Sunday, May 29, 2011

Jonathan Evison's six favorite books

Jonathan Evison is the author of All About Lulu, which won the Washington State Book Award. In 2009, he was the recipient of a Richard Buckley Fellowship from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.

His new novel is West of Here.

For The Week magazine, Evison named his six favorite books.

One novel on his list:
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Melville’s shorter novels find him at the top of his game as a pure craftsman, but Moby-Dick is something else, something rarer. Moby-Dick is unfettered genius, furious, unhinged, and at times frustrating. A work so powerful it can barely sustain the force of its own invention, containing every narrative mode you can think of.
Read about the other books on Evison's list.

Moby-Dick also appears among Bella Bathurst's top 10 books on the sea, John Mullan's list of ten of the best tattoos in literature, Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.

The Page 99 Test: All About Lulu.

--Marshal Zeringue