One Hundred Years of Solitude is way over my head as well, and I'm not much of a Stephen King fan, (though I do appreciate him mocking Stephanie Meyer in a column for Entertainment Weekly) but I'm going to keep this list as a reference for the future. My dad has given me a huge list of books that he thinks I should read in addition to those listed above; I'll list the ones I'm actually looking into reading:

1. Leviathan- Paul Auster

2. Bright Lights, Big City- Jay McInerney 

3. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami (also his short story "Sleep") 

4. War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy (I've read this but I was too young to "fully understand it" as my dad puts it and need to revisit it as an adult) 

5. Operation Shylock: A Confession- Phillip Roth

6. All short stories by Ray Bradbury 

I think my relationship with my dad is different than anyone else's. All he does is give me books to read and fight with me about politics. I don't think he's ever asked me "how was school" in my life.