Well, I’m writing to you from the great metro of Seattle. Fastest growing city of the country as well as one of the best read. Or so we claim. When winter hits, though, those smeared up gray days really make for some brilliant reading days.

So here I am to give you a list of fiction books that should be read. Now, whenever I see these kinds of lists I always see the same books. Hemingway? Check. Lolita? Check. Not to say these books are worthless, just… can we get some variety. And no, I don’t want to hear you talk about how these are the classics. I’ve read them and I think we need to add other books to our repertoire. Not doing this leads to the one track thinking that stifles thinking.

You see, I think that books need to represent and expand the world we live in, not simply reinforce preexisting beliefs (which is what a lot of these lists do). I too had these books in my list, but time and chance have me rethinking them.

So here is the list:

Go Tell it on the Mountain. by Baldwin. Read this when I was down and out a few years ago. Not exactly a happy ending kind of book, but there was some recognition in universality of this story being told by someone I have nothing in common with other than intellectually speaking. The story is full of heart and the sharp insight that proliferates Baldwin’s essays (also worth a look but outside the purview of this fiction list). Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Shire. Okay, so this is poetry, one that draws from real life, but I dare say it’s one of the best poetry books I’ve read in a long time, and, of course, it speaks to the human side of the current trauma in the world. Worth a read, IMO Kolyma Tales by Shalamov. Brilliant, dark and timeless. A tale as old as apes: the machine with grinds out humanity. Here it’s the gulags. A friend’s parents told me that to be caught with this book in the USSR was to be thrown in jail immediately, while to be caught with Gulag Archipelago was merely to receive a reprimand. Such was the power of this book. Read it, as I’m sure it will always be valid, even in non-communist countries. The Conscript by Hailu. It’s odd how I found this book, on a random shelf in a random store. But the opening quote says it all:

“He who fights on a foreign soil another man’s war

Not for his family or his country’s honor

And, when he lies dying, hit by a deadly blow

From an Angry firearm

But cannot say, “Oh! My beloved country

Here is the life you gave me, I come back to you”

Dies twice, reduced to eternal wretchedness.”

― leopardi

And it gets better from there. A short bittersweet journey. Worthy of a read.

5. The Bloody Chamber by Carter. A collection of tales, fairy tales, but oh are they worth it, if only for the sake of revisiting that which is old. Beautiful and thought-provoking.