Literature I've Loved (after the NYT list)

I began compiling this list because whenever I teach, I'm always scouting out works I can include on the syllabus and I'm slated to teach a course this Fall. But I decided to complete it after the fanfare that resulted from The New York Times' list. Note, I don't make temporal distinctions. These are the works from all time that move me, which I suppose might be off-topic since the newspaper was specifically aiming to capture the best books of this century. I am not convinced -- or maybe I'm simply unsure -- the best books  I've read were published during the current century. I also approach my reading life in a way that's quite separate from the publishing industry's calendar. I have recommendations from friends, I have genres I follow (memoir, literature by Italian women authors), I have gaps to fill (Shakespeare! Toni Morrison!), and none of that necessarily coincides with the particular books that come out each year (the most notable often go on the TBRL file, no?). 

To be sure, many of these works I've read and/or re-read this century. But does that matter? Let's put the issue aside and move onto the actual list, which isn't exhaustive, more like 'some ideas' for what to read. A list like this could really go on and on but I'm going to call time right now. And I've probably missed all kinds of books that I loved. Oh well!

Fiction

The Dubliners, James Joyce

Drown, Junot Diaz (which I preferred to 'Oscar Wao,' which made the Times' list)

The Divine Comedy, Dante (definitely not this century, ha ha!)

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

This Darkness Will Never End, by Edith Bruck (note, my translation) UPDATE!!!!

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

Il Giorno della Civetta, Leonardo Sciascia

To Each His Own (A Ciascuno Il Suo), Leonardo Sciascia

Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini)

Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones (His book, "The Known World," is on the NYT list but I haven't read it yet!) (almost this century!)

Country Girls, Edna O'Brien (May she rest in peace!)

A Month in the Country, J.L. Carr 

A Meal in Winter, Hubert Mingarelli

Gli Indifferenti, Alberto Moravia

The Bishop's Bedroom, Piero Chiara (in a stellar translation by Jill Foulston)

Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill

So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood, Patrick Modiano (actually this century)

Suspended Sentences (ibid)

A Scrap of Time, Ida Fink (see below)

Charming Billy, Alice McDermott

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver 

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (this century)

If You Kept A Record of Sins, Andrea Bajani (ditto) (and translated gloriously by Elizabeth Harris)

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (thanks to my friend, Jenny, for reminding me of this incredible book! So this entry is an addition to the original list, judges)

Essays/Memoir
"Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin

"My Alma Mater is Auschwitz," by Edith Bruck (note, my translation)

"Journey into Night" by David Sedaris

"Black Men and Public Space" Brent Staples

"Going it Alone" by Rahawa Haile

"Winter in Abruzzo" by Natalia Ginzburg

“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan 

"The Namesake" by Mason Stokes

"Brownsville Kitchen" by Alfred Kazin

“No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston 

"We Should All Be Feminists" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nonfiction (book-length)

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

If This is a Man, Primo Levi

Dora Bruder, Patrick Modiano

A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid

The Periodic Table, Primo Levi

Wanderlust. Rebecca Solnit (it's about WALKING! Walking!)

Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

Family Lexicon ("Lessico Famigliare")

"Trial by Fire," by David Grann (in The New Yorker)

The Letters of Nancy Mitford

Aran Islands, Synge (definitely not this century, ha ha!)

Here in Our Auschwitz, Tadeusz Borowski 

Individual short stories

"The Haircut" by Ring Lardner

"Making Love" by Antonya Nelson

"Casta Diva" by Francesca Scotti

"Autumn Lessons" by F. Marzia Esposito (read my translation of it here!)

"Cortez Island" by Alice Munro

"Your Husband is Cheating on Us"

"The Dead," Joyce, just in case you can only read one story from Dubliners

"A Hand Reached Down..." David Gates

"The Key Game" by Ida Fink (click on link but it's devastating)

“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid

“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” by Amy Hempel

Poetry
"Now" by Denis Johnson
"Aubade" by Philip Larkin

"Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

"The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy (a poem I learned by heart as a girl -- yes I can still recite it. It's short!)

"Dulce et decorum est," Wilfred Owen

"The House," Warsan Shire

"The Second Coming," by Yeats

"When I think of Tamir Rice While Driving," Reginald Dwayne Betts

"Digging," by Seamus Heaney

"The Symbol," "To Be Born By Chance" and "Maybe," by Edith Bruck (note, my translation)

Graphic novel

Maus, Art Spiegelman

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

In Italian, not available in translation

Viaggi e altri viaggi, Antonio Tabucchi (English translation forthcoming)

Andremo in Città by Edith Bruck, not yet available in translation BUT SOON! SOON!

Due Stanze Vuote, ibid ^^^

Passaggio in ombra (note the English translation could be available! Read an excerpt here)

(Yes, forgive me, I've included links to some of my translations because as a part-time translator, I only translate what moves me)

Tell me the literature you've loved. Don't worry about which century had the luck of seeing it published.

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Gente di Dublino (What I read before leaving for Ireland)

Italian literature is never far from my mind, even during the last few months when I immersed myself in Irish literature as I prepared for my first trip to Ireland in more than a decade. 

It's perhaps because when I read Italian literature, I attempt to fill in the vast gaps in my education, seeing as I attended school in America, and not Italy. So many Italian classics I naturally didn't encounter in high school!

As such, I've avoided reading American or British classics in Italian. Why bother?

But a year or so ago, I stumbled over the opening lines of The Great Gatsby in Italian. By which, I mean, the first lines of IL GRANDE GATSBY. (I wrote about it here). 

It happens to be my favorite novel of all time. And I realized how tickled I would be to see how the Italians render it (tickled and maybe also edified, since I do some literary translation, myself).

And why stop there?

So when Il Nostro Inviato (Mike) went to Italy a few months ago for work, rather than ask for the latest releases from my favorite Italian women writers (my standard order), I asked for Gente di Dublino.

Or what I've been calling "Dubliners" since I read it for the first time at St. Anthony's High School on Long Island.

I made a beeline for the masterpiece of James Joyce's collection, "The Dead," or in Italian, "I morti."

Here are the indelible final lines from that seminal story (slightly condensed):

(From "I morti" -- "The Dead")

"Cadeva la neve in ogni parte della scura pianura centrale ... E cadeva anche su ogni punto del solitario cimitero sulla collina in cui giaceva il corpo di Michael Furey.

"...pian piano l'anima gli svaní lenta mentre udiva la neve cadere stancamente su tutto l'universo e stancamente cadere, come la discesa della loro fine ultima, su tutti i vivi e tutti i morti."

I can remember my teacher, Brother Jeffrey, pointing out the repetition in the lines: "falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling," and they delight in Italian, too. (In my head, I still hear the main character's name, Gabriel Conroy, in Brother Jeff's voice).

(Update for 2026: I taught Dubliners for the first time in the Fall as part of a writing course at Wesleyan on Fiction and Nonfiction, and that was a thrill! To revisit all of these characters -- Little Chandler, Mr. Duffy, Mrs. Sinico, Michael Furey, Gretta, and, of course, Gabriel Conroy, was nothing short of stepping into a time machine because some of my students were reading it for the first time and I could remember how I felt when I did just that).

I've been binge-reading Irish literature for months -- ever since booking our trip to Ireland shortly before St. Patrick's Day.

And I've spent my reading hours re-visiting Synge and other works by Joyce, as well as tackling several Brendan Behan works and a short play by Samuel Beckett.

But there's really nothing like those final lines of "The Dead" or "I morti." It's the same, really, in the end. Be it "The descent of their last end" or "La discesa della loro fine ultima," I am equally enthralled.

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