In case you’re interested, here’s a short list of books on the same set of shelves, by living writers, which I enjoyed very much, have even reread and would recommend to others,–but without necessarily moving those writers into the list in my last post (the “I’ll run out and read the next book as soon as it comes out” list).
- Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
- Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
- Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
- Jane Smiley, The Age of Grief
Another list would be a list of dead writers, who won’t be bringing out any new books, but if they did, I would run out instantly to seize them. This list would certainly include Laurie Colwin, mentioned the other day. And Barbara Pym. And Bruce Chatwin. There’d be a special rank of honor on this list for writers whose entire ouevres I’ve reread multiple time, writers whose posthumous collection of grocery lists I’d buy just for the chance to hear something new in their distinctive voices.
Literature Should Mean Something in Your Life 
Posted by Pym Fan on July 18, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I can definitely see myself running right out to buy the “Posthumous Grocery Lists of Barbara Pym.” Do you think the Library of America will come out with that one someday? Other authors whose grocery list collections would send me running to the bookstore: James Merrill, Henry James, Eudora Welty…
Posted by meansomething on July 18, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Edith Wharton’s grocery lists, LOL. With instructions to the cook.
See, HJ would not make it onto this list for me, because there is PLENTY of Henry James left for me to read. But I’d love to read Merrill’s or Welty’s grocery lists!