You Must Read This "You Must Read This" presents conversations with writers about the books they love to read and recommend.

Special Series

You Must Read This

Writers recommend their all-time favorite books

Sunday February 9, 2014

From Muse To Outcast, A Woman Comes Of Age In 'Widow Basquiat'

Rebecca Walker's previous work includes the memoirs Black, White & Jewish and Baby Love. Adé: A Love Story is her first novel. Amanda Marsalis/Courtesy of Little A / New Harvest hide caption

toggle caption

Amanda Marsalis/Courtesy of Little A / New Harvest

From Muse To Outcast, A Woman Comes Of Age In 'Widow Basquiat'

February 9, 2014 • In her unconventional memoir, Jennifer Clement writes about the famous artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his relationship with Suzanne Mallouk — from Mallouk's perspective. Rebecca Walker says it's harrowing, beautiful and utterly riveting.

Sunday January 19, 2014

A Half-Century Later, Fearing's 'Big Clock' Still Ticks On

iStockphoto.com

Review

A Half-Century Later, Fearing's 'Big Clock' Still Ticks On

January 19, 2014 • If you liked the movie No Way Out, writer and editor Adam Sternbergh has one message for you: The book was so much better. Kenneth Fearing's 1946 noir novel The Big Clock, which inspired the Kevin Costner thriller, is just as tightly plotted and suspenseful — but it's also a moving meditation on mortality and time.

Wednesday January 1, 2014

Crossroads And Coins: Naomi Mitchison's 'Travel Light'

January 1, 2014 • Travel Light is an unjustly forgotten fairy tale about a wandering princess who goes from bears and dragons to the real world of medieval Constantinople — and back again. Writer Amal El-Mohtar says she encountered the book as an adult and "felt, very powerfully, that I had been waiting for it."

Sunday December 15, 2013

istockphoto.com

Surprising And Skillful, 'Yellow Dog' Deserves A Second Look

December 15, 2013 • Critics bashed Martin Amis' Yellow Dog, a novel that tells the competing stories of a thug, a king, a tabloid hack and an airplane flight. But author Ben Masters says you should ignore the naysayers and pick up this surprising, supple novel. In fact, Masters says, it's a "small 21st-century masterpiece."

Sunday December 1, 2013

iStockphoto

A Skeptic Is Swept Away By The Bromance-At-Sea In 'Master'

December 1, 2013 • Napoleonic Wars? The Royal Navy? Yawn. Novelist Nicola Griffith had low expectations when she started reading Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. But soon she was tearing through the 20-volume series, reveling in the deeply rendered friendship between the characters Jack and Stephen. It's a masterpiece, she says: "Jane Austen on a ship of war."

Sunday November 10, 2013

A Youngest 'Daughter' Remembers Famines, Shame And Hope

AFP/Getty Images

Review

A Youngest 'Daughter' Remembers Famines, Shame And Hope

November 10, 2013 • There are plenty of memoirs of China's Cultural Revolution written from the perspective of elite intellectuals. But Hong Ying's story is different; in her youth, the writer was the sixth child in a crushingly poor family. Novelist Karen Ma says Hong Ying's memoir, Daughter of the River is unflinching, unapologetic and incredibly powerful.

Sunday October 13, 2013

'Mezzanine' Takes The Trappings Of Everyday Life To The Next Level

iStockphoto.com

Review

'Mezzanine' Takes The Trappings Of Everyday Life To The Next Level

October 13, 2013 • Author Antoine Wilson suggests bypassing Proust in favor of a far shorter choice: Nicholson Baker's 1988 novel, which shares the internal monologue of a businessman on an escalator. Shoelaces, drinking straws and the corporate culture of men's bathrooms undergo thorough analysis in this slim book, which Wilson calls "relentlessly perceptive."

Sunday September 15, 2013

Love Story Electrifies Beneath The Silhouette 'Of Venus'

Mark Baker/AP

Review

Love Story Electrifies Beneath The Silhouette 'Of Venus'

September 15, 2013 • Shirley Hazzard's 1980 novel Transit of Venus tells a sweeping, decades-long tale of two Australian sisters and three men, with a dash of astronomy thrown in. Author Roxana Robinson says the novel entranced her with tragedy, complexity and elegant, arresting prose.

Sunday September 1, 2013

A Return To Trollope: Did The Book Change — Or Did I?

cover detail cover detail hide caption

toggle caption

cover detail

Review

A Return To Trollope: Did The Book Change — Or Did I?

September 1, 2013 • Author Ann Kirschner first read Anthony Trollope's Palliser series as a graduate student. Now, returning to it after more than 20 years, she finds her impression of the Victorian tale has transformed along with her life.

Sunday August 11, 2013

Author, Feminist, Pioneer: The Unlikely Queen Of Sci-Fi

Andrew Ostrovsky/iStockPhoto.com

Review

Author, Feminist, Pioneer: The Unlikely Queen Of Sci-Fi

August 11, 2013 • Science fiction has long offered us the image of "the final frontier," but some sci-fi authors have mapped frontiers of their own. Author Stephen Burt says James Tiptree Jr. (pen name of Alice Sheldon) was a pioneer in writing about gender and sexuality when most sci-fi authors were male.

Sunday July 28, 2013

A World A Few Degrees Of Whimsy Away From Our Own

cover detail cover detail hide caption

toggle caption

cover detail

Review

A World A Few Degrees Of Whimsy Away From Our Own

July 28, 2013 • Bohumil Hrabal's novel, I Served The King Of England, about a Czech waiter who barely survives World War II, may sound dire but author Anthony Marra says that if you allow yourself to be sucked in, you'll enter a story so ethereal you'll practically float.

Sunday July 7, 2013

'Rock Crystal' Tells Of Catastrophe's Quiet Avoidance

iStockphoto.com iStockphoto.com hide caption

toggle caption

iStockphoto.com

Review

'Rock Crystal' Tells Of Catastrophe's Quiet Avoidance

July 7, 2013 • Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter's 1845 novella Rock Crystal is the seemingly simple tale of two children who get lost in a snowfall on Christmas Eve. But author Susan Choi says the story perfectly captures humanity at its humblest and most resilient.

Sunday June 16, 2013

Evelyn Waugh's 'Scoop': Journalism Is A Duplicitous Business

iStockphoto.com

Opinion

Evelyn Waugh's 'Scoop': Journalism Is A Duplicitous Business

June 16, 2013 • The fictional tale about war correspondents will make you laugh till the person next to you on the subway thinks you have problems. It is also, according to writer Alexander Nazaryan, an all-too-real parody of the glory days of print journalism.

Sunday June 2, 2013

Donald Justice's 'Collected Poems' Offer Refuge From The Rain

iStockphoto.com

Review

Donald Justice's 'Collected Poems' Offer Refuge From The Rain

June 2, 2013 • Donald Justice's poems are not interested in making us feel comfortable or special. Yet author Mary Szybist says there is something about them that she finds profoundly consoling.

Sunday May 19, 2013

Ghost Ships, Murders, Bird Attacks: Stories To Keep You Awake

iStockphoto.com iStockphoto.com hide caption

toggle caption

iStockphoto.com

Review

Ghost Ships, Murders, Bird Attacks: Stories To Keep You Awake

May 19, 2013 • Author Ethan Rutherford started reading Daphne du Maurier's collection of stories, Don't Look Now, while it was still light out and didn't move from his chair until dark. Each one features characters who endure the strange and the extreme, and who are forever changed by the events that befall them.