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For the 2011 opening of his Parisian nightclub Club Silencio, surrealist filmmaker David Lynch was given carte blanche to curate the interior. Along with his personal selection of music, film, photography, furniture and wine, Lynch named five of his favorite books to add to the library.

Stories hold conflict and contrast, highs and lows, life and death, and the human struggle and all kinds of things.

Read on for the list, and dip into Lynch’s own writings with 2006’s autobiographical Catching the Big Fish. For more insight into his artistic process, check out his Masterclass on creativity and film.

The Name Above The Title by Frank Capra

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (also rec’d by Joan Didion & Philip Roth)

The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

Anonymous Photographs by Robert Flynn Johnson

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

(via Trebuchet Magazine)