I've been reading mostly fiction this year. Rather than go over my favorite books, this year year I'm recommending three authors whose books I find consistently enjoyable.
- Edward Abbey: A few years ago, I was backpacking in southern California with a copy of Abbey's Desert Solitaire, a book about the desert wilderness and Abbey's thoughts on protecting it. A few days into my hike, I was taking refuge from the noon sun under a small bridge. To pass the time, I took out Abbey's book and continued reading. One phrase that I found interesting was "Poetry and revolution before breakfast". It didn't immediately make sense to me what Abbey meant by that phrase, so I put the book down and looked up to think about it. I noticed someone had scrawled some graffiti on the underside of the bridge. They were a bit faded, but it was still clear that they said... "Poetry and Revolution before breakfast". Which proves that the "number of weird things that happen to a person in the wild is directly proportional to how much time that person spends in the wild" (Steven Rinella in American Buffalo).
- Richard Russo: Russo writes so well that I sometimes feel guilty reading him. An author who knows how to tell a story like that can't be serious, right? I haven't yet come across any book by him I didn't like, but the one I've read multiple now is The Risk Pool, which recounts his childhood in upstate New York, growing up with a partly absent, sometimes violent and always hard-drinking father. Nobody's Fool and Everybody's Fool are great novels too. Nobody's Fool was turned into a movie starring Paul Newman that I'm re-watching every few years and that has just the right amount of sentimentality and snow for the holiday season.
- Jim Harrison: Harrison's trademark style is first person stream of consciousness. But unlike Thomas Bernhard, who pioneered this style or maybe just took it to its extreme, the protagonists in Harrison's novel are more likable and their musings are less abstract. I like The English Major best. It's about a recently divorced, broke and lonely man and it's unexpectedly heartwarming.