Famous Authors Share Their Favorite Reads

The books that inspired Barbara Kingsolver, Louisa May Alcott and others.

By Jamie Miles • Editor

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Nora Ephron: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s grip on the reading masses doesn’t stop short of literary “it-girl” Ephron (I Feel Bad About My Neck, Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally). Ephron has said her favorite book is the English classic, Pride and Prejudice.

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Barbara Kingsolver: The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy

Author of The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver, enjoys reading Margaret Atwood, William Faulkner and Kurt Vonnegut. Among her favorite books is The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy, a fantasy story in which anthropomorphic elephants start their own religion and customs.

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Jonathan Safran Foer: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

Foer extracted words from his favorite book, The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, to create a new story, Tree of Codes. “I’ve never read another book so intensely or so many times. I’ve never memorized so many phrases or, as the act of carving progressed, forgotten so many phrases,” Foer has said. His novel tells of a character’s last day on earth and is both an artistic and literary tribute to Schulz.

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Louisa May Alcott: Influenced by Emerson and Thoreau

Alcott grew up surrounded by literary legends. She lived next door to Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance), who granted her access to his private library full of classics and philosophical works, and her family was close friends with Henry David Thoreau’s (Walden). Both men influenced Alcott to publish poems, short stories, and later, Little Women.

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J.K. Rowling: Emma by Jane Austen

Another Jane Austen fan, Rowling has said Emma is her all time favorite book. “You're drawn into the story, and you come out the other end, and you know you've seen something great in action. But you can't see the pyrotechnics; there's nothing flashy.”

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John Irving: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Irving, author of The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp, is apparently a sucker for the classics, citing Great Expectations as his favorite book.

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Alice Hoffman: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Hoffman has referred to her novel, Here on Earth, as “homage to Emily Brontë,” who wrote her favorite book, Wuthering Heights. “It's always on my list when there's time to re-read the most brilliant psychological fiction ever written,” Hoffman has said.

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Anita Shreve: The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

Shreve, author of The Pilot’s Wife, has said her favorite book is The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard, a story of love, seduction and abandonment. “I have read this masterpiece half a dozen times, and during each reading I discover something new in its gorgeous prose,” Shreve has said.

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Stephen King: The Golden Argosy

King has said he’s learned more about good writing from this anthology of short stories than from any of the English classes he’s taken. The book includes stories from some of the world’s most widely read authors, including Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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Sue Monk Kidd: Lost Horizon by James Hilton

Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, has named Lost Horizon a must-read.The novel is based in Shangri-La, a fictional utopia located in the mountains in Tibet.“I read it over and over again. It was a like a spell, and you didn’t want the spell to be broken. It was this exotic, otherworldly story,” Kidd has said.

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Tom Wolfe: L’Assommoir by Émile Zola

Wolfe has cited L’Assommoir (meaning a cheap liquor store), by French novelist Émile Zola, as his favorite novel. The book is the seventh in a twenty-volume series, and provides an unforgiving study of alcoholism and poverty in 19^th century Paris.

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Influenced by Edward Bellamy

Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, a novella, about her own mental breakdown. Although she continued writing throughout her life, author and social activist Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward) greatly inspired Gilman to lecture on women’s suffrage and trade unions.

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