Personal Favorites

More often than I'd like, I'm asked what my favorite books are. Usually I blank on that question, then think of some good answers five minutes after the questioner and I have departed. To answer your questions, then, dear sir or mam, questions which I've failed to answer, here is a tentative list of favorites, all of which I recommend.

Of course a list like this is nearly meaningless to me, because such a list would change every ten years. I've included here only creative or purely fictional works.

1. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
2. Cervantes, Don Quixote
3. Dante, Divine Comedy
4. Homer, Odyssey 
5. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
6. Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun
7. P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves!
8. Charles Dickens, Bleak House
9. Robert Louis Stevenson (everything!)
10. Anthony Trollope, The Warden
11. Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
12. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
13. Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice
14. Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
15. Terry Pratchett, Discworld novels
16. Charles Portis, True Grit
17. Flannery O'Conner, Wise Blood
18. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
19. Graham Greene, The Quiet American
20. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
21. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
22. Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
23. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court