In honor of our 40th, Our Top 40

In honor of our 40th Anniversary (don’t miss our celebration this Saturday!) we’re asking our staff to submit their top 40 favorite books. Any genre, any author, good taste, bad taste, it doesn’t matter. Just the top 40 books that matter to them, in order of importance. We’ll be posting several of these, and our first comes from Brian Contine, a well known contributor to this blog.

Brian’s Top 40

1. Ulysses, James Joyce: In my opinion, the most important work of fiction ever published.

2. Don Quixote, Cervantes: Every day I try to be more like Don.

3. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates: Frank Wheeler is a better-written Don Draper

4. A Personal Matter, Kenzaburo Oe: You’ll hate the main character in this book. Serious hate.

5. The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot: The shortest big poem, and the biggest small book in Modernism.

6. Spring and All, William Carlos Williams: The most used catch phrase in Modernism is “Make it new” by Pound, the most intelligent catch phrase in Modernism is “No ideas but in things”

7. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf : Proof that you can be experimental and lyrical at the same time.

8. Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:  Adichie may be the most important writer for the next 50 years.

9. A Light in August, William Faulkner: Faulkner’s Christmas will embed himself in your moral compass.

10. Brownsville, Oscar Casares: Perfect sentences.

11. Paradise Lost, John Milton: If you haven’t, you should.

12. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy: McCarthy is America’s best bet for the next Nobel Prize, and Blood Meridian is his best book.

13. The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty: America’s First Lady of letters, Welty’s rock hard style mixes with some Southern sweat to prove that Mississippi is the literary center of our country.

14. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee: If you read this book with a group of friends, fights will break out. Guaranteed.

15. The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata: 200 pages about a single game of Go. If it sounds too good to be true, check it out and you’ll see why Kawabata was Japan’s first Nobel winner.

16. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf: My second favorite Woolf novel, but it’s probably her most intimate book. If “To the Lighthouse” shows off Woolf’s mind, “Mrs. Dalloway” shows off her heart.

17. Naomi, Junichiro Tanizaki: The Japanese “Lolita”

18. White Teeth, Zadie Smith: This is probably the funniest book on the list.

19. How to Cook a Wolf, M.F.K. Fisher: Fisher’s voice is so strong, you’ll feel like she’s sitting in the same room as you, and that’s a good thing.

20. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan: Is this a disjointed novel or connected short stories? Who cares, it’s phenomenal.

21. Let the Dead Bury the Dead, Randall Kenan: If you don’t know Kenan, check out his bio, then check out his books.

22.The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day: If I ever become a Christian, Dorothy will be the reason why. I dare anyone who bemoans Christians as a group to read this book.

23. Watership Down, Richard Adams: Political allegories about talking bunnies are awesome.

24. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov: The great American novel. Often called the American “Naomi”.

25. Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor: Funnier than you think.

26. The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross: How smart is Alex? I hate him. If you’ve often wondered why you don’t love Classical music more, Mr Ross will point you in the right direction.

27. My Life in France, Julia Child: Romantic comedies are my favorite thing, and this is the most romantic book I’ve ever read.

28. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford: Sometimes love is a debilitating thing.

29. You Are Not A Stranger Here, Adam Haslett: If you’re broken, which you are, you’ll find something to relate to in this collection of stories.

30. Dear John, Dear Coltrane, Michael Harper:Very good Jazz poetry.

31. Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson: Is it a woman or a man? It’s sexy.

32. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges: You’ll spend more time per word with Jorge than with any other author. Dense.

33. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin: Ex-Patriot literature as its best.

34. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami: Murakami’s masterpiece reminds us that sometimes an empty well is just an empty well.

35. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Davis: Biographies of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday put together under the focus that the historical, social, and musical revolutions of post-abolition America.

36. Silent Cry, Kenzaburo Oe: Oe’s best, most dynamic writing.

37. The Circuit, Francisco Jimenez: The best book about the immigrant experience I’ve ever read.

38. Nampally Road, Meena Alexander: Diasporic communities sometimes come back. What unique challenges do they face? Meena shows us.

39. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire: Freire’s memoir/theory/rant about how to help the acted upon become actors in our world. A perfect gift for any socially minded person who considers themselves a teacher.

40. The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht: This book won’t be out until 2011, but when it comes out I urge you to be the first in line to read Obreht’s wonderful novel. She’s young, but she must be an old soul, because her novel, set in the former Yugoslavia, has all the genius of Flaubert and all the bite of Twain, mixed with war and loss and grandfathers.