Recommended Books

Very big object arrives in Earth orbit; contains secrets
Bear is one of the few who can induce sense of wonder in adult sensibilities (or in me, anyway.)

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Count Zero, William Gibson

Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling

Distraction, Bruce Sterling

Genetic high-jinks in the Unraveled States of America
I think he put in the Air Force gun-point bake sale just to bug me

Distress, Greg Egan

If a journalist can conceive of a unified theory, the universe will change
I think, therefore you am
Best hook in SF: "All right. He's dead. Go ahead and talk to him."

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein

Tunnel in the Sky, Robert A. Heinlein

Red Planet, Robert A. Heinlein

Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank

Animal Farm, George Orwell

1984, George Orwell

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison

Burning Chrome, William Gibson

Crystal Express, Bruce Sterling

Mirror Shades, editor, Bruce Sterling

The Year's Best Science Fiction, editor, Gardner Dozois

The Year's Best SF, editor, David Hartwell

OTHER GENRE NOVELS

ESPIONAGE

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John Le Carre

The Honourable Schoolboy. John Le Carre

Smiley's People, John Le Carre

George Smiley, British intelligence officer, quests against Karla, the master Soviet spy
None better; outstanding examples of craft transcending genre

THRILLER

The Odessa File, Frederick Forsyth

MYSTERY, MURDER, MAYHEM

Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith

Polar Star, Martin Cruz Smith

Arkady, now a fugitive from the KGB working in a Russian fish factory ship, investigates a murder of a fellow crewmember

Rose, Martin Cruz Smith

Disappearing parsons and a mysterious explosion in a 19^th century English coal mine
Smith is fine writer who excels in transporting us to lives in strange, grim but fascinating worlds

Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

Red Dragon

Apparently there are family issues
Thomas Harris is an excellent writer, who shows excellence in preproduction (research), production (composition) and postproduction (rewriting and editing). His also shows a truly disturbing sensibility, well-fitted to his chosen genre

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler

Philip Marlow, PI, wages a existential crusade against the dark forces of LA
Another outstanding example of craft transcending genre. A quintessentially American writer. Good, tight, acutely-observed prose

WESTERN NOVELS

Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty

All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy

Cities of the Plain, Cormac McCarthy

Final part of the Crossing trilogy
McCarthy is an exquisite stylist and an original thinker. No one has demonstrated such a transcendence of genre since Hemingway

CONTEMPORARY NOVELS

Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow

Herzog, Saul Bellow

You have your life and if you read this book, you have Herzog's
Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature. For one of his books, Herzog, I think, he wrote 3000 pages of manuscript, then boiled it down to 350

A Flag for Sunrise, Robert Stone

An alcoholic professor, a nun and a homicidal Latin American military thug are on a collision course. A case study in converging subplots

Children of Light, Robert Stone

Two of Stone's typically damaged characters do what they shouldn't in Tinseltown
Stone is another National Book Award winner (one of the most telling prizes in literature.) He is a superb stylist, with a thoroughly modern sensibility, a wicked eye, a taste for low life and a very buried sense of humor. Readers who admire Gibson's ability to raise sympathy for damaged characters should read Stone

Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe

A Park Avenue bond trader and his beautiful mistress side-swipe a poor black youth in the Bronx
This is the latest installment in the Great American Novel. Wolfe has captured contemporary life in NYC, from the highest to the lowest economic strata. A Man in Full, his follow-up to this book, is also very good, despite a contrived ending

HISTORICAL NOVELS

A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin

A lyric story of a young man who among his other adventures is an Alpine sniper during WWI
An exceptionally fine writer, Helprin's C.V. includes Harvard, Oxford, the British merchant navy and the Israeli Air Force. He is also a National Book Award winner

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

A prisoner in a Soviet labor camp has a relatively good day
Kruschev allowed this novel to be published in the USSR, then pulled it after one day of publication. This short novel is a stunning example of testimony: cold and hunger inform everything in this book in a way that no fiction writer could imagine; reading it, we are inescapably convinced of the truth of life in the labor camps. First Circle and The Cancer Ward are also good, but Ivan Denisovich is essential

SWORD and SAIL

Beat to Quarters, C.S. Forester

Ship of the Line, C.S. Forester

Flying Colors, C.S. Forester

Captain Horatio Hornblower is the Ulysses of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars
The central trilogy of the Hornblower stories. Read these while you're young and male

Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian

Captain Jack Aubrey commands the Sophie; the ship's doctor, Stephen Maturin, is also a spy for naval intelligence. The two friends meet in this book, the first of the Aubrey/Maturin series
These books are a joy and a wonder. The reader is immersed in the late 18^th century, both afloat and ashore. Observation of human traits and foibles, elegance of language, delicious humor are the hallmarks of these books. These books exemplify the ability of an author to build upon the conventions of a genre to reach dizzying heights of fiction in a very pure form

HISTORY

Bodyguard of Lies, Anthony Cave Brown

Comprehensive, eminently readable history of the deception industry behind the successful attempt to convince Hitler and Rommel that the allies were not going to land at Normandy. The definitive text on the 20th century's most important information operation

D-Day, Stephen Ambrose

Largely based on the oral histories of American survivors of the Normandy landings, this is the book to read if you wonder about the nature of battle

Treblinka, Jean-Francois Steiner

In August, 1943, after 700,000 men, women and children had been slaughtered in Treblinka, one thousand remaining prisoners revolted

The Harvest of Sorrow, Robert Conquest

In 1932, in an effort to subjugate the Ukrainians, Stalin had the Ukraine surrounded and removed all the food. Millions starved
If you don't think that anything is worse than war, read this book (and Treblinka), and consider the possibility that there is something even worse

The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad, Harrison E. Salisbury

For two and a half years, the Nazis besieged Leningrad, during which nearly a million and half people died, mostly from starvation
A gripping, detailed history of a city starved, with some driven to cannibalism

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Sir Winston Churchill

Days of the Jungle, Mario Payeras

A small group climbs from the jungles of Mexico to the mountains of Guatemala to form the Guerrilla Army of the Poor

Fire from the Mountain, Omar Cabezas

Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family, Shirley Christian

PHILOSOPHY and RELIGION

Man's Search for Meaning, an Introduction to Logotherapy, Viktor E. Frankl

A Nazi death camp survivor advances his thesis that the human search for meaning is essential to our existence as food and water
A beautiful, ennobling and wise book that exemplifies the Jewish spirit

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell

The Myth-Maker, Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Hyam Maccoby

A good, sand-blasting, deconstructionist look at early Christianity. Not recommended for Christians in the fragile flower of their faith

Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography, John Dominic Crossan

Jesus as a "savvy and courageous Jewish Mediterranean peasant who challenged the sacrosanct social rules regarding class, gender and status." An important book that illustrates what debt western civilization owes the Nazarene, divinity taken aside

The Synoptic Gospels, Mathew, Mark and Luke.

Tao te Ching, Lao Tse

BIOGRAPHY

Life of Johnson, James Bowswell

The life of Samuel Johnson, who single-handedly wrote the first definitive English dictionary, and who was one of the giants of 18^th century letters. What to think? Listen to Johnson

Living My Life, Emma Goldman

The life of Emma Goldman, a turn-of-century anarchist, who horse-whipped former lovers and inspired a youth to assassinate McKinley