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Books I've taught or just loved
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items These are books that I have taught as a college instructor as well as those I've just loved and keep returning to.
Taught me how to be a compassionate adult! Plus, aliens!
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
Guillermo del Toro breathed new life into this Mary Shelley classic. But the original novel is still the greatest. Father/son, God/man. Science vs. Nature. It's all here in precise and chilling prose. Hard to believe that this was written by an Engli...
Frankenstein: Mary Shelley: 0800759282111
I taught this in university 20 years ago. Groundbreaking graphic novel about a father and son grappling with the Holocaust and its generational aftermath. Mice are Jews, Cats are Nazis. What send line an absurd conceit becomes chillingly apropos. You...
The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
A novel in verse by renowned Canadian poet Anne Carson. A real delight--funny, sad, and real. It's an LGBTQ love story about a young monster with red wings.
Autobiography of Red: Carson, Anne: 9780375701290
Sci-fi/Fantasy wunderkind (she's just 28) takes on historical fantasy in this tale of language, magic, and politics in an alternate England on the custom of the industrial age. A complex, tightly woven narrative that left me intellectually challenged...
Babel by R.F. Kuang
A post-apocalyptic novel about the recovery of ancient knowledge that takes place at a monastery in the southwestern US, many years after the collapse.
A Canticle for Leibowitz: Walter M. Miller Jr.
This blew me away when I read it in graduate school. Post-nuclear holocaust England. 12 year old Riddley Walker must forget a new path for his people.
The language is wholly invented, reminding one of Anthony Burgess' "nadsat" language from A Clockw...
Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition: Hoban, Russell
John Irving's masterpiece! Or one of them. It's the story of a boy with a wrecked voice, who also happened to be God's instrument. Religion, war, and family secrets.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
This is John Irving's breakout novel. A heartbreaking and hilarious story of a wrestler and struggling writer trying to forge his own way in a complicated world. An early champion of trans rights and feminism. One of the most important popular novels...
The World According to Garp by John Irving
This is the book that probably started the genre of Dark Academia. College intrigue and shocking secrets and what lies beyond a seemingly calm Ivy League tableau. This book made me want to go to college, but for reasons one might not think!
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The classic Gothic novel of forbidden love. And maybe a ghost story?
Notable for its post-modern narrative 100 yrs ahead of its time. This one's dark.
(Also, everyone seems to have the same name. Just go with it )
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Okay, okay. I wrote this one. It has poems about failures, about poetry, and even a few photographs. One of the poems was even published in the New York Times!
Failures of the Poets
The Great American Novel is more than just a novel: it's an entire world and a microcosm of 19th Century America.
Ron Swanson said it was a story of a man who hates a fish. But it's a bit more than that!
Moby Dick; or The Whale
Winner of the Booker Prize, 2025.
Flesh: A Novel - Szalay, David: Books
A fifteen-year old autistic boy investigates the killing of a neighborhood dog. A compelling book of mystery and self-discovery with a lot of heart!
Easter egg: the title is taken from a line from a Sherlock Holmes story.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time